Singularity User Review

Just finished Singularity (yea, sometimes it's nice livin' in the EU ^^) and wanted to share my impressions of it with you guys.

Singularity is basically Raven Software's take on an altered Cold War scenario - and a rather entertaining one.

You're playing as a member of an American recon team investigating a mysterious Russian island in the year 2010.

On that island Soviet scientists researched the rare element E99 in the early 1950s.

Turns out E99 can manipulate time and thus the TMD - Time Manipulation Device - is born.

Now I don't wanna spoil too much of Singularity's story, because it's rather good, but basically your job's to rewrite history - Soviet Russia reigns over the whole world now - because you messed it up in the first place.
Sounds confusing? Well, it actually makes sense once you play through it completely.

There are some interesting time-line overlaps in the last third part of the game and it really gets crazy.

The voice actors are kinda cheesy (Russian accents) but decent. Don't expect stand-out performances, though.
Ambient sounds are a different matter: Creepy, moody, always fitting the setting.
One sequence even uses atmospheric bgm.

Graphics are nice but kinda underwhelming if compared to other games running on UE3.

Expect lots of blood, gore and some shocking set-pieces, though - the usual Raven stuff ;).


You have a nice array of weapons available with rather entertaining secondary fire modes. Like player-controlled explosive bullets (similar to HS) or grenades that can be remotely controlled by the player: rolling on the ground and detonating at will.

Weapon stats (power, clip size, reload speed) can be slightly upgraded through collectible E99.


The most fun part of the game is the TMD of course.
You can deploy time-slowing singularities, age and rejuvenate items and