Singularity is a shooter that seemed to come out of nowhere for some people. It never seemed to receive much hype despite the interesting premise. The game borrows pretty heavily from some established and popular franchises and combines them into an enjoyable experience. The storyline was definitely influenced by Back to the Future and there is even a part in the game where you can look at the chalkboard from Back to the Future 2 that was describing the alternate year of 1955. Then you have some of the enemies (especially in the beginning) that looked like they were taken from Dead Space. You could dismember them by shooting their legs so they couldn’t run at you but they could still use their arms to crawl to you. You also have crab like creatures that reminded me of the crab like creatures that you would encounter in Half Life. Overall the fact that I had seen some of these enemies before didn’t bother me at all because I had so much fun going through the campaign. It is a great story that deals with time paradoxes and what can happen to the future when you change the events of the past.

When you initially start out in Singularity you don’t really know what is going on. Russia has discovered a powerful (and unstable) new mineral called E99. It was found on this tiny little island called Katorga 12 and they built a small town on that island so people could continually mine this mineral as well as conduct tests and experiments on it. At some point something goes terribly wrong and a lot of people on this island are either instantaneously killed or they become mutated creatures. It is your job to stop this cataclysmic event from happening. This Singularity must be prevented or the world as you know it is over. Throughout your adventure you meet up with a faction that seems to have a similar goal and they help you out along the way. There is even one point where you are captured and unable to defend yourself so you need to listen to their directions to get away from your captors before they kill you. You will eventually come across one of your primary tools in this game, the TMD (Time Manipulation Device). Using the TMD you can jump back and forth between the past and the present as well as use it against your enemies. The effect that the TMD will have on an enemy will be dependent on what kind of enemy you are facing. If you are facing a soldier you can zap him once with the TMD and basically incinerate him. If you zap him quickly twice it will cause him to revert back to a blind mutated creature that reacts to sounds. If I was in a big firefight I would simply use this strategy of turning one of the soldiers into one of these creatures and then letting that creature take out the other soldiers for me. They only react to sound so I would simply walk slowly and quietly when I got near one of them and they wouldn’t attack me. It is a great strategic move and definitely helped me out of some bad situations.

Of course a shooter wouldn’t be very fun without its guns and the guns in Singularity are definitely fun to play around with. You have your standard gun which you can fire like you normally would but the real fun comes once you unlock one of the specialty guns. One of my favorite guns was the “Seeker”. With this gun as soon as I fired it I could control where the bullet went with the analog sticks. If there was an enemy in the distance that I couldn’t quite get in my sights I would fire in their direction and then I would simply control the bullet and direct it towards the enemy I wanted to take out. When the bullet struck it set off an explosion which looked really cool, especially if you were able to get a headshot. Next is the Autocannon which is basically a big machine gun that you can run around with and it does quite a bit of damage. It takes it a moment to spin up though so you have to be a little more careful when using it. There is also the Dethex Launcher. With this weapon you can fire it as a normal weapon, however, you can also fire grenades from it. The interesting part about this one is that you can control where the grenades end up. Once they hit the ground you can have it roll wherever you want. If there is a pesky enemy hiding behind a box then you can have the grenade roll right behind that box and then detonate it to take him out. It is a great idea and it definitely helped me out in a few different situations. You will also come across the Augmentor where you can level up your equipment as well as your perks. Leveling up your equipment will get you things like improved weapon accuracy, being able to gain health for each enemy kill and more. Some of the other “Hero Perks” can increase your health, increase your health pack carrying capacity, increase health pack effectiveness and more.

Singularity also has a multiplayer component that has two different modes: Extermination and Team Deathmatch. In Extermination you play as Soldiers vs. Creatures in a battle to control beacons on each map. In Team Deathmatch you have to work together with your team to defeat your enemies and the team with the most points at the end of the match wins. Both of these modes were a lot of fun play and I had the most fun being a “Creature”. I could easily sneak up on a soldier and quickly take them out before they knew I was even there. I was able to rack up a pretty decent score doing that and I could also throw exploding barrels at them too if I saw someone in the distance. The problem with the multiplayer in this game is that with only two modes, the whole multiplayer seems like an afterthought. I enjoyed my time playing these modes but there are going to be a lot of gamers that won’t even give it a chance because of the lack of options you have here. That is a real shame because it is a lot of fun to play.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Singularity.I thought the game’s pacing was good and I never got bored going through the campaign. I think the weapon variety helped with that as well as the fact that half way through the campaign I was still learning new ways to take out my opponent. Raven had some great ideas for this title and those who give this title a chance will see that. Unfortunately there will probably be a lot of people who pass this title over because there isn’t a whole lot of replayability unless you want to get all of the achievements. The first person shooter landscape is crowded with titles and another huge title is going to join the mix in a couple of months with Halo Reach. You need to be able to stand out in the crowd and replayability is one way that you do that. With that said I would definitely recommend to everyone that they should give this title a try. You might be pleasantly surprised. The time travel stuff they did was fantastic and was definitely a nice change of pace from what you experience from other titles in this genre.

Score: 8.5/10

Originally posted on Totally Gaming Network