Singularity
Developer: Raven Software
Publisher: Activision
Release Date: June 29, 2010

by Schizophriend

Beat it somewhere in the range of 6-8 hours on easy because I didnt want to get stuck and not finish it before my rental period was up. Ended up beating it the second day of my 5 day rental period. The first thing I would like to say that has me extremely disappointed with this game, is that almost nothing from the E3 2009 gameplay demo is featured in this game. The character Yuri from those demos is not in the game at all. Those levels and a lot of the cool features from that gameplay demo do not exist in the game or are vastly different in a not as cool way. So the game has disappointed me, but I will still give it a fair review.

Graphics:
About the same as Bioshock 2. Which is barely above that of Bioshock 1. Its the Unreal Engine 3 and theres nothing special about the graphics. I like the look of the TMD, but as it upgrades it only looks slightly cooler and only gets only slightly more powerful. Having things age right in front of you is pretty cool and nice to look at, but it is all canned and once you see it once or twice, the awe is gone. Some of the animations repeat themselves a lot to the point that its very noticeable, but its not a big distraction. Sometimes after you kill an enemy they will appear to crawl towards you as though they are still alive, in the beginning of the game this caused me to waste quite a bit of ammo on enemies I thought were still alive, but it was simply a rather long death animation. There is nothing wrong with the animations that are there, they are well done and look awesome. The facial animations are extremely well done, as opposed to Bioshock 2 which had pretty crappy facial animation.

Pop-in textures were not a problem in this game. The Unreal engine is known for it, but in Singularity it only happened a very few times and always loaded extremely quickly.
The framerate was solid on my new Xbox 360 s and I dont think it stuttered once.
From the very beginning this game felt like very well done Bioshock mod, later in the game it drifts away from that feeling. The introduction of a little bit of foliage and different textures make the game feel different. In the beginning many of the textures and the extreme amounts of water really make it feel like Bioshock.

The atmosphere is nicely done. The modern day is haunted by spirits and hideous creatures, and everything looks decayed and broken. While in the past everything looks new. The differences in appearance from one time to the next when traveling the same corridors is nice. You can tell they are the same corridor or courtyard, but the feel is drastically different.

Gameplay:
This game plays exactly like Bioshock. Also it pays homage to many games that have come before it with minor details. If you played Bioshock you will either feel at home with this game or you will be disgusted with how much it plays, looks, and feels exactly like Bioshock. Even some of the sound effects for picking stuff up sound the same. One thing they did worse than Bioshock though, you cannot pick up recordings. So once you hit play, you have to sit next to the recorder in order to hear the whole thing. That was a bit annoying.

The TMD (Time Manipulation Device) is a an awesome weapon/tool, but I was really disappointed with how much was taken out of the final game. A bunch of stuff I saw in gameplay videos before release was taken out. Its still a really cool toy, but I was still disappointed. What is left in the game is still very fun to play with however. The different powers are unique and all of them are fun. Once you get all the powers you can pretty much destroy an army of human enemies and feel like a god. There is an upgrade system similar to that of Bioshock as well. You find E99 tech which you use to upgrade yourself, your weapons, or your TMD device. All of which are upgraded at stations throughout the game. There are also weapon upgrade kits which you find and use to upgrade your weapons at a station in a similar fashion to bioshock, except without a visual upgrade as well. The guns never change in appearance. Using the TMD is very canned, your freedom to use the device on items in the environment are limited to items imbued with E99, which lets the game limit to you a few canned items which are repeated constantly throughout the game, leaving using the TMD on enemies the only really entertaining use for it in the end.

The “Puzzles” if you can call them that are mind numbingly easy. Only once was I actually impressed with a puzzle and that was in the very beginning. Then its basically the same puzzle over and over throughout the game. Use a box to open a door. Use a box to get over a fence. Use a box to get under a fence. The fuse puzzles from the E3 demo dont exist. Their “many” puzzles are actually just a few small instances where you stop walking for about 5 seconds and look around for a box or switch.

There are some very cool weapons in this game, but I just ended up using the shotgun, assault rifle, and occasionally the sniper rifle for the whole game. Those weapons got the job done. The other bigger weapons were stylish, but I never needed them. Yes I played on easy, but the bigger weapons seemed more difficult to wield and get kills with. The Seeker is a guided bullet rifle (much like the one in Clive Barkers Jericho if you played that game) and its really cool/useful, but you only get it occasionally and with limited ammo, which makes sense. The weapons handle nicely and are solid.

