Introduction
Singularity is an alternate reality FPS game set in 2010 that has survival/horror and time travel elements. You play as Captain Nathaniel Renko, a U.S. special horses drone sent to investigate the island Katorga-12 that belongs to the Ruskies. Charlie had discovered the "mysterious E-99," the supposed 99th element (not based on Einsteinium at all) that was to let them compete with the nuclear based advancements of the West. Shit inevitably goes wrong, your team is all dead, and weird rifts in time start happening.
Gameplay
It's an FPS game, so largely you will already know how this game will be. A big part of gameplay comes in with the "TMD." The TMD is a device that gets strapped on your wrist and lets you do weird shit like age or de-age certain objects in the world, create a sphere of halted time, and act like the Gravity Gun. The TMD is largely used for puzzle solving, and in general, the solutions to each puzzle are rather straightforward and easy to figure out. You can also use the TMD aging effect on people, turning them into dust.
You explore Katorga-12, largely on your own completing tasks set forth by various characters that are still alive on the island. Singularity feels a lot like Bioshock in many respects. You have the Health bar and another bar below it for your TMD Energy (i.e.: Eve and Plasmids). You can store a number of Health Kits and TMD Energy Vials. There are upgrade stations spread about the world that let you upgrade your guns, upgrade yourself, and upgrade the TMD.
Speaking of guns, you have a fairly standard assortment of items, a revolver, a shotgun, an assault rifle, a sniper rifle, along with a minigun (which you can actually use for as long as you want once you find it, and there is plenty of ammo for it). There is also a stupid railgun and a stupid grenade launcher. In addition to the guns you can hang on to (you have two weapon slots, lame) there is a rocket launcher and a gun called the Seeker, which lets you steer the bullets around when you hold down the right mouse button. When you pick up the Seeker and rocket launcher, you don't have to drop one of your other weapons, but you have to drop the Seeker or rocket launcher in order to go back to the other weapons. The Seeker is a lot of fun to use in particular.
Sights and Sounds
Singularity runs on the Unreal Engine 3, so it's on par with most other UE3 based games, on a technical level. Artistically, the game is pretty impressive. The people are fairly well detailed (though facial animation continues to not be anywhere near as good as Half-Life 2, seriously when is someone going to catch up?) and the monsters are suitably grotesque and such. There is also some good in-game UI work, though not to a Dead Space level. Special effects are great.
As far as sound is concerned, Singularity is decent, but not awe-inspiring. You're not going to blown away by the sounds of bullets coming out of your assault rifle, but it's not anemic sounding either. They do a good job of handling sound in slo-mo and such. Voice acting is generally good. The Russian accents are good without sounding too stereotypical.
Stuff that sucks
First, the game seems just a bit too easy. Most enemies just require figuring out the particular trick to defeating them the easy way, and they are pretty much never in combination. You're almost always fighting one kind of enemy in isolation, so you never really need to make any intense tactical decisions like which targets should have priority because it's pretty much which one is closest to you.
Similarly, there isn't any difficulty in the time/physics based puzzle aspect either. The solution to any problem is always in front of you, and to miss it means you're fairly thick. The only time I had difficulty was one particular section that required some odd timing.
Like all games seem to be doing now, there is no save system, just checkpoints that are fairly arbitrarily spread out. You can always count on a checkpoint occurring right before a boss fight, which gives away most surprises. If they just did away with the notification that you'd triggered a checkpoint the game would be much better. Of course, most bosses again aren't too difficult, considering the "Here is my weak spot, shoot me here to kill me" and "I am going to attack you now, you should get out of the way" obviousness of them.
Finally, the inclusion of the Bioshock (or more accurately, System Shock 2) style audio tapes and flash backs just feel a bit forced. They slow you down in a game that feels more like it wants to be more run and gun.
Conclusion
It's not superb, but I definitely enjoyed it. The presentation is good, and I like the premise and the way the plot works in all the cool stuff with the time travel part. The ending works well, and if nothing else it will give you a good 10 hours of solid, standard gun shooting. I think it is worth checking out, but full price is a bit much to ask.
Score : 7.5/10
