I really should quit doing muli-part blogs. Setting myself up to finish something later never ends well...

But yeah, so next up we have Singularity!

The game begins with you and Nolan North investigating an island because apparently Russians did some crazy stuff you should check out. I'm lazy and have bad memory, alright people. To make a long story short, thanks to some strange resources some how people and animals turned into zombie monsters and have messed with the time line or something. Don't think about it too hard, it's a videogame and the ending creates plot holes anyway.

These same resources, called E99 are what power your nifty time manipulation device. When I say time manipulation device I mean it lets you age enemies, Shoot slomo bubbles, age or revitalize crates for crate puzzles and restore stair ways. Yeah, for such a cool piece of tech you'd be surprised at how short your list of options are with it. Sure, you can jump between time lines, but these are only in key areas of the plot that are entirely scripted. You might as well have replaced some of these sequences with cut scenes. But of course they because the character is as interesting and full of personality as such riveting characters like Gordan Freeman and ODST's Rookie.

The game starts out kinda spooky. You're separated from Nolan North and you're fighting monster things with just a pistol. But as you progress that atmosphere is completely destroyed as you power up your happy gadget(not that one! Get your mind out of the gutter) and you pick up uber power weapons such as a minigun and a rifle that you can has rounds you can personally guide to their targets in slomo and insta kills regardless of where the round hits. About half way through the game the challenge is completely gone.

The game allows you to level up your abilities and equip perks, which is pretty cool Whats not cool is that once you beat the game you're done with that character. There is no importing, if you missed some upgrades you're out of luck. If you want to pick up some stuff or earn achievements you missed on your first run you have to play through the entire game over again. Singularity has multiple endings and fortunately if you select to continue from the last checkpoint after beating the game it'll got back the game's last check point and you can get the other endings without playing all the way through again.

Now, one complaint I've heard that I do not understand is the graphics. The game looks good. Not fantastic, but certainly above par. The environments are well realized, the characters look pretty good, I think they even used motion capturing. It's not going to blow you away but it still looks good.

If anything is unimpressive, it's the multiplayer. Only two game modes. Creatures vs Soldiers and Extermination. Creature vs Soldiers is just death match with one team playing as regular humans and the other playing as the game's cast of beasts. The Elimination is similar in that one team takes on the role of human and the other as monster but the goal is different. Human players try to activate beacons in the map while the monsters try to prevent it. So it's kinda like Battlefield's Gold Rush mode.

This concentration of human vs monster gameplay is a bit reminiscent of Left 4 Dead, although I'd say cooperation is less pivotal here. The multiplayer is class based. You can select a class and customize it to an extent, choosing between perhaps a couple of abilities and weapons. but it ends there. There are no unlocks, everything is available from the get go.

What confused me the most about the multiplayer was the ranking system. It served no purpose. There are no unlocks, like Call of Duty, but like Call of Duty players gain experience and rank up for just playing, essentially. So the ranking system doesn't say anything about player skill. It's just there decoration, really.

I almost want to say the multiplayer felt tacked on, but the campaign wasn't anything amazing either and can be beat in around seven hours. Without the multiplayer the game would have been less appealing. It's fun, but it's nothing amazing. A rental is enough.

Bringing a Knife to A Gun Fight

Something I wanted to mention that I never got in, early in the game I was try to earn some achievements. One for getting a certain number of kills with the sniper rifle and another for getting a certain number of kills the pistol. These two weapons aren't exactly a great combination for taking out waves of enemies but against my better judgement I went with these anyway. I was pretty sure my MLG clutch, clutch, clutch skills would come through.

I suffered for that decision. A checkpoint came and I got to a segment where I had to fight with a bunch of fast enemies that fought in close quarters. There were no human enemies to pick different weapons up from, I was pretty low on ammo and there were none of the station where I could get other weapons picked up previously in the game. I was pretty close to just starting a new game.

I ended up just hiding in an area clustered with cars the monsters had trouble getting into. An area I probably wasn't meant to go into. Essentially I had to cheat the game.

Moral of the story, don't use sniper rifle and pistols for close quarters fighters just to earn achievements.