Singularity: A Preempt of This IP’s Future Maybe?

Available: PS3/Xbox 360

Game Type: First Person Shooter

From: Raven Software/Activision

As a fan of science fiction and time traveling escapades, I was pumped to play Singularity. Futurama, one of my all time favorite shows, has ranked as such because of the fantastic method implemented in the entire space/time continuum paradox in which it parodies. Granted the show itself ranks among the Simpson’s as a great animated sitcom, but it’s my love for the ideas with which the plot and script therein are formed that really draws me to watching, even when there were only around fifty episodes.

So when I read about Singularity in several magazines and online gaming sites, I was jazzed. The idea of manipulating time fused with a strong first person shooter element had me dreaming about blasting Russians with Cold War fury and reverting them to aged powder was just too much to remove from my radar.

As indicated, Singularity takes place in October of 2010 on a fictional Russian island called Katorga 12. AS the story goes, in the 1960s as the Cold War heated up, the Soviet Army found a new mineral on the small island of Katorga dubbed E99. Fearing the American’s nuclear might, the Soviets enlisted their top scientists Doctors Bistrov and Dimetrev to devise a means to an end—the end of the Cold War, the end of American aggression, and the end capitalism and its principles. Through extensive research and experimentation, a device was born—one capable of changing not only Russia’s future, but its past as well, along with the whole world.

Dr. Bistrov had noble intentions when he figured out E99 was capable of bending time as we see it. He noticed the areas with high levels of E99, for example near a tree, caused monstrous deformities, or so it appeared. Bistrov noticed that wherever these high volumes of the translucent, viscous, orange material was found, things happened—as in the tree example, sometimes a sapling would grow into a mutated version of its older self, bubbling with E99 pustules, and other times the opposite would occur. As Bistrov enhanced his studies and delved deeper into the subject, he began developing high tech mechanisms for manipulating this new substance. During his research and mechanism inventing, Dr. Dimetrev caught wind and had other plans.

Dimetrev thought that with this new substance and its time manipulating machina, the American dogs would pay for their crimes against the motherland. Catching wind of a particularly important device on which Dr. Bistrov had been working, Dimetrev ordered the execution of his partner on the grounds of his being a traitor to the Soviet Union.

But everything went wrong. There was an explosion, as E99 was highly volatile, and the entire island—flora, fauna, scientists, and everyone else—was caught in a time warp. And that was the last the world heard from Katorga 12.

Shortly before October of 2010, United States satellites found a patch of high radiation over an unknown island off the Russian coast. A two-man aircraft is sent in to investigate, and our character Corporal Benchev is introduced as copilot of this ship. Upon reaching their destination of Katorga 12, all hell breaks loose; the plane crashes, and when our hero awakes, the pilot is dead, and he is lost. The supposed technological island, having had vast radioactive resources, is a in a decrepit state, almost as if this was an island that time itself forgot. Within moments, monstrous undead-looking mutants attack from all sides, time warps crop up around a corner, and trees grow into giant versions of themselves or revert to seeds. As we search the area, we’re given bits of information through notes, old 8 mm recordings, and demolished chalk boards discussing the struggle of the two doctors. Enter the time manipulation device, the TMD.

This lengthy set up is where the intrigue dies and makes way for generic gunplay and useless time manipulation. With the introduction of the TMD, we find a way to revert broken containers to their original form yielding health packs and ammo; chalkboards get put back together to give a better sense of the happenings on the island; and Russian enemies can be sent through the passage of time and turned to dust. Sounds fun right? Well, I don’t blame you—that is exactly what I thought when I read about all this and began my playthrough.

As stated, the gunplay is generic at best, with spotty hit detection resulting in a boring FPS experience. Russian soldiers hide behind crates with the precision of an excited puppy—as soon as it’s been decided by these so-called “soldiers” that the process of taking cover has grown boring, they pop out and blast in an unsophisticated method to say the least. When they are hiding, that doesn’t mean they hide well; I don’t believe I encountered one soldier that was capable of recognizing what a head shot is. The E99-mutated enemies in the form of brown, aged zombie-like creatures or muscle bound, dual-headed, blue skinned zombies fare none too better. Their methods amount to running at you and maybe jumping up to a wall in a linear fashion, all the while getting rounds pumped into their supposedly grotesque bodies. The “pumping of rounds” is an apt description, since hitting the trigger multiple times results in multiple shots; in other words, when you have the shotgun equipped and hit the trigger twice before the first shot is fired, the second shot will fire on impulse. Speaking of which, I’ve not played a shooter in quite some time where the trigger button was so delayed.

