Singularity Review

From the Vault — originally published July 18, 2010. Some links, videos or prices may be out of date.

Singularity borrows heavily from Bioshock and that’s is one of the reasons I liked it so much. From audio recordings scattered all over the levels, to ADAM which in Singularity is a little thing called E99 (more on that later), upgradable weapons, different perks to improve your character, and having powers in one hand and a gun in the other. Even the beginning of the game bears similarities to the plane crash in Bioshock. It’s a helicopter crash in Singularity. Also you have someone telling where to go and what to do all the time as in Bioshock with the overall confusion and mystery about what is going on and where you are.

The game takes place on a Russian island named Katorga-12 where over 50 years ago experiments with E99 were performed on the island. E99 is a very powerful but unstable element that eventually led to a disaster on the island with no known survivors. The project is quickly abandoned and everything was forgotten. Fast forward to 2010 a American satellite picks a radiation surge from Katorga-12 fearing another Chernobyl a team is send out to a team investigate the area. One of the team members is you, Nate Renko.

Once on the island while exploring you time travel back to the 1950s and change the past. Which changes the world as we know it. It becomes your mission to correct the what happened. You will need to travel back and forth between time throughout the game to correct things.

OVERALL LIKES

What I really liked about the game is the fact it is like Bioshock. The mystery of what was going on in Singularity is what I experienced in the first Bioshock. The story was one of my favorite of this year without a doubt.

Game play is very easy to get the hang of. Shooting is just like in any other game. You got your standard weapons. Pistol, machine gun, rocket launcher, shotgun etc. One weapon I enjoyed using was one that once a bullet was shot you control the bullet in any way you want. It also explodes on impact killing most enemies instantly. The weapons are upgradable if you find the Upgrade Cases.

Other than your gun you have a Time Manipulation Device (TMD) that holds a lot of power. Sort of similar to the plasmids from Bioshock. Over the course of the game you will receive updates with new powers. You can age objects as well as enemies with the TMD. You can also resort object back to how they were in the past. For example fixing staircase for so you can proceed or fixing health or ammo boxes. You can also destroy the same objects. Just like in Bioshock you need power-ups to use it.

There is a few puzzles in the game that must to be solved by using your TMD by moving objects through time back and forth. These are simple after a while but a first take time to get the hang of.

There were actually a few moments where I jumped out of my seat cause I got scared. Always enjoy moments like that. Wasn’t really expecting that during this game.

The environment was very enjoyable and although the graphics are just standard the world and set pieces looked great. Lots of Soviet Union symbols, and statues really made the atmosphere much more enjoyable.

I really enjoyed the multiple endings. I will leave it at that.

DISLIKES

I played this game on Normal level and I found it very easy. I highly recommend playing it on Hard.

I tried getting into the multiplayer mode but there wasn’t a game on the server I could get into. Probably just not enough people online.

The game is average length and wished it was longer.

Non soldier enemies don’t look that interesting. They just seemed like they didn’t spend much time on their design.