Raven Software are an odd bunch. They crank out games at a good pace, but all their titles seem to miss that little bit of polish or spark that could shift them into a different light. One example of this is Quake 4. It was playable, but it just didn’t feel right and ultimately it failed to match up to the Quake name. Following that, they made Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Wolfenstein, which were all enjoyable but again there was no crazy thrills or anything that would create that gratifying feeling of enjoyment we crave.
Singularity is different. There is something about this game that we really like. It might be that the gameworld is designed in such a way that it may as well be a Bioshock expansion, or that we are secretly communists ourselves that wish to prolong a new Russian empire. Whatever it is, it’s hard to place, but let’s just get the basics down. Singularity revolves around an old Russian scientific experimentation centre (Katorga-12), where the lucky folks who toiled away there found E99.
E99 is odd in that it can do weird timey-wimey stuff and apparently turn normal people into weird blue freaks. Regardless, you’re playing as Nate Renko, an Air Force pilot who has been given the unfortunate task of investigating weird radiation emissions from the Katorga-12 Island, remnants from the “Singularity” event that occurred sometime in 1950 and mucked everything up. Naturally, Renko’s helicopter crash lands and that’s when things get complicated.
Renko quickly becomes some kind of time tripping super soldier, like Master Chief on LSD. The twist is the game takes place both in 1950 and 2010, thanks to the Time Manipulation Device (TMD). As a key gameplay and plot/narrative mechanic, it’s probably the only original thing here. You can use it to age/de-age objects; open time portals, as a gravity gun that freezes objects in time, to create weird slow-time bubbles and other such time oddities as you progress through the game. Other than the cool timey-wimey stuff, the gameplay is basically typical FPS point A to point B linearity, but with Bioshock-esque audio logs and one corridor exploration.
Despite this, the gunplay is actually quite good; basically akin to Modern Warfare 2 (maybe Activision is finally making developers share their tech). You can only carry two weapons, and there isn’t much to choose from, but what’s here gets the job done well. There’s your typical machine gun, shotgun, pistol, sniper, etc. and they’re all upgradeable. What’s interesting is that you can mix and match your time powers with your normal run and gunning for some unique results.
Some enemies have to be brought into this timezone, whereas others can be slowed down or destroyed through reversing their own biological timeline. It’s refreshing to see that in an industry that’s keen on dumbing down to casuals, we can still have complex elements in shooters like this. Sure, it won’t make gamers bow to it like how we all will to China in five years, but there’s always something rather fun about mucking around with time. TimeShift may have done most of this stuff already, but the basic gameplay and gameworld is much more intense here.
Talking about the gameworld, the aforementioned comparisons to Bioshock are not some kind of odd joke for your amusement; the game literally looks like something in the same game. While this reeks of unoriginality, we think depicting Katorga-12 with this style complements the propaganda-propelled Russian communism of the mise-en-scene. The life-bar and time-energy (we forgot its technical name because we were busy blowing people up when the game told us it) are ripped straight from Bioshock, with literally the same health-kit system.
Traversing through the linear levels isn’t ever boring, and there’s always something kicking off. Whether it be a new TMD power, lots of enemies wanting to kill you or an impromptu boss fight (don’t worry, it’s actually good), the pacing is very fluid and it fights for your attention. The big set-pieces are surprisingly fun to play through, despite one particularly annoying segment when a load of creepy-crawly enemies run at you and explode, like the world’s worst spiders. If you’re not afraid of them, you’ve got a better disposition than anybody in our office. This type of enemy must be the worst thing to be introduced in the past few generations of console gaming. We do not want weird gits running at us to try to blow us up in rapid succession; we want good old fashioned bipedal Russians, poor people or aliens to duel with.
The rest of the enemies are so-so. Their design is a bit odd, with most of them looking like rejects from Eiffel 65’s Blue (Da Ba Dee) video (we suggest heavy YouTubing, but you didn’t hear that from us). The Russian soldiers from the 1950-based segments look remarkably cool in their full soldier regalia, and you will weirdly find yourself looking forward to the time-trippy moments just to see a different colour pallet for a change. We get that the 2010 enemies have been infected with some weird time stuff, but you don’t need to bang us over the head with it by making everyone blue.
Multiplayer-wise, what’s here is entertaining and should keep you going during the summer release drought. You get to fight as either Soldiers or Creatures to try and control a map. As you would expect from a game in this century, each side has its own abilities and classes. It’s nothing to write home about but could give you a nice distraction if the weather finally decides to implode in real life.
Verdict: Singularity is daft but good old-fashioned gaming fun. It isn’t quite a top tier must-have, but it’s definitely worth playing and has some tasty tricks up its sleeve that will make you want to keep playing. It may be linear and unoriginal in places, but the time-wimey elements are surprisingly entertaining.
