Customer Reviews

Singularity

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I had a lot of fun with this game. Many people compared it with Bioshock. While the color pallet and some of the graphics look similar in style, for me the game felt completely different in atmosphere. It's very difficult nowadays to find a first person shooter that's totally original because they are so well established. So Singularity does seem to borrow elements from past shooters, but it does have it's own feel and style as well.

The ambient sounds were creepy and had me constantly looking over my shoulder. Monsters were interesting and the phasing back and forth between the present and the past added some tense moments. There's nothing like walking into a room full of soldiers frozen in the 50's then finding them phasing into the present and opening fire on you to test your skill.

I also like the fact that there was minimal cussing in this game. I'm not a big fan of games that over use foul language. For me a lot of cursing adds nothing to a game.

I do not like the current trend of the auto save versus being able to save when you want in PC games, so that was a big negative for me. It seems that everyone is going that route now though. Another negative for me was that the game was too short, another recent trend. Just when I was really getting into it, I was done. I guess it does say something positive for a game when you are disappointed that it's over. It does have some interesting multiplayer to extend your play time though. Those two cons kept this from being a 5 star game for me.

Overall I had a great time with this game and was glad I bought it.

I purchased this game through 'Steam'; the download took about 18 hours.

"Singularity" is a FPS computer game that features both single and multi-player action. It not only uses traditional guns (pistol, automatic machine gun, sniper rifles, shot guns etc.) but also features a new item that has several uses, one of which will allow the user to manipulate time.

The Story:

The old Soviet Union, in their ongoing paranoia to beat the west, has come across a new element that seems to hold the potential to give them the edge in the arms race. However, experimentation went wrong and instead of breakthrough advances in arms technology, the fast and reckless development (pushed ahead by Moscow) has caused an apocalyptic event...resulting in a wasteland being created on the island where research was taking place.

Your job is to go back in time, using this new equipment and change certain events, thus preventing the devastation from occurring.

The game...the positive

Fabulous graphics struck me right from the start...the audio was also well done.
The atmosphere reminded me of 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl'...the time warp features had flashes of 'Timeshift' coming to mind...and some weaponry was a little reminiscent of 'Half Life'

There is a multiplayer and the ability to use a 'friend(s)' option...you have a choice between 'soldiers vs creatures' or a 3 on 3 versus mode. You need to have six players for the game to start.

To add to the regular features of the weapons there are an assortment of rare upgrades available...giving you choices between such things as bigger clips, faster reloads and more damage and some interesting additions to the 'special' weapons that you'll encounter throughout the game.

The negatives: (minor to more important)

1.)The game, not surprisingly, appears very linear. Other than the occasional side room or hall, you can't wander off the main path very far.

2.)Up to this time, no manual was found either on the game-site or on Steam...not absolutely necessary, but would have be helpful early on.

3.)Your only able to equip (carry) two REGULAR weapons at a time.

4.)There does not appear to be any player generated game saves. Only checkpoint saves AND more importantly, it is only the very last checkpoint you went through that is save...all previous saves are ERASED. And the implications are this...

a.) there is no going back and restarting a previous level other that the one your on (unless you restart a new game).
b.) if you've made a poor choice of upgrades to a weapon OR just want to experiment with a different upgrade, your stuck with it once you've reached the next checkpoint.
c.) some doors MAY lock behind you...so make sure you explore an area fully before you go through, because you'll never be able to assess that area again once a new checkpoint is reached.

5.)Once you figure out the 'game-play', the best weapons etc. the game tends to become somewhat repetitive after a while.

Conclusion:

A FPS which uses time manipulation as a way to accomplish the game objective.

It has fabulous graphics that flowed smoothly with my machine (P5K mother board and nVidia GT8800 video card).

The ability to save anywhere with F5 or at least have a choice of reload from any previous game-save checkpoint would have been really nice.

Replay value (single player)...near zero, mainly because of the lack of the ability to load in a particular game-save. Really, who's want to spend all that time just to get far enough into the game to try out some different weapons or upgrades.

Ultimately, the game became somewhat tedious due to its repetitive nature. Honestly, I was glad to be finished.

The ending was 'anticlimactic' to say the least.

Multiplayer is available, but requires six players to begin.

Overall... 3 1/2

Ray Nicholson (cujo)

I've got to give props to Raven for making such a great game! Singularity is a whole lot of fun and I had a blast playing it. From the moment you start the game and see the Raven logo being affected by a Singularity time wave, to seeing distortions occur while navigating the main menus, this game simply breathes awesomeness. The story is good and always keeps you engaged and wanting to find out what happens next, and the atmosphere and set pieces are fantastic! I also felt that the music was exceptionally well done and added so much more to the experience.

This is a game that never forgets it's a shooter. It always retains its focus and I never felt like I was doing a task for no reason. The weapons are solid and I especially liked the special purpose Seeker rifle, which lets you fire special E99 bullets you can guide around corners. It definitely added some extra flare to the game.

