Singularity Review

Singularity, more like Similarity

• Game Title: Singularity
• Release Date: June 29th, 2010
• Developer: Raven Software

Singularity is a game that was developed by Raven Software and released on June 10th, 2010. It was the last full game to be developed by Raven before they became a map developer for the Call of Duty Games.

It was released to positive critical reception but only sold roughly over 600,000 copies worldwide.

The premise is simple back in the 1950s the evil Russian Government discovered a rare element that has strange effects on people both good and bad. Scientists discovered that it had supernatural powers and after an island exploded off the coast of Russia it remained top secret for more than 50 years.

That’s where you come in as Captain Nathan Renko you are sent off to investigate the island after satellites picked up signs of distress. Upon crash landing on the island, you are quickly bombarded with an energy wave that sends you back in time upon where you must escape a burning building but not before saving a man from burning to death.

When you are returned to the present by the power of plot device you will notice that things have changed and that you have altered history. From here on the game will have you focus on writing the wrongs you’ve done by giving you a badass arsenal of weapons and even a device that lets you control time. The Time Manipulation Device or TMD allows you to do all sorts of kooky things that you’d want in a sci-fi game. You can shoot a giant time bubble to freeze enemies and slow down the environment around you. You can age enemies to death or turn them into mutants. You can even pick up small objects like Half-Life 2’s gravity gun and launch them like a projectile. To quote Kevin Vanord from Gamespot “Who needs a reason for all this it’s super fun.”

I especially loved experimenting with different types of enemies. Since this is a sci-fi game, after all, you will fight not only humans but mutants. Different enemies react differently to your TMD’s functions. Phase ticks will implode when you pump them with energy from your gauntlet, Zeks will slow down becoming virtually immobile, while reverts will turn into time bombs and explode after a while.

Though while having this OP weapon does make the game easy for the most part don’t get too cocky. Every time you use your TMD it drains a certain amount of E99 energy that you’ll find on the island in the form of crystals. Very rarely this happened, but if you run out of energy since your only means of melee combat once you acquire the TMD is its impulse shock attack which shoots out a horizontal beam of death, once your out of energy and your out of ammo you will be completely defenseless. Why couldn’t the developers make it so that once you run out of energy the melee attack becomes your knife again? Or map the knife to a different button or something.    Since your gauntlets’ energy recovers naturally at a snail’s pace the only way to constantly stay one step ahead of your enemies is to search the island for E99 energy.  You will also be able to find audio recordings of people hidden throughout the game that does a good job of immersing you in this world. If it seems like I’ve been describing Bio-Shock or Half-Life then kudos to you you’ve played a handful of popular video games before. I often joked to myself saying that this game should have been titled “Similarity” because of how similar it is to other popular games.  

The game also has upgrade stations scattered throughout that allow you to increase your gun's strength, ammo capacity, and reload speed. As well as many other character upgrades that I won’t spoil for you.

The game also has a multiplayer feature, but since this game was released back in 2010 nobody seems to be playing it online anymore.

As much as I liked going along for the ride the game lost a lot of its luster towards the end. Towards the final hour of the game, you’re so overpowered that you’d pretty much have to try to get yourself killed.  And the games twist if it could be called that had me yearning for more.

But at the end of the day Singularity is a fun game that should not be overlooked.  I only hope that RavenSoft or Activision realizes the potential that this game has and decide to franchise it. Score 8.4/10

I also made a video review for the game and managed to interview a developer. If you are interested in watching it you can find it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xczKJ81DmYg

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