Okay Geek Farm
PS3 Review - Singularity
Alex Tretrop
We’ve been hearing about Singularity for quite some time now. And while many people saw the game at many gaming conferences like E3, it never really garnered much media attention so I went into the game with fairly low expectations. After finishing the game however, it was much more fun than I had originally expected and it’s definitely a great game to play during the long and uneventful summer.
Story
In Singularity you play as Nate Renko, a soldier who is being flown into the island of Katorga 12 to discover why it’s been abandoned. You quickly discover that the island was home to Russian scientists who discovered a new type of element called E-99 around the 1950’s. This element plays into Singularity’s main theme which is time travel and manipulation. Very early on you find a piece of equipment called the Time Manipulation Device which attaches itself to your left hand, and this allows you to interact with things that have the element on them and either pull them forward in time to the present or push them back into the state the item was in during the 1950’s. This also serves as a large plot device in the overall story of Singularity as the island occasionally pushes you back to the past so that you can see what happened during that time and sometimes save people that are already dead in the present, which can alter the current timeline even more. It can get a little confusing at times but overall the story does keep you interested and the crazy time altering during the plot will keep you guessing at who to trust right up to the end.
Gameplay
Singularity also holds up, much to my surprise, as a competent shooter. While you have your standard guns like assault rifles and shotguns, you also have guns that play to the game’s time mechanic. One standout example is the Seeker, which you can only pick up at very specific points in the game. It allows you to fire a few shots that you literally steer into an enemies unsuspecting face. Unsurprisingly, this never really gets old. Other standout guns include the sniper rifle, which, as you zoom in, allows you to slow down time and get that perfect shot lined up very easily and quickly… or rather slowly? When you’re using these weapons effectively, Singularity is a ton of fun and levels are challenging enough to keep you using the right weapon at the right time.
The enemies in Singularity are also pretty fun to deal with; throughout the game you’ll alternate between shooting the fairly generic Russian soldiers and weird time monsters which make the game that much more interesting, as they all have fairly unique, if unoriginal, properties that harass you on a very regular basis. One monster - the Phase Tick - is very similar to the Ticker in Gears of War, in that he explodes on contact with you. And to no one’s surprise the game enjoys throwing many of them at you at once, which can result in quite a few deaths if you aren’t careful. Another can blink between 1950 and 2010 at will, essentially meaning he can blink out of existence as he attacks you, making him tough to find and take down. Add in a few other variants that are fun to battle and you have a recipe for an enjoyable experience, even if we’ve seen almost all these monsters in just about every other shooter on the market.
Other than shooting, you’ll also be engaging in puzzles using your “TMD” and many of them feel a little silly and too similar to each other. Most of the puzzles involve pushing a broken box back into its original state and using it to get up a ledge or pry open a door. Another involves you slowing down time on some rotating blades you’re trying to crawl through. All of these are fine the first couple of times but basically every puzzle is one of these, with almost no variation on it, making them pretty boring as the game progresses. It’s a good thing then that these are few and far in between so as to not interrupt the pacing of the game.
Interestingly enough, Singularity also has a competitive multiplayer component and of all the things I was most skeptical about this one definitely takes the cake. We had heard next to nothing about it and since Raven had only really showed off the Singleplayer portions, you can assume that the multiplayer was just a tacked on mess. Thankfully, while it isn’t very memorable, it isn’t the aforementioned horrible pile of garbage either. It only has two modes, the more interesting of which is Extermination, which gives you the ability to play as the time monsters. It does get very tedious very fast, and there aren’t many maps but it can be fairly entertaining to play as one of those annoying Phase Ticks and mind control a human opponent. Other than that there isn’t much content here that will give the multiplayer any sort of long term appeal.
Visuals/Audio
In terms of visuals, many people have compared this game to Bioshock since they share many similarities in environment and situation - you being alone in a land that was supposedly paradisaic before something went horribly wrong. I would say that it does seem to have very similar visual qualities to our favorite underwater adventure but with all the time manipulation and time travel that happens I would say the visual style ends there. It is very cool when you go back in time and an area that was devoid of any life is now actively patrolled by soldiers and every building is suddenly in pristine condition. Still the game looks fairly nice on the PS3 and while it isn’t anything technically ground breaking it’s still great to look at.
The audio is also fairly good as well, with all the characters sounding good. Although, I do find it a bit strange that considering we’re on a Russian island everything is voiced in English like the audio logs or narrated videos which are found very often in the game. It’s ant immersion breaking but nevertheless makes the story a lot easier to understand for all of us non-fluent Russian speakers out there.
My biggest complaint about the audio though would have to be how the guns sounded; the assault rifle having absolutely no force behind each shot making it sound like some sort of toy. This can be said for other weapons like the shotgun but it’s a little strange that the Sniper Rifle and Seeker Rifle sound really good because of their slow motion capabilities. The monsters are also great sounding, with the beginning of the game providing a few jump scares as you go along with only a pistol and the shrieks of some of the more powerful time monsters definitely resonated in my head after I had encountered them.
Final Thoughts
Singularity was enough fun to keep my attention and is a great way to pass the time during the summer, with the drought of games in full effect right now. The game probably wouldn’t have held up in the fall with our Call of Dutie’s and Halo’s covering the shelves, but it definitely makes for a great experience especially with such an interesting and fun Single player campaign.
Everything about Singularity is something that is enjoyable but not much of it is memorable. It’s the equivalent of a good popcorn movie; it keeps you interested and is ultimately a fun ride but it won’t be staying in your head much longer especially as we near the fall and the big holiday swing of releases. Still, it’s summer time and if you want a fun, yet unoriginal game, with an interesting story to quench your thirst for a shooter, you should definitely check out Singularity!
