What Bioshock 2 should have been!
Time manipulation, crazy futuristic guns, the Russians and the Unreal Engine 3. Doesnt seem like anything new and innovative; however once you pick up the controller it is hard to put Singularity down.
The game starts with a recon mission gone bad, an explosion causes your helicopter to crash on an abandoned island where strange time anomalies are a common place. Singularity's has excellent pacing, every few minutes either a new event unfolds or you get an extra weapon or an upgrade that you want to try out.
Singularity borrows a couple of elements from Bioshock, namely audio tapes, scribbled warning on the walls and a sense of people used to live and work here, but something went horribly wrong. All these things are executed well, although the audiotapes should have been something you could pick up, instead of standing next to them and looking at the wall while the dramatic tape is played.
Singularity took some key mechanics from Bioshock's playbook, and improved upon them. It makes you feel that any weapon you use will do just as good of a job, be it a standard rifle, a shotgun, or time warping weaponry. This keeps combat interesting and you find yourself constantly experimenting with new weapons and abilities.
One of the strongest things Singularity has going for it is its atmosphere. I must point out one particular section of the game, it involved bringing back a ship from the past and going aboard. However due to its size, the ship can not remain in the current time line and slowly starts warping back while you are inside of it. The art direction and environmental scripting in this section of the game is one of the best in gaming... to put it simply it is wicked!
On the Xbox360 the game looks on par with other Unreal Engine games, the textures could be muddy at times, but there is far less popping and blurriness than BioShock1/2. And there are some time travel mind-benders that dont necessarily make sense. As it comes to any time traveling games, shows or books you are better off accepting whats going on rather than trying to reason it.
Singularity is a solid first person shooter, with solid animations, good graphics, and fun combat. After the 8 hour journey and 3 possible endings it leaves us with nothing less than wanting a sequel.
