1Up Review: Singularity - Link
A fine shooter that experiments with time manipulation more aptly than any game since Braid.
By Dustin Quillen
06/29/2010



That's it, videogames; I've officially had it with audio logs. They were a cute diversion a few years back, but now it seems like every post-BioShock game environment is strewn with more recording equipment than a Guitar Center. Aside from the latest Batman -- excused for being set in an insane asylum -- I've never been able to comprehend why anyone would capture the intimate details of their day-to-day lives on tape, only to leave said recordings out in the open for any caped crusader or genetically-enhanced super-soldier that might be passing through. Then again, I guess I still don't really understand the point of Twitter, either.

Anyway, Raven Software's newest first-person shooter, Singularity, absolutely overflows with that sort of atmospheric junk. And that's just one of the many, many ways Raven's game gives off a serious BioShock vibe. For starters, Singularity opens with a helicopter crash over the Pacific Ocean -- BioShock, a plane crash in the Atlantic. Both games drop their silent protagonists into strange and perilous ruined cities where mysterious, flesh-mutating substances have been unearthed. They also both allow you to collect and trade the aforementioned gene-altering materials to customize and upgrade your abilities. I could go on for days, honestly, but all that's really missing here are guys in retro-looking diving suits, a soundtrack loaded with Bing Crosby songs, and the ability to unleash swarms of bees from your hands.



For all the similarities between the two games, however, Singularity still manages to explore plenty of its own unique ideas -- particularly when it comes to the game's focus on time travel. You play the part of Captain Nathaniel Renko, a modern-day military operative sent by the U.S. to investigate the abandoned, Cold War-era research island of Katorga-12. After a bit of snooping around the rotting facility's propaganda-filled halls, you eventually find yourself inexplicably warped into the pristine, 1950s version of the Soviet base. Your brief trip to the past winds up royally screwing with the present, and you spend most of the game bouncing between time periods in an effort to set things right.

These little excursions through time are hands-down my favorite part of the game, as your actions in the 1950s can affect the present in both drastic and subtle ways. A statue of Stalin might get replaced by a sculpture of a new dictator, for example, or you could inadvertently cause an enormous laboratory to become overrun with mutant vegetation. Yeah, these outcomes are all predetermined and you don't ultimately have much choice in the matter, but I enjoy seeing the consequences of my time shenanigans nonetheless.




The whole time travel premise isn't restricted to the story, either; your interactions with time factor heavily into Singularity's gameplay as well. While the game starts off as a typical FPS with some less-than-stellar gunplay, everything changes for the better once you get ahold of the Time Manipulation Device (TMD for short). The TMD is essentially a gauntlet infused with the ability to alter time and space in all sorts of nifty ways. Initially, the device can either rapidly age a person or object until it deteriorates altogether, or it can revert a target from a damaged or decaying state back to a more unspoiled condition. These powers go a long way in spicing up Singularity's otherwise lackluster combat, and -- along with later TMD upgrades like the area-of-effect time freeze and the Half-Life 2-style gravity pull -- they come in handy for solving the simple puzzles that dot Katorga-12.

My biggest beef with the game is that Singularity doesn't quite live up to its own potential. Given that the entire plot revolves around time travel being possible, the developers could have dumped you literally anywhere in history. I kept hoping for a caveman sighting or glimpse of medieval Russia, but the game never sends you anywhere but 1955. The devs also put a severe limit on which items in the environment can be affected by the TMD, though that's mostly for the sake of maintaining the game's structure. As for the TMD puzzles themselves, they never really ramp up in difficulty, and the game insists on recycling the same old tricks ad nauseam.




Multiplayer gets the worst of it, though. Both online variants split players up into two teams of six -- horribly mutated creatures versus human soldiers equipped with TMDs -- and each team has their choice between four classes unique to their respective sides. Extermination, Singularity's capture-and-hold-the-objective mode, sounds like a good enough idea on paper, and I actually had a pretty good time with it once I got over the steep learning curve associated with each class. But the three maps included on the disc just aren't enough to sustain my interest for more than an hour or two. The only other option is basically your standard team deathmatch. Pardon my yawn.

Some repetitive puzzle design and a half-baked multiplayer component still aren't enough to completely tarnish Singularity, however. Beneath its flawed exterior lies a fine shooter that experiments with time manipulation more aptly than any game since Braid. If the opportunity for a sequel arises, here's hoping Raven goes for broke with the time travel stuff next time around.

Master Pre wrote ...

[...] the multiplayer seems to be kinda weak. I need a solid multiplayer experience with my shooters.

Atlas in Flames wrote ...



Point taken. I suppose it's kind of difficult to put out an FPS without stellar multi-player this day in age...