Reviews// Singularity

I've played a lot of first-person shooters and for me playing Singularity. To be honest, I get bored of playing first person shooters in environments where you are in cities and streets.

I enjoy them, but playing them over and over again bores me. So, when I played Singularity I thought it was a perfect game to take a break from those environments. Trust me it’s definitely worth the money for the fun moments you get from it.

Singularity was created by Raven, which has created some great games you may know or have played: Wolfenstein, Quake 4, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, ShadowCaster. Out of the list of games Raven created I think Singularity is the best by far. It based the game in 1950s and the present day. The game is mainly about altering the past and fixing the present.

The plot revolves around a failed project – the eponymous 'Singularity' - that has been developed and then covered up by a group of Soviet scientists. These scientists thought that the project would have been useful for future purposes. They were wrong...

The story starts as you heading to an emergency mission, being transported there by helicopter. You and your men then realise that there has been a mistake while controlling Singularity.

You play as Nate Renko an air force pilot who has been sent to investigate a spill of radiation emissions. You also meet a character called Kathryn who helps you on your mission to stop the Singularity. You also learn information about Victor Barisov, a scientist who was in charge of the making of the “E99 Bomb”. He was also the creator of the Time Manipulating Device (TMD). These are the main characters, they help you on your mission to try and stop the singularity and save humanity.

Singularity is an interesting game to play, some of the puzzles you have to solve can disrupt what you think about the game. Aside from the puzzles, Singularity is an well-paced game for its action moments. For example, being out in ‘rushing’ positions you have a set time to complete an objective.

Your mission entails learning about the past and what happened to those who lost their lives trying to escape creatures mutated by the failed experiment with the aforementioned substance, E99. You are given new objectives along the way. As you complete these you begin to notice that nothing is normal any more; the world has changed, people have mutated and changed into hideous creatures.

As you progress through your mission objectives you begin to learn what caused everything to go terribly wrong. The plot gets interesting, something is always happening when you don't expect it. I thought that the plot dragged on; at one point I thought that I had finally finished. I then realised that I had to do something else to complete my previous objective.

As you progress through different environments you discover the Time Manipulation Device; a device created to be able to jump, slow down and alter time; age and un-age objects and people, repair and break objects, lift objects, reveal past footsteps and cause a fatal pulse, blowing things away.

You get upgrades for your TMD, meaning even more mayhem. You begin to discover TMD platforms, which give you surges of energy to repair the larger environments that would require more power.

Beware Minor Plot Spoiler:
Towards the end of the mission you are given three options: kill your friend and become the most powerful man alive; kill the enemy and alter the past and save the future by sacrificing yourself; kill them both and continue your life being haunted of the project that you embarked upon. The things you discover in the game really help you, as you can really get the feel of how they lived back in the past in that time of crisis.
Minor Plot Spoiler End

Weapons! Along with your experimental time altering device, defeating the toughest of monsters from the past and present, you get a bunch of advanced and powerful weaponry. These include:
Centurion, a small revolver that fires E99 bullets, packs a deadly punch, but a slow rate of fire.

AR9 Valkyrie an assault rifle, useful for its sharp accuracy and power.

Volk S4 a shotgun that has an auto loading system, delivering large amount of power at close range.

Kasimov SNV-E99, a one shot sniper rifle, using the feature of its slow motion scope for pinpoint accuracy.

I enjoyed using the weaponry as it was realistic and fun to use, each weapon had its own unique feature.

In terms of the environment, you can use objects around you to gain the advantage over bosses and creatures; try launching flammable barrels towards them, making them burn to hell. Explode liquid nitrogen barrels to freeze the enemy and then smash them for instant kills.
Instead of just continuously using weapons and the TMD to do all the work you can also use the objects in the environment.

The environment worked well for me: highly textured structures of buildings, environments, props, weapons and explosions all created a believable play area.

Conclusion
Apart from the slow plot and the fact that the controls are slightly hard to keep track of – changing within and without the TMD, Singularity is overall still a great game to keep.

SPOnG Score: 86%