Every once in awhile a game comes along that looks at other titles and says,”Hey wouldn’t it be cool if we combined these elements from these games into one title?” I’ve found that most of the time this spells disaster and that it is better to focus on making a unique title that feels new instead of an abomination of 3 games taped together by dreams. Singularity almost blatantly steals ideas from Bioshock and mixes them with Timeshift, while the multiplayer feels like natural selection without the RTS commander element. Can this abomination of a title dominate our time or is it best to put it down?
I have a lot of complaints about this game and a lot of compliments. At this point I am not sure which to go through first. I suppose I will complain about the multiplayer a little bit. The multiplayer feels slapped on and really adds nothing to the game. There are only two modes in multiplayer, which include Extermination and Team Deathmatch. Both are very similar except in Extermination there are beacons that you need to capture to win instead of just flubbing around and killing each other. All multiplayer modes are humans vs monsters, and there really is no reason to even bother with multiplayer as it really feels like it was adhered to the title with last month’s chewing gum before it went out the door. I guess this explains why multiplayer was unannounced for the title almost up to launch day.
I was actually very excited for Singularity when it was announced and had high hopes of them announcing a co-op campaign or some amazing multiplayer mode when it finally became revealed. What I will say is that they worked on the single player a lot and it shows. The singleplayer campaign has a great storyline, and was very enjoyable. The RPG elements in the game made me search every corner of the map for upgrades and diagrams. Instead of using ADAM like Bioshock did they used something called E99 Tech. Collect enough of these and you can then use it to upgrade abilities. There are tons of abilities and you can’t possibly max them all making you pick and choose what to spend your precious tech on. New abilities are unlocked through diagrams that are hidden in each level. Once you have a diagram you can then use tech to buy upgrades. Bioshock had the weapon upgrade stations as does Singularity, the only twist is that you can only upgrade weapons if you find weapon upgrade kits. The weird part is there is almost always a weapon upgrade kit laying in front of the upgrade stations… perhaps they didn’t want to make it identical to Bioshock.
Throughout the singleplayer campaign you will be jumping from time period to time period with your current time period inhabited with dangerous creatures and other time periods generally combating soldiers. Your soldier can only carry two weapons at a time, and some weapons are extremely powerful while others are extremely weak making them useless in most combat situations. The most fun weapon in the game is ruined by a strange mechanic where if you are using it you can’t switch weapons without dropping this gun, although it is technically allowing you to pick up 3 weapons. The strange part of this is that this is a fairly small rifle that fires rounds that you can manually guide around the level. This is especially nice when you are low on health and need to take out a large number of soldiers. But once again this is ruined by the inability to make it a permanent gun in your arsenal, and unfortunately you cannot make improvements to it either.
Singularity has a very dark feel to the game and it attempts to scare you in ways that, well, are just not scary. There is maybe one cool part that kinda freaked me out in the entire game, unfortunately it is optional and can easily be missed. If you see a camera use it, that is all I will give away. I will say that on normal the game can get tough at times, as there have been times where I’ve found myself out of ammo in both guns and running low on health kits and e99 power. I will also say that there is a room in the game that introduces a new type of creature and once you fight them you will instantly dread seeing them for the rest of the game. These creatures remind me of the flood from Halo that runs up to you and suicides until you are dead except these are faster and do a lot more damage than the flood. I found myself just running through rooms popping health kits every other second hoping I would get away from them before I ran out of health kits.
The time manipulation aspect of Singularity is used to solve puzzles and fight enemies. Using it on enemies drains a large amount of E99 energy however, making it more of a once in awhile helpful thing. Only certain items in the game can be manipulated with the TMD or Time Manipulation Device making it feel very limiting and preset. It is like giving someone the world’s most powerful weapon and at the same time making sure the weapon can only be used against beer cans. It feels out of place and fairly disappointing to not be able to age and remake everything in the world. This would require a lot more coding and detail but if you are going to make a device capable of this sort of thing it shouldn’t be so limited.
Final Verdict
Overall, Singularity is a solid singleplayer experience with an uninspired and boring multiplayer that feels tacked on with sticky tack. The singleplayer experience is fun and if you look in every nook and cranny (like I did) it can run you about 15 hours. This game has great potential but unfortunately there isn’t a lot of replay value here.
Score
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