Activision's latest attempt to kill a game (who can get the logic behind
that nonsense?) is from Raven, the group behind the awesome Marvel
Ultimate Alliance 1 game and the really good X-Men Legends games. And it
involves time manipulation, which is one of my all-time favorite game
mechanics (heck, I LOVED Timeshift, and nobody else can really make that
claim). So, why did Activision try and kill this game?
It's
still a bit baffling as Singularity is actually a pretty decent game.
You definitely get a bit of a Bioshock vibe to it, but it is a rather
decent game.
You land on the island of Katorga-12, where Soviet
scientists in the 1950's discovered the mysterious Element 99, which
allowed the manipulation of time and, well, gave us the central tenet of
the game. The faux-Soviet vibe is prevalent throughout the game, with
cyrillic-style writing (well, ""R"" being backwards a lot) being a
staple. The notes and audio recordings do provide a nice bit of context
for the plot...but, unlike with Bioshock, these don't seem terribly
important. The story isn't all that well fleshed-out and the atmosphere,
while nice, doesn't really have the same level of polish as Rapture.
You spend considerable time shuttling between the modern day and 1955,
when Katorga-12 first turns to crap.
And, yes, I agree it might
be unfair to compare Singularity to Bioshock, but it is nearly
impossible to ignore the similiarities. Raven clearly took a lot of
notes from Irrational and 2K Marin's gems (yes, I still say Bioshock 2
was excellent) and took a lot of ideas and, for the most part, it works
pretty well.
The weaponry, to be honest, by and large isn't all
that impressive. The rolling grenade launcher is quite fun to use, the
sniper rifle that allows you to stop time when aiming it was inspired,
and the Seeker is one of the single most enjoyable weapons to use in any
game out there. It's just that the pistol is very underpowered. the
shotgun lacks any visceral impact, and the assault rifle is an average
weapon at best --- and these are the three weapons you will find the
vast majority of your ammo in the game. Some others, such as the rocket
launcher, is not all that good a gun.
The time powers work well,
but it is not overpowering (a problem Timeshift had). You can age
soldiers to turn into dust in moments and, in later stages, you can send
them back and forth in time quickly, turning them into mutated
creatures called Remnants (which you can ALSO age and turn into time
bombs). They try to use the TMD to have you solve puzzles, but the
puzzles all are based on either aging equipment so it breaks or knocking
something back in time so it is fully functional. The puzzles are
almost pointless, but it is nice that they attempted to provide a change
of pace.
Activision did Raven no favors and I can't fathom why,
as it is a rather enjoyable game. The length of game is heavily
dependent on difficulty --- on hard, you will take 9 hours or so to beat
it, on easy? A little less than half of that. You need, minimum, medium
difficulty to get anything out of this game. The game is enjoyable,
Katorga-12 is a pretty good environment, and the enemy AI is not bad by
any means. It is a game you definitely should try.
