Why Did They Let It Die?
Activision's latest attempt to kill a game (who can get the logic behind that nonsense?) is from Raven, the group behind the awesome Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1 game and the really good X-Men Legends games. And it involves time manipulation, which is one of my all-time favorite game mechanics (heck, I LOVED Timeshift, and nobody else can really make that claim). So, why did Activision try and kill this game?
It's still a bit baffling as Singularity is actually a pretty decent game. You definitely get a bit of a Bioshock vibe to it, but it is a rather decent game.
You land on the island of Katorga-12, where Soviet scientists in the 1950's discovered the mysterious Element 99, which allowed the manipulation of time and, well, gave us the central tenet of the game. The faux-Soviet vibe is prevalent throughout the game, with cyrillic-style writing (well, ""R"" being backwards a lot) being a staple. The notes and audio recordings do provide a nice bit of context for the plot...but, unlike with Bioshock, these don't seem terribly important. The story isn't all that well fleshed-out and the atmosphere, while nice, doesn't really have the same level of polish as Rapture. You spend considerable time shuttling between the modern day and 1955, when Katorga-12 first turns to crap.
And, yes, I agree it might be unfair to compare Singularity to Bioshock, but it is nearly impossible to ignore the similiarities. Raven clearly took a lot of notes from Irrational and 2K Marin's gems (yes, I still say Bioshock 2 was excellent) and took a lot of ideas and, for the most part, it works pretty well.
The weaponry, to be honest, by and large isn't all that impressive. The rolling grenade launcher is quite fun to use, the sniper rifle that allows you to stop time when aiming it was inspired, and the Seeker is one of the single most enjoyable weapons to use in any game out there. It's just that the pistol is very underpowered. the shotgun lacks any visceral impact, and the assault rifle is an average weapon at best --- and these are the three weapons you will find the vast majority of your ammo in the game. Some others, such as the rocket launcher, is not all that good a gun.
The time powers work well, but it is not overpowering (a problem Timeshift had). You can age soldiers to turn into dust in moments and, in later stages, you can send them back and forth in time quickly, turning them into mutated creatures called Remnants (which you can ALSO age and turn into time bombs). They try to use the TMD to have you solve puzzles, but the puzzles all are based on either aging equipment so it breaks or knocking something back in time so it is fully functional. The puzzles are almost pointless, but it is nice that they attempted to provide a change of pace.
Activision did Raven no favors and I can't fathom why, as it is a rather enjoyable game. The length of game is heavily dependent on difficulty --- on hard, you will take 9 hours or so to beat it, on easy? A little less than half of that. You need, minimum, medium difficulty to get anything out of this game. The game is enjoyable, Katorga-12 is a pretty good environment, and the enemy AI is not bad by any means. It is a game you definitely should try.