Those who have played Timeshift and thought this game might be similar, it is not. The time aspect of this game is very different than that of Timeshift and is much more interesting in my opinion. In Timeshift you control time as a whole. In Singularity you control time details, you age specific things foward and back and you travel through time. In Timeshift you simply had the basic VCR buttons and time grenades.

One thing that annoyed me was that whenever you use a health pack the character wraps his wrist. Which while it makes sense, it is annoying because during a firefight or while an enemy is wailing away at me I cant fight back while I spend that second wrapping my wrist. This is a minor gripe, but it annoyed me many times as by the time I was done wrapping I was missing a quarter of my health again. Your health and TMD function the exact same way as Health and plasmids from Bioshock. You use health packs and E99 vials to replenish your health and TMD. Your TMD slowly recharges on its own if you run out as well. Once you get the TMD your melee becomes a repulse (force push) which instantly gibs any enemies caught in its wake (awesome) but if you run out of E99 energy, there is no backup melee until it recharges.

The control layout is very similar to that of Borderlands or Call of Duty.
LT=ironsight
RT=shoot
LB=TMD
RB=melee/repulse
B=crouch
A=jump
X=reload
Click right stick=gravity gun-ish feature.

Also there is a ping feature. Which sends out a wave from you and shows you footsteps on the ground of where you should go next, although I never used this feature because the game is extremely linear with very little else to go other than to scrounge the corners for loot.

Also, there are no cutscenes. Everything is acted out in game.

Story:
You are an American soldier sent do investigate a radiation spike on an abandoned Russian island base that caused a sattelite to black out. While flying near the island an EMP blast causes your chopper to crash, sending you and Nolan North to random locations on the island. He quickly sets a goal for you to reach once you are on the docks. The atmosphere is nicely done and Nathan Drake holds your hand guiding you through the most basic of game mechanics. At one point you are sent back in time while inside a building, the building is now on fire and you must escape. A man runs into the same room as you and falls through the floor you quickly grab his arm and pull him up, he then asks you to carry him out and you do so. Once he is brought to safety he thanks you and you are sent forward in time again. This sets the games storyline into motion.

It works. I liked it, but it wasnt anything special. Similar to Mirror’s Edge in that it works and it keeps things moving forward, but the only thing that really kept me playing was so I could keep playing with the TMD. Also I was expecting something big to happen near the end, but was extremely let down. The game builds things up and up and up and up and then just falls flat at the end. I never got close to any of the characters. The one person you work with for a bunch of the game I never trusted. Theres also a girl who guides you around for a level or two, but aside from being a pretty face, she holds no meaning and I did not care about her. Especially since “time notes” as I call them kept telling me she wasn’t to be trusted. lol.

You have one ally and his female assistant throughout the game. Outside of that there is no intereaction with NPCs. The player character does not speak, which from what I saw from gameplay videos before release is a big change as I believe I saw cutscenes in which the player character spoke to your ally.

The game also has a few different endings, but you can get them all simply by hitting continue after the credits roll and making a different choice. All of which leave a bitter taste in my mouth afterwards. I also wonder how Dr. Barisov knew some of the things he knew since my character never spoke a word to him throughout the game.

Sound:
The sound effects work. There werent any times when I said “Oh wow that sounds cool.” I’m not a fan of russian accents in games, dont know why, but in this game I didnt mind it so much. The fact that everyone speaks and writes in english instead of Russian when we are in a Russian facility is a bit odd, but it is easy to ignore that for gameplays sake.

The music is there and it fit the mood. It never felt out of place and I actually cant remember any of it as I dont really pay attention to the music so long as it fits. The only time I notice it is when it is out of place. lol. I did notice at one point that the music did get a wee bit repetitive on a bit when you have to sneak past a bunch of reverts, but it was good music so I didnt mind as much.

A good voice acting cast. Nolan North is your guide through the tutorial then exits the game entirely. Dr. Barisov and whats-her-face are voiced well by voice actors I dont recognize. The main baddy is voiced by a recognizeable voice actor, though his name escapes me (I think its the same guy who voiced the lead roles in Bionic Commando and Wolfenstein, though he does a much better job here even though his Russian accent is questionable.)

