By Adam Delo at thegamingliberty.com
Singularity has silently crept onto the gaming scene and the fact that it’s had almost no promotion in the run up to its release is immediately suspicious – insinuating that publisher Activision doesn’t want their name tarnished with a sub-par release. I can’t understand why though, as Singularity is a hugely competent shooter with a gaming first; a well-implemented and interesting time-manipulation mechanic.
The story follows a US Special Forces soldier, Captain Nate Renko, en route to investigate strange radiation readings that appeared on an island off the coast of Russia. His squad finds a huge abandoned and overgrown research complex where an ‘incident’ has fractured the very nature of time itself. He very quickly finds himself propelled back to the 1950s and inadvertently re-writes his own time-line, with disastrous consequences. Renko must figure out what happened at the complex and find a way to correct the past and save the present. It’s not award-winning stuff, but it doesn’t get in the way of the game and serves as a decent plot to drive the action forward.
The graphics are good as you’d expect from an Unreal-tech game and also have a refreshingly wide colour palette. Sure, there’s a lot of greys and browns – it’s mostly set in the ruins of a 60 year old facility after all, but Raven have found any and every excuse to inject as much colour into the world as possible, which often leads to some striking and memorable scenes. There’s a lot that’s heavily influenced by 2K’s Bioshock here, especially with the health and TMD energy bars, which operate pretty much exactly the same as Bioshock’s health and EVE bars. There’s also a vague and subtle Half-Life vibe here too, mostly in the general ‘feel’ of the atmosphere, with the occasional puzzle that would feel very at home in Dr. Freeman’s world.
Trigger Happy
There’s an ample selection of extremely well designed weapons to kill and maim with – a standard take on a pistol, a shotgun, assault rifle, Gatling gun and a sniper rifle that gives you the ability to briefly slow down time when you’re looking down its sights. Some of the more interesting weapons include a rail gun, which fires exploding slugs (much like the crossbow in the original Half-Life), a grenade launcher that allows you to manually control the grenade as it rolls along the floor and a high-powered rifle called ‘The Seeker’, which fires explosive rounds that you can manually guide – very cool stuff.
Then there’s the Time Manipulation Device, or TMD. This little fellow, acquired early on in the game, allows Renko to control and play with time, to an extent. You can age or renew certain objects in the game that often help you on your way, like renewing a collapsed staircase or rapidly ageing a door look, or for a higher energy cost, rapidly ageing an enemy to dust. There were one or two sections where Raven used this ability very intelligently in way of a few scattered puzzles, but sadly these were few and far between – which is a shame as they could have done so much more with it.
Other abilities are unlocked for the TMD as you progress through the game, including telekinesis-type ability and the ability to summon and throw a ball of energy that creates a large shield-type dome called a ‘Deadlock’ that almost stops time for anything inside it. Once you have control of all these abilities it unlocks some real potential for coolness.
There’s also an upgrade system for both weapons and TMD abilities. Finding Weapon Tech allows you to upgrade many of your weapons’ stats, and finding the enormous amount of E99 Tech allows you to purchase and upgrade your TMD abilities and give yourself certain perks, like taking less damage or increasing the amount of health kits you can carry. The weapon upgrades are a bit of a disappointment, only allowing you to upgrade the same damage, magazine capacity and reload speed of every gun, and I had hoped the upgrades would vary per weapon and allow you to augment their more interesting abilities.
The TMD upgrades have had more thought and offer a good range of tweaks and secondary abilities but it’s a shame there were only two perks that modified an existing power, and disappointingly again, in just increasing range and power. It’s a good system, but one that could have been far more in-depth.
The enemies in the game come in many flavours, and your main enemy in the 1950’s will be the Russian army of the time. In the present day, however while there’s still the Russian army to fight, including elite troops that can withstand many of your TMD powers to spice things up, there’s also various mutants that have been created by the severe radiation following the original incident. They are primarily melee fighters who mostly rush you as a group, apart from the stronger types that you only fight every now and again. Depending on the type, they have a few powers such as the ability to teleport or temporarily phase out and are invulnerable to damage. Thankfully there’s a good mix of both and it changes up frequently enough that you don’t tire of facing a certain type of enemy down to overuse.
Multiplayer Options
The multiplayer component comes in two types, your standard Team Deathmatch affair with “Soldiers vs. Creatures†mode and an attack/defend mode called “Extermination.†Both multiplayer modes are class-based and pit mutants against soldiers and both are a lot of fun, though the Extermination mode is clearly the better of the two. A team of soldiers must renew and hold a series of beacons on the map against the mutant defenders, pushing them back each time a beacon is claimed much like Rush mode in Battlefield. Mutants have a wide variety of abilities depending on the class you pick and the perks you choose.
As mentioned before the multiplayer is a hell of a lot of fun, but isn’t quite good enough to rival any of the big players. There’s nothing inherently bad, but it’s just not excellent – it’s hard to put a finger on, but despite all the quality meat in there, this burger is just another like any other.
Overall though, Singularity is a brilliant, accomplished shooter that borrows heavily from some of the giants of the genre, whilst never quite reaching the level that they’re on. That said, I highly recommend this title and find it bewildering as why publisher Activision isn’t promoting Singularity at all.
Format: Playstation 3, Xbox 360; Developer: High Moon Studios
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