Have you ever dreamed of stumbling across an awesome glove of awesomeness that uses experimental and really dangerous material to allow you to manipulate TIME ITSELF?! No? Oh. Well, I guess that was just me then. Luckily enough for you, that's precisely what Singularity gives, and provides this power at your fingertips. It also demonstrates why people shouldn't have this power, butwe'renottalkingaboutthatrightnow.
You want to know what we will be talking about? Well! Click below and you'll find out after the jump.
Now! As you start the game, picking the difficulty level of your choosing, you are greeted with the standard opening cinematic as other games tend to do. Since everyone should like being told a story, I'll tell it for you, on behalf of the game. Singularity recounts the events leading up to the main events of the game, which basically brings up the subject of how we Americans developed nuclear power first during the Cold War, gaining that industrial foothold over other countries back then. History that anyone paying attention in school should already know, BUT! Here's where that game fiction picks up, detailing that Russia had discovered an unique substance that they labeled E99, which is just as volatile as it is unique. At first, the Russians push for development of this material, even establishing the research island Katorga-12, and right as they're thinking they're the greatest everything backfires and wipes out everything and everyone living on the island. Well, damn.
After a timeskip all the way up to 2010, apparently a surveillance satellite that passes over the location of this dead island witnesses a nuclear flash, which disables surveillance in that region. The United States, being unsurprisingly nosy, decides to send in a covert team secretly onto the island when Russia remains all hush-hush about Katorga's operations. This is where the player comes in, taking control of Captain Nathaniel Renko. When the aircraft you're aboard suddenly gets hit by an unexpected power surge coming from the island, things turn sour and instead of smoothing landing you not-so-gracefully crash onto the docks. But you're kay, because you're just that awesome. Chuck Norris has got nothing on you.
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Even Russian ruins can look just cool. Look at that! LOOK AT IT |
Once you do some walking around and read some notes that somehow managed to totally stay where you found them after 50 years instead of just blowing away into the ocean, and for some reason are in English instead of Russian, you discover via your radio that the member of the team you were chillin' with, whose name is Devlin, on the flight over here also survived getting sucked out of the aircraft pre-crash, has contacted HQ and relays the order to rally at the radio tower further up ahead.
“Fair enough.” you say as you look ahead to the path ahead of you, figuring nothing could go wrong. Well, you're right. Sort of. After some optional background story stuff, Devlin bugging you to get to the radio tower some more, and a small hallucination, something goes wrong. You step into a large chamber that is in total shambles, before some sort of cool-looking and yet sort-of intimidating wave of somethingorother surges through the area, and all of a sudden you're not in 2010 anymore. Nope. You suddenly find yourself back in the 1960s, when Katorga-12 is up and functional and everything. Oh, yeah, and everything's on fire right now.
With that epic-sounding music pumping in the background, you maneuver your way past all the fire and Russian people scrambling around for safety, including a man that you totally don't know at all but decide to save anyway, ignoring the fact you just traveled 50 years back into the past and are probably about to affect history just by existing in that time. Because you're just a nice guy like that.
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Right, okay! Remember not to touch any hot surfaces! |
Once you save that poor Russian fellow and get to safety in that one room with that Stalin bust you were in back (or rather forward I suppose) in 2010, you manage to overhear that this guy just caused the big fire and catch the name Demichev. All of a sudden, when Demichev is thanking you for saving his ass, you flash back to 2010 and if you, the player, has a keen eye you'll notice an immediate difference. That Stalin bust statue thing is no long a bust statue thing of Stalin, instead it's a rather swanky statue of Demichev. Huh.
After you do some looking around in the still ruined room to see what else you just changed, you decide to go outside for some fresh air, because this is totally screwing with your mind the more you think about it and- ooooh... Outside did not look all apocalyptic a couple minutes ago. Plus it's raining, and that means you're going to get all wet now. As if your day couldn't possibly get any worse, you come across this tape-recorder thingamajig that says basically that something called a Singularity exploded and now a bunch of people turned into flesh-eating monsters. Well, ain't that just peachy keen?
Crossing your fingers and progressing onward, hoping that said tape was recorded by a druggy that was on an acid trip, your hopes are quickly diminishing when you hear Devlin freaking out. What could possibly make a soldier freak out like that? Hmmm...
This is the point that Singularity gets its Bioshock on, leading you through a little ruined house that a happy family lived before some freaky shit started going on. Undeterred, because whatever the hell did all this surely can't hurt someone as cool as yourself, you make your way through the creepy house. When you reach a roof that's locked up clearly to keep some sort of thing out of the rest of the house, you grab that pistol next to that dead body and promptly shoot off the lock without even thinking about it before you go inside. After seeing another disturbing vision/hallucination, you pause, and then go through the hole in the wall, cautious as can be.
Oh, well maybe there's noth- HOLY SWEET JESUS WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?!?
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Reader, meet flesh-eating monster. Flesh-eating monster, meet reader. Play nice now! |
Having been suddenly tackled to the floor from the side, you find yourself staring into the ugly mush of some kind of freakish monster that clearly wants to eat your meaty bits. Some frantic shooting and panting later, knocking the fugly thing off you and killing it, you regain your manly coolness and gather your bearings. HOKAY! So! Apparently saving Demichev means its zombie apocalyptic time! That's what you get for being so nice, huh? COOL.
Now that I have done my little, or rather long, introduction in how the game settles in, I shall now refocus. Time for the actual review. Singularity is a game that does what it does well, even though its methods can be easily compared to, say, Bioshock. Not only does it compare to Bioshock in terms of messing with your head in that special way, but it also has those RPG elements to it. Said RPG elements both include tweaking yourself and that before mentioned awesome glove that is the Time Manipulation Device, or just TMD, at special stations as well as upgrading the various guns you'll acquire as you journey forth through Katorga-12.
You encounter various scenarios where you are attacked by the flesh-eating monsters in present day on the island, otherwise referred to as Zeds, and fighting regular non-mutated zombie versions of Russians way back in the 1950s. You change history in various ways every time that you go back in time, altering the timeline so you can fix that big boo-boo you made earlier in a mistaken gesture of kindness.
At no point during the game does things begin to feel repetitive, however that does not mean that the game leaves the player completely satisfied. The parts that I feel it lacks are, in my opinion at least, are the functions of the TMD. You can age enemies, and you can repair broken objects by reversing time on that specific foe or inanimate object, as well as age environmental things to your advantage. That's... about it. You can't do much else than that, whereas my imagination can think of other cool stuff for such a swanky device. Oh well. It seems the developers of this game did not.
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Okay! That was not there a few minutes ago! |
In short, I quite enjoyed Singularity when it came out last year in 2010, and I find myself coming back to it time and again. There's just something about it that keeps calling me back, and I believe its a combination of its gameplay, its story, and just the fun I have shooting Zeds and Russians in the face, no offense to any Russians. My two cents have been given, and so I bid you adieu!
Until we meet again!
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