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Singularity - Game Review

Singularity is the latest first person shooter from Quake 4 and Wolfenstein developer Raven Software. 

The plot revolves around a mysterious element called E99 (which for some reason I always read as Egg and find mildly amusing) and a Russian research facility built after WWII to exploit its powerful properties.  And research it they did, using it for everything from weapons, alloys, time manipulation devices and making children unhappy (“I don’t like the new milk they are giving us, it’s orange and it glows”).

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly all does not go well and the base ends up being abandoned after an unspecified cataclysmic accident.  And so it remains for 50 years, until a mysterious radiation surge is detected by the west and as a result, a covert ops team is sent in to investigate.  This is where you come in; having been covertly dropped on the island via helicopter crash, it’s up to you to discover what is going on.  A task made easier by a distinct lack of secrecy on the island itself, it even seems to have a tourist information centre for new arrivals that proudly announces how amazing E99 is and how it’s key to defeating the evil Americans. 

 

The E99 is key to the plot as a one stop explanation for all the time travelling shenanigans, various monsters and other weirdness that you will encounter on the island.  The time travel aspect sees you switching between the present day and 1955, primarily trying to restore the time line after you dropped a rather large chronospanner in the works on your first trip back to 1955.  The “E99 explains all” plot device is a little too convenient, the plot is a bit silly and it does have holes, but if you can live with that it does carry the action along nicely and provides you with plenty of stuff to shoot.

 

In terms of gameplay Singularity never really settles into a predictable pattern that can cause some first person shooters to get a bit dull.  My default tactic is to take my time, kill all the baddies and then look for loot, but Singularity forces you into the occasional change of pace or tactics.  This is primarily done with set piece battles that vary from the standard big boss battles to defending a location from wave after wave of monsters.

 

The game is linear, having thankfully having dropped the “sandbox” idea that worked so poorly in Wolfenstein.  There is a bit of exploring to do in order to find currency, ammo, weapons etc. and the game manages to throw in the odd fright.

Singularity’s main gimmick / distinguishing feature is the Time Manipulation Device (TMD), this plays an important role in both the plot and the gameplay.  Like most games that have a “unique” item, it works better in some places than others and like the E99 it is a very convenient plot device.

 

In combat the TMD is fine, it has a range of uses from slowing down, aging or regressing enemies, aging or restoring cover, lobbing explosive barrels around with the gravity gun feature to name a few.  In the exploration and puzzle elements it’s more hit and miss, occasionally there will be an interesting use that adds to a certain set piece battle but usually it’s just a case of age/restore object A to continue, which gets old quickly.

Guns are of course the main bad guy despatching tool of choice and the game does this well, initially you have a choice of 4 main guns; pistol, shotgun, assault rifle and sniper and these can be upgraded as the game goes on.  There are also some other weapons you get to use later such as a rail gun, a minigun, grenade launcher and a rather nifty gun called The Seeker that lets you steer the bullets you fire.  Nothing particularly new there but shooting baddies is satisfying, the weapons are accurate, there are a few interesting alternate fire options with some and they make bits fall off enemies.

 

Along with weapons upgrades you can buy upgrades for yourself (more health, stamina etc.) and at certain points have your TMD upgraded with a new ability.  To pay for the upgrades you need to look around for E99 objects to use as currency and find upgrade items.  All very Bioshock, and while it works reasonably well, the majority of upgrades are fairly minor and don’t make a great deal of noticeable difference.

Graphically it looks a lot like Wolfenstein, which is no great surprise as that was the last FPS from Raven, with a bit of Bioshock thrown in.  For the most part the graphics are decent enough, they aren’t state of the art but they do a good job of creating a believable gaming environment, which is the point of graphics after all.  About the only issue was some high resolution textures occasionally not loading, this left low resolution rendering on some objects, nothing too terrible but it was noticeable at times.

Overall Singularity is a solid and enjoyable first person shooter with an ambitious plot that doesn’t quite deliver.