Firearms include an Ak-47 rip-off called the Valkyrie, which was supposedly created with E99 technology, although I cannot figure out how this is implied. It shoots like a standard weapon, less the fact that its just no fun to shoot due to the delayed trigger reaction, the slow bullet speed, and the aforementioned spotty hit detection. A shotgun is available, but suffers from the poor trigger-reaction method. The sniper rifle seemed fun at first, including a temporal displacement action that slows time—but the fun of this makes way for ridiculousness when every headshot blasts the enemy skull to nothingness (as does a shoulder shot for whatever reason). One weapon that was quite fun was a weapon that fires rounds you can manipulate mid-flight, similar to the arrow shooting segments of Heavenly Sword. I also encountered what was called a Rail Gun, but aside from shooting slowly it didn’t do much other than a minor explosion that did little to enhance the FPS play.

The TMD has some highlights, but they all become very repetitive and seem to be employed more for finding story progressing chalkboards and fixing busted recorders and health pack/ammo crates. The mentioned time enhancing or reversion isn’t even done well, as it’s a simple click of the shoulder button to send something forward or back through time like a toggle. If it’s decayed it can be renewed—if it’s alive or functioning, it can be broken. More differentiation in the time progression/reversal would have been greatly welcome and could have made for a much better experience. Other tools involve stopping time within a generated orb (only useful for puzzles, and by puzzles I mean stopping fast moving fan blades—really, that’s all it works on, not even fast moving bosses), and a gravity enhancement only useful for stopping enemy grenades and launching them back at them. The problem with the gravity situation is that the enemies throw projectiles in a strange super arch that launches off the top of the screen, only to quickly fall down to your feet. I’m not saying it was hard, just not fun. To summarize, the TMD quickly devolves from a fun, seemingly useful tool to a trial and error type of puzzle-beater.

In terms of graphics, I’ve not seen anything so bland in quite some time. Severe problems with texture pop make me want to snap the disc in half, and it doesn’t even need to be a change in venue or scenery to cause it. Just standing in the same room allows for walls to lose all graphical quality, only to have what little quality there was to reappear. Enemies are awful too, as once killed and investigated there is little more than pixilated sprites conveying their (as mentioned) supposedly grotesque appearance. When a busted medical crate is fixed, suddenly it won’t open, but you can crouch and walk around until you happen to find the “sweet spot” where you can pick up the pack through said crate. Overall the graphics are just bland and poorly implemented, not nearly as enticing as they appeared on the preview videos and such. Also, I was hoping for some creative uses of the TMD, not just toggling old and new.

Overall, this is one lackluster performance, although had I known it was created by the same people that brought us uber-homosexual Dick Mercinko’s Rogue Warrior I surely would have stayed away. I can’t really recommend this to anyone, whether you’re a fan of shooters or science fiction, it’s just a let down. There are certainly more horrifyingly bad experiences to be had for sure, but there are certainly much better ones of each genre, and though I wasn’t super impressed with Time Shifters, having purchased it too late to be impressive, I think that has a lot better hold on each element. And here’s a quick note to the gaming industry in entirety: until Raven Software makes a good game, please stop paying these schmucks to make garbage. We have enough of it in our landfills as it is.

Graphics: bland and texturally displeasing. The supposedly horrifying monsters are so poorly designed that they look as though they belong in a late 90s Playstation game.

Controls: they work, I suppose, but the FPS isn’t that tight, leading to some very plain shooter segments. Even the couple weapons I liked couldn’t save this disaster.

Story: Pretty good really. The core of the story as detailed above is the stuff that legends are made of, but shows us that a great story alone isn’t enough to make a game good.

Multiple Play: had the TMD functionality been more diverse, they game could have been seen through multiple eyes each playthrough. As it is, it’s just tough to digest it once.

Total: 68, D+