With that said, I do have a few (very) minor gripes and a couple of wishes....

You can't control the refresh rate from within the game. I had to use an external program to lock the refresh rate of my monitor while playing as it kept defaulting to a lower refresh rate. I wish Raven would have put just a little more effort into putting an option in the game to control this.

While the single-player mode is excellent, the multi-player mode does feel a little like an afterthought. It's still fun to play but there are only two game modes. It also lacks dedicated servers so you're forced to wait quite a while at times before being able to begin a match. It's too bad because dedicated servers could really help this game live on for years and years. I could even see some modders making some fantastic new game modes.

I wanted more boss fights! You only get to fight two actual boss enemies with a few other mini-bosses. There's a certain point in the game when you see how E99 has affected some plant life, with one of the mutations looking like a Venus flytrap. The specimen is small but I have to admit I kind of wanted to fight a giant "boss" version of the plant.

I also wish there was some kind of "super-crazy-hard" mode that tripled the amount of enemies and made you fight two bosses at the same time. My first play-through was on Normal difficulty, and while challenging enough for the first run, I found the Hard difficulty to actually be a little too easy for my second play-through. The only difference between normal and hard is that the enemies hit a little harder and take slightly more ammo to kill.

But other than that, this game is great! Raven made a rock-solid shooter that's a whole lot of fun to play and I definitely recommend it. My only hope is that Raven makes a sequel. Even after winning the game there are still unanswered questions, and I'd love to have more adventures with the Time Manipulation Device!

DRM (Digital Rights Management) INFO: This game uses SecuROM but only for a disc check. There are no online activation requirements.

Singularity is first person shooter game that has as it's premise a research lab on an island belonging to the old USSR, where a mysterious "Element 99" is discovered, that can manipulate time and provide nearly unlimited energy. An experiment in 1955 goes awry and causes havoc with events in 2010. The "kick" in this game is you're traveling between both 1955 and 2010 in addition to different realities, and you have a device called a TMD which is a bit of the gravity gun from Half Life 2, a bit of energy/forcefield projection, and some new ideas. With the TMD you can age/renew enemies and objects, which comes in handy several times for solving puzzles, and knock some enemies who are out of phase with you into your time. The standard weapons (assault rifle, shotgun, etc.) are there but the special weapons are unique; in particular the Seeker, which adds a whole new meaning to "bullet time."

My criticisms of the game are numerous but in the end really minor in just playing it and having fun:

The levels are very linear, and you are restricted in where you can go. You think you can jump into a truck or down a ledge, but find yourself mysteriously blocked. The set design is a little on the overkill (too much junk, literally), and there's some things that jar your immersion of the game, such as finding early on a wet and rainy environment where fifty-five year old tape recorders still work and things that should have decayed are still around.

Also, while it's a given the Russians speak in English with accents as otherwise the entire game would be in subtitles, it's odd that a secret base has it's signs in Russian and English.

A little characterization would have gone a long way, you have lots of audio recordings of the people who came before you, but the main characters were barely fleshed out at all. In particular the female character is literally a puppet with a British accent. The plot is sufficiently interesting, but also confusing with all the timelines, and the twist at the end is nothing revolutionary but still kind of cool.

They had a little too much fun with the TMD and properties of Element 99 (E99), as it was sometimes awkward to decide which special power to use, and also trying to rationalize just what E99 is able to do aside from pretty much anything they wanted. The puzzles, while novel at first, become routine, as in every time you see a blue metal crate you know you'll need it to either prop up a door or serve as a stepping stone somewhere else.

You also can use the age/renew effect on only a limited number of items, generally either ones that provide resources or that you'll need to escape a puzzle. The fun quotient would have gone a lot higher if you could have used it on anything you pleased, but then the game would have been much more difficult to design.

You're given three choices at the end, the two "wrong" decisions were really unexpected.

As with most modern shooters it's fairly short, about 2-3 evenings of playing.

I don't know why this bothered my but the characters from 1955 who also appeared in 2010 kept saying it was "50 years" rather than 55. Why they did that who knows.

In general I rank this game head and shoulders above the crop of current shooters, with some original ideas and concepts, but still a little short of classic status.

this is maybe the best 3d shooter game of 2010.
it is a mix of the best parts of Half Life and Bioshock. the game actually has a nice premise and a good plot.
No long and boring battles against final bosses, pure joy and entertainment.
this is a game for people who like playing the game, not repeatedly play frustrating parts 100x.
highly recommended.

