Review | Singularity

Things are always going wrong in Russia. If they aren’t trying to take over the world by secretly financing dangerous terrorist organisations, they’re emigrating to the USA, infiltrating powerful secret societies only to be brought down by cops with magic powers, kidnapping scientists to develop walking tanks that shoot nuclear bombs, or creating a virus that destroys every soldier on the planet while possessed by the arm-DNA of a dead British guy. Or some idiot invents time travel.

Singularity opens with an American soldier, Nate Renko, headed to the fictional Russian island of Katorga-12. The island was home to scary, experimental research in the 1950s, after the Russians discovered a new element they called E99. In 1955 a mysterious accident meant the whole facility was shut down and all evidence of the research there was hidden away. Then, in 2010, an energy surge from the island damaged a US spy satellite, so Renko and his fellow grunts are sent to investigate. One helicopter crash later and you’re dumped on an island filled with time travelling explosions, Cold War soldiers, hideous mutants, secret organisations and lots of guns. The story has a load of potential, with Renko somewhat randomly jumping between 2010 and 1955 to save (or completely ruin) the future and mysterious cause and effect chains crisscrossing all over the competing timelines, but the plot never goes beyond campy, throwaway fun. Questions may linger in your mind, like why isn’t there more time travel in this story about time travel? What do mutants have to do with time travel? Is this story going anywhere?

And before we go any further, yes, it does look a lot like Bioshock. There is a glowing orange hand that gives you superpowers, there is a 1950s vibe, there are audio recordings to collect which flesh out the backstory. Singularity also looks a lot like Half-Life 2 when you pick up barrels and shoot them across the room in the style of a certain gravity gun. It looks a lot like Halo when the goo-infested tunnels start sprouting tiny exploding bugs. It looks a little too much like Fallout when you watch cartoon-style propoganda videos about radiation safety protocols and fight lumbering mutants. When Singularity isn’t doing any of this, it looks remarkably like every other first-person shooter you’ve ever played.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly isn’t anything new. You will be provided with a selection of guns (although you can only carry two at a time) and run through a series of corridors shooting communists until America is safe. The usual suspects are present – shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle, grenade launcher – but all of them at least feel interesting and fun to shoot. This is due in part to the delicious gory streak the game has. Every time you shoot something dead, be it a soldier or a mutated pile of fleshy horrors, globules of blood will spray out and limbs will evacuate. Battles become so over the top that you can’t help but enjoy yourself. Each gun has simple upgrades you can purchase, and some of your weapons have their own special time travel abilities. In particular, the sniper rifle can slow time while zoomed in to line up perfect shots, and a hefty death-bringer called a Seeker lets you guide explosive shells directly to their target to watch them become a bloody mess.

The trick up Singularity’s sleeve is the TMD, or Time Manipulation Device, which is a glove that comes into your possession and lets you control the very fabric of the timeline. Actually, what it does is let you maek boxes old and flat or new and shiny to solve puzzles, or reverse time for busted stairs so you can climb up. While the ability to move objects though time seems amazing, you’ll soon find that only a very specific and very small variety of things can be affected. Switches, crates, barrels and ammunition boxes will be your main focus, and after the thrill of making a box new again to jump over a fence wears off you’ll realise that time travel is another coat of paint on the same old gaming puzzles. Combat is where your powers really come into their own. With your TMD you can age soldiers to dust in seconds or turn them into monsters, which makes perfect sense. You can throw out bubbles which slow time in a specific area and freeze enemies. You can even use your glove to catch and return grenades and rockets to their owners. The powers still feel very gimmicky, but it does add some tactics to otherwise bland shootouts.

But while originality isn’t this game’s strong suit, variety thankfully is. The game is roughly split up between tense battles with enemy forces and exploration sections involving light puzzle solving. New enemies are constantly being thrown at you, as are a bundle of different locations and situations. One minute you’ll be fighting your way across a bridge covered in Russians, the next you’re crawling through living sewers. Some scenes are memorable enough to make you forgive all the corridor shootouts, such as a race through a giant cargo ship which is rapidly sinking back through time, and a tense, silent creep through the lair of deadly, but blind, freaks. And Singularity has colours. Vibrant, colourful levels are plentiful, even in the destroyed version of the island, and that immediately makes the game a thousand times more interesting to look at than the brown wastelands of modern FPS games.

It isn’t all fun and roses, though. Following the standard shooter path means Raven have also put in all the horrible cliché irritations that the genre can’t shake off. There is a giant boss on a train that has small, glowing weak points. There are checkpoint saves without the option to make your own save game. There are tiny enemies that serve no purpose except to send you into a blind rage when they kill you for the umpteenth time. There is a mission involving escorting a mostly helpless woman which then turns into a timed mission to save a kidnapped woman. Enemy soldiers are complete morons, often forgetting to turn around when you are filling their backsides with bullets.

There is a small but satisfying multiplayer aspect to Singularity. Two game modes are available, each putting soldiers against hideous creatures in either a straight deathmatch or a battle for control of set locations. The soldiers play like soldiers, while each creature has its own unique ability set. Phase ticks can possess soldiers, giant spider things can destroy everything by being huge, smaller mutants can make large jumps, and so on. The modes aren’t deep but offer enough fun to be worth a small look.

Despite being painfully generic shooter that could have been a mind-bending masterpiece, and despite Raven stealing a little too much from every FPS released in the last 20 years, Singularity is a real blast to play. The shooting isn’t amazing, but it is fun, and throwing a time bubble into a room full of hapless Cold War Russians to see their gooey bits fly off in slow motion never disappoints. Some irritating sections and a lack of ambition by the developers is offset by the sheer exuberant madness on display. Take the time to play this one.   [8]