Singularity is probably a game that not too many of you have heard of. It's a first-person shooter that involves futuristic weapons not unlike Half-Life 2. Whereas Half-Life 2 came out 6 years ago and is considered a classic today, Singularity seems to be doomed to being overlooked in the already crowded FPS genre. The question now is, should Singularity be overlooked?
To be honest, Singularity's story wasn't that appealing to me and seemed a little too wordy. To sum things up, you are Captain Renko and are sent to a Russian island abandoned in the '50s. You discover the TMD (Time Manipulation Device) and uncover the secrets as to what happened 60 years ago. Along the way you fight various amounts of creatures and the Russian military on your way to discover what happened and..yadda yadda yadda. The story is pretty standard fair and basically results in forcing the player to fight waves upon waves of enemies to push forward. As for the gameplay itself, this is where the game shines. The control set up is exactly like Call Of Duty (World of War was a carbon copy of Modern Warfare so why not again right Activision?) The difference is that the grenade buttons are now used for your TMD. For fans of Bioshock 2, the TMD looks like a complete ripoff of the Big Daddy's Plasmid, and seems to be even less useful, at least in the beginning. The games main gimmick is that with the TMD, you can manipulate objects and enemies ages. After giving it some thought, I feel it has potential, but still needs some work. As the device stands, it's pretty effective but doesn't deliver the bigger picture like some fans may have hoped for (see Red Faction's destructible environments for reference). I loved aging enemies and some environmental hazards, but overall it felt as if you were extremely limited to what you could manipulate (possibly addressed in a sequel?)
If I were to rate this game based on its single-player experience alone, it'd score a C+. The story is kinda lame but interesting enough and the weapons and gun play are par for the course (although the
bullet time is pretty cool.) However, I can't deny that I am definitely enjoying it's multiplayer content. You're given two game modes (hopefully more in a future update) including a basic team death match and another known as Extermination. In multiplayer you either control the creatures or the military. The military controls mimic the single player game and you have 4 different classes with their own unique special abilities. The creatures on the other hand are seen from a 3rd person perspective and are each completely unique with their own set of specialties. The military's abilities comprise of teleportation, healing, shielding, and pulsing. Paired with their multiple guns and you can see how powerful the humans are. The creatures have their own set of techniques and are completely varied. I don't want to get into too many details but I actually have more fun being the creatures and manipulating their powers and abilities as opposed to the humans. This is where the game gets interesting and shows the potential for a fun and varied squad based game. Some characters are more rush-centric resulting in quick kills and instant results, but leave themselves open for attack. Others are slower more defense oriented, but much stronger. You must find a careful balance with your team to decide who will be a support character and who will be more in the heat of the action. This is apparent in Extermination mode where the humans objective is to take over 3 beacons while the creatures attempt to defend. The military must regenerate these beacons and then defend them for 20 seconds (see CoD Demolition mode). The creatures must prevent the military from regenerating them, or destroy them so they become inactive. Extermination is where I've spent most of my time with this game and I can tell you without a doubt that it's definitely a lot of fun. The back and forth gameplay is enjoyable and I only wish that some of my other friends had the game so I can play with them.
FINAL GRADE: B
Singularity is a fun title that will most likely get looked over for other high caliber games released this summer. While enjoyable, I can't say you should buy this game due to the sudden rush of grade A titles (Red Dead Redemption, Mass Effect 2, etc.) If you're looking for a different FPS experience from Call of Duty, get Fallout 3 or Bioshock 2 instead. Singularity is fun, but I don't recommend it unless you already have some of the other games I've mentioned.
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