Singularity Review: Revenge of the Power Glove

I really, really wanted to love this game. I have been excited about it ever since the first details back in January of 2009. I followed the game's progress, watching every trailer and reading as many articles as I could. But like Raven Software's last two games X Men Origin Wolverine and Wolfenstein the game has come out mediocore. Well I better get to the meat.

To be fair this game has good bits to it but unfortunatly the story is not one of them. The game is about Nate Renko, a mute, faceless American soldier with absolutely no personality (so you can put your's on him). He's on a stealth mission to an island in the Bering Sea where strange reports are being shown and the Russian government is being hush about known as Katorga-12. Katorga-12 was back in 1955 mined of it's resource known as lazily titled E-99 which as it turns out has magical properties of time manipulation (so that's what the TARDIS is mad of) and the Russians plan to use for a superweapon to take over the world!!! Yeah another Russian hating game that thinks the Cold War is still going on. Nate crashes on the island but finds it turns out that a highly unstable element might explode after the station known the Singularity explodes destroying the island and mutating it's residents into horrible monsters. Nate fucks time a bit after saving the future world conquerer creating an alternate timeline because the island is unstable in time and Nate travels between 1955 and 2010 and with the help of an old scientist and a sexy Alex from Half Life clone to stop the Russians. The story is underdeveloped and not very deep at all. The plot is simple and cliche: and the countless audio logs add no interesting story details. That and since it has time travel numerous plotholes come up.

Now if you thought about my story description in basic details it comes out as: miracle element to make perfect world but ends up mutating all the innocent citizens and causing the island to fall into ruin. yes this game squarely has it's sights to ripoff BioShock (fine to be specific, System Shock). The gameplay mostly is a BioShock ripoff, as the game is a resource based first person shooter so you have health packs and energy packs for your out of this world powers. The game is spread between two environments: 2010 where you fight Russian soldiers and 1955 where you fight Soviet soldiers who have all the same weapons for some reason. The soldiers AI is mostly okay, so they take cover and shift cover but they seem to be totally confused by the concept of flanking as any time I do it they act like I'm not even there. Enemy vareity in the soldiers is bad with like two types, but monsters are much more varied: Zeks for example can teleport and become impervious to fire by phasing out of reality or spider like tanks. They require creative TMD and weapon use. The game also offers perks and upgrades but nothing overly interesting is here. The guns are the standard pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle etc. That's not to say there aren't more interesting weapons like the Seeker where you can control your bullet's flight with a satisfying splattering boom and the grenade launcher which allows you to steer the grenades.

But the best weapon here is the TMD or the Time Manipulation Device. The TMD yes is a BioShock Plasmid rip off because it's a hand based weapon that needs constant refueling. Yes, some of the powers are clearly taken from the Plasmid gallery. The powers are: Impulse. a pulse of energy that can throw enemies to the ground or at close quarters deismember, a bubble shield that freezes time for everything inside it, gravity gun levitation of many items. But the best is the aging. With the TMD you can render soldiers to dust or turn them to puke spitters to attack the soldiers for you. Some items in the environment are used for this like ammo crates or health boxes can be returned to their previous states or sometimes you can revert entire ships, bridges, trains to their glory days. The TMD is used in "puzzles" and their are air quotes there because the puzzles are simplistic and while creative with the TMD are way too easy like revert a crate to get over a fence is the most common. No imagination needed which is disappointing. Fighting with it is better because it breaks up monotony of corridor shooting. Instead of using a shotgun to take down an enemy just use Impulse to blow his head off. Tired of that chain gun guy's never ending fire, then just freeze him in time and take him down. Still you'll use all the tricks before the game's over. The game is great in sections of creative TMD use like raising a ship from the deep and then run through as it falls apart or boss fights with giant monsters (spoiler there's only two which is bad). Not enough creative thinking went into the gameplay department.

The game does offer a multiplayer mode though but this is not a thing in the game's favor. Again to be fair to the game I had fun in the multiplayer but it wouldn't last over long term without constant updating like what Valve does but since this is Activision chances are no. The mode  takes "inspiration" out of Left 4 Dead as it's soldier classes versus monster classes. On the soldier side the TMD powers they use can be interesting but the classes are clearly TF2 taken. Their's even a healer that heals through a stream. Monsters are a bit better as those classes are more varied: you have the Zek who can turn invulnerable, Phase Ticks who can take over soldiers, Reverts who puke to heal monsters and harm soldiers and Rdions or spider tanks. Their are perks here but nothing interesting at all in fact worse then the single player as they are incredibly basic. A lot of it is basic in fact as the game seems to have just 3 or 4 maps and only two modes: capturing points and team deathmatch so no interesting modes. The multiplayer is maybe worth playing for novelty as it is fun for a little while just don't expect much of a community because match finding was hard a times.

On the presantation side the game is in the area of average to slightly above average. The game definetly doesn't take advantage of Unreal 3 Engine's full potential. The environments never get interesting as they are always industrial areas or undergrounds sewers and they look fine just not amazing. I would say though work went into the look of TMD powers and the monster designs and animations. Character models also get cliche as the main villain has a cape and a white eye (all he needs is a cat). It also took me out of the experience that on a Soviet island all the 1955 soldiers spoke english and had all the signs in english. The audio department doesn't get better either as the music works for what it's supposed to although outside of the three main speaking characters (and really only the girl Cathryn was interesting in personality) every other voice actor phones this in mostly through audio logs as they pull very silly Russian accents. Then again this game like many other shooters hates Russians.

To sum it up the game is by no means mad but is a competent FPS with some neat ideas and the fairly good gameplay fun of the TMD the game is still disappointing in pretty much every area: weak story, standard gameplay, short term multiplayer, standard graphics. Only the TMD rises as being really cool but the developers should have worked as long as they could instead of simply copying BioShock (sorry, System Shock) and made their own interesting game. I'd like to see more of this series but just flesh it out a bit more. The game had a lot more potential judging by your credits which show concept art for more interesting enemies and a mech.