Activision and Raven have teamed up to create an entertaining and compelling first person shooter that is a clever mix of old and new. Playing as a Special Forces member named Nate Renko, who is dispatched to the mysterious island of Katorga 12 after unusual activity was detected by satelites on the long abandoned cold war facility.
Renko and his team have a rude arrival thanks to a EMP pulse that wrecks crashes the copters and leaves Renko and his team scattered on the long abandoned research facility. Players cleverly gain more of the backstory thanks to film projectors, tape recorders, and notes that lay about the various maps.
When a temporal flash moves Renko to the past, he finds himself jumping around in time from the past to the present. Renko soon encounters some bizzare and deadly creatures on the island as well as Special Forces Units under the command of a ruthless dictator.
Renko eventually becomes involved in a resistance movement called Mir 12 who tell him that history has been altered and that the world as he knew it was gone, and that the dictator is bent on dominating the world and that the U.S. has been defeated as has most of the world.
With the help of a Time Manipulation Device, Renko is able to fire off pulses, age and restore objects, move objects, create a temporal shield bubble, and much more. All of which will be needed during the numerous battles and puzzles that lay ahead for gamers.
What sets Singularity apart from its peers is the clever little wrinkles that the TMD allows gamers to deploy. Ammo does run out, and players are limited to only carrying a few weapons. Being able to fire an energy pulse when dry on ammo saved my bacon on more than one instance. The maps and settings of the game are interesting and being able to mainipulate objects temporally such as restoring long rusted power connections to fry a group of creatures was great fun.
The weaponry was also lots of fun as there is a pistol, a machine gun, a shotgun, a chaingun, a spike launcher, sniper rifle, and rocket kauncher, but all of that pales to my favorite, a seeker rifle which allows players to fire a tracing round that you can steer around objects and into targets. I had great fun taking out waves of bad guys while hiding behind objects and steering my destructive round into an unsuspecting bad guy.
My only real issues with the game were the use of a check point save system which I hate when playing a PC version of the game, as it was annoying to have to reply entire parts of some of the games tricky sections. I also had issues getting both the PS 3 and PC version of the game to connect to a multiplay game on a regular basis, (an issue I am told is being fixed via future updates). When connected online, the game was great fun, especially the ability to play as either soldier or
monster. The online play was standard carnage and defend/attack a checkpoint, but with a few more maps and tweaks, this will be a great plus to the game. The voice acting is solid and the storyline of the game will keep you guessing.
The game does allow multiple options for resolution, and I was suprised (spoiler), that there was not a big battle leading to the resolution. It did seem to reach the finale in a very un challenging final few steps which did not keep with the challenges presented prior. The game does have multiple ending options, and has plenty of replay value as their are ways
that players can upgrade their weapons, abilities, and even the TMD which allow many gameplay variations.
Using the latest Unreal engine, the game has solid graphics and sound which really credit the great setting for the game. Unlike Timeshift which was a great concept limited by bugs and issues, Singularity is a solid and highly entertaining game that should lead well to future installments in the series. If the multiplay issues are ever fixed, this is one of the
more entertaining games of the year.