Replay value: Moderate.

Multiplayer:
I’ve tried a few times to play it, but no one is playing the multiplayer apparently. I dont really expect much from the multiplayer anyway.

Achievements:
For you gamerscore nuts, I got about 515/1000 GS for completeing the game normally and then hitting continue two more times afterwards to get the other two endings. I think somewhere around 300 GS are multiplayer achievements. The achievements are very basic. Get X# of kills with each weapon. Do this X# of times with the TMD. Beat the levels. Get the different endings. etc etc. No entertaining achievements here.

Conclusion:
To me, since I was following this game before its release, it seemed like a lot of stuff was cut from the final game. This makes me think that Activision gave away Prototype for free with pre-orders because they were trying to sell Singularity as an unfinished game. Its polished and well done, but it just feels like a big chunk is missing. Once you get past the cool initial awe the TMD gives you then you will just keep playing to turn enemies to dust with it. Its a lot of fun dont get me wrong, but I say its just a rental as it is a bit short with little replay value and a tacked on multiplayer.

tl:dnr - Bioshock clone without the amazing story. Good game. Few great parts, but not amazing. Thumbs up rental.

Graphics: Gets the job done in a nice way, but its not pushing any boundaries.
Gameplay: The game plays very well and its a lot of fun, but the drastic changes since E3 ‘09 leave me bitter.
Story: Gets the job done, though its nothing special.
Sound: Gets the job done well, but nothing stands out.

This is my first review. Please let me know what you think.

*Edit: Followup.

Multiplayer:
I was finally able to get some multiplayer matches going. The multiplayer is ok. I only played one of the two modes. Humans vs Creatures I believe it was called.
When playing as a human you get to choose your class. Each class type has a single TMD power, the power I ended up with choosing randomly was a teleportation power which I found very handy for teleporting through walls (awesome!) to escape an enemy when I had low health. I didnt get a chance to try out any of the other powers. I really wish the teleportation power would have been worked into the campaign. It wouldnt really have added much, but its still a cool power.
Then I played the creatures. I tried out each type. Reverts play similarly to spitters in Left 4 Dead 2. The phase ticks are a little tough to control IMO, but they lunge and explode on enemies (nabbing someone on the head and watching them squirm to get you off as you explode on top of them is entertaining). You get to play as the giant spider creatures (forgive me, I forgot their names) which is very cool. Its sort of like playing as a tank(vehicle) except you can only take a little more damage than a regular character. Then playing as the guys who switch between dimensions is just as you would expect it to be. You can switch dimensions and you can spawn an explosive barrel which you throw.
Health is regained (at least for the humans) by walking up to one of the health stations positioned in a few places around the level.
The multiplayer overall wasnt bad, I may have played it a few more times if I still had it, but the pretty long waits between matches kinda sucked and there are other multiplayer games I would rather play. I wish I would have had more time to test the multiplayer as I feel I cant really review it well enough.

Hard difficulty:
I played a few hours on hard. The game didnt seem much harder until I came accross the phase ticks. Phase ticks are basically Singularity’s version of the small flood creatures from the Halo series except they do more damage when they explode on you.
Also, as I mentioned before how when I would heal myself there would be a wrist wrapping animation which by the time it ended I would have lost some health already. There were a few parts on hard difficulty where I would heal and by the time the animation was done I would have the same health as when I started to heal. Healing on Hard difficulty was pretty much pointless unless you have extremely good cover, which this game provides very little solid cover.
Fighting the creatures on hard was pretty much just as easy as before with the exception of phase ticks which became brutally hard as each one takes a huge chunk of health and there are dozens at some points. Fighting enemies with guns was a bit harder and became a nice challenge. Forcing me to use everything I could to my advantage and heal carefully. The first boss fight on hard was a bit harder, but only because of the lowsy healing system and the fact that there is no cover during boss fights at all. I cant even imagine how hard the boss fight later in the game would be which was already pretty difficult on easy. (BTW, forgot to mention this before, but this game has possibly one of the coolest FPS boss fights I’ve ever seen about 2/3 of the way into the game. Part of the reason I was expecting a huge boss fight for the ending, but didnt get anything at all at the end sadly.)

I still stick to my original review. Big thumbs up rental. Its a good game, but the amount of missed potential is staggering.