This game is great its really just a FPS that has taken ideas and story lines from other games. The atmosphere is very much like Bioshock, and Dark Sector(remember that one? With the radiation and the russians)VERY much like that. Also there are elements of both F.E.A.R titles with holgramish ghosts, children, creatures etc. Also you get the feel since its made by Activision that there is a bit of Call Of Duty feel, with the way you collect and drop guns, and also in different positions such as crouch it has the same exact icon at the bottom of the screen. So thats not to say this game is a clone at all, i really just started it, so i haven't gotten into the "meat and potatoes" of it yet. But i'm not worried because i'm already engrossed. Great creepy atmosphere, awesome looking creatures, especially maxed out at 1080p on my gaming desktop, textures fly out at your and the water is just so realistic looking you search around for a tarp to cover yourself wiht while playing. Funny i didn't think after Bioshock that water effects could get any better. The character models are ok, better even than Just Cause 2 which i have a hard time finding anything as graphically superior thus far, so thats a plus. So as i get further into the game i'll update my review, as of now i love it, so far so good. Nothing is perfect and the only thing i've found "wrong" is that the aiming isn't really what i'd call "spot on", but the weapons are great to use none the less. So until next time, get this, its a very good first person survival horror game. Lets hope the next Resident Evil gives us the best ever. Hopefully.

The best features of this game are a superb plot, some very clever physics puzzles and the PhysX effects. Aging objects is a real treat to see. The gunfights, however, leave something to be desired which is why I didn't give it 5 stars. While playing in normal mode, the fights are challenging at first but after a while they become too easy. TIMESHIFT's (a pure FPS) gunfights were much more fun.

As I said in the title, this game has a great plot like Half-Life and equipment customization options like in Bioshock. I would've compared it's time manipulations to the game Timeshift, but in this game you can't reverse or stop time (you can slow it down but not directly). This is a big deficiency especially in a game about time. It lets you age objects backwards and forwards but that is not the same thing.

Overall, my final verdict is that this game is definitely worth buying.

P.S. While playing the level "Use TMD On 1950s Time Rift In The Lab," look for a camera on a shelf in the lab and use it. I won't tell you what happens but rest assured it's very imaginative.

This is a great game. I haven't had this much FUN playing a game since Half Life 2. Don't get me wrong, there have been plenty of great games (Crysis, Fallout 3, etc) that have come along, but as far as just jumping in and blasting the crap out of everything, this game is great. The controls are easy to learn (it really helps to have a mouse with a couple of thumb buttons for custom controls...I'm using a Logitech G500). There are a ton of weapons to keep the game exciting and fresh.

The game is running on an older engine (I believe it's the Unreal 2 engine), so the graphics aren't groundbreaking. However, they look great, and they don't take a state of the art rig to run at full detail. I'm running 1900x1200 on a ATI 5830 and Intel Quad Core 9650 at full detail and never get any slowdowns.

I'm about half way through the game, so I can't comment on how it ends, but so far I feel like I've gotten my money's worth and would highly recommend the game.

I know this game is a little old, but if you want to have some FPS fun, BUY IT!!!
If you are running Vista make sure your joystick etc are unplugged because you are gonna get dizzy.
The graphics are good, the game play is good and it lasts a lot longer than other newer games = value for money :)
Take a chance and give it a go, you won't be disappointed.

In Singularity you are an American soldier sent to an island near Russia to look into what happened after some sort of major accident took place. Once you get there you learn that in the 50s they found a new element over there and that experiments yielded some interesting results and some dangerous and deadly ones as well. It's clear from the first couple of minute what goes on and some of the things that will happen but it takes a while until your character learns this things. This game has a lot of story and some twists as well.

You will end up helping a Russian scientist stop a mad general from getting his hands on the material and devices and causing havoc. And sometimes you're helped by a girl. Due to the major accident with the new element, the island is a virtual wormhole. You walk in an out of the year 2010 and 1955. Your enemies include Russians, mutated people, mutated creatures, bosses, and other creatures that phase in and out of space. The scientist gives you a device that's strapped around your wrist with which you can control time and space and shoot energy.

This game is one of the more elaborate ones using the Unreal engine. You'll find text notes, audio recordings, video projections, you can grab things and move them around, with the device you have the power to age and rejuvenate certain items, and throw a ball that freezes in time everything in it. Your weapons and your special device can be upgraded. However, interactivity with the environment is fairly limited. There are only a few basic weapons and one really cool one that lets you drive the projectile around and hit your target. There are gasoline, gas, and freezer tanks around that you can use. It captures a lot of good elements from other games like puzzles and the ability to carry and throw large objects, as well as a few scares. There are some annoyances as well. In some levels you run out of ammo quickly and there isn't any to be found. I personally really dislike large bugs, critters, and giant bugs. I didn't like it Half Life 2, don't like it here either. You can't save your progress at any point. But the main weakness is the Unreal engine, which frankly has reached the end of its useful life. A major revolutionary version needs to be released and soon, or alternatively, game developers need to look at other options, and there are plenty around much better than Unreal, like the one used in the FEAR series for instance. Because so many games use Unreal, they are all starting to look alike, feel and play alike and the graphics are for this day inadequate.

Singularity is fun to play for the most part, it has a very interesting story, and one the best endings I've seen in a game. But it could have been so much better with a more sophisticated game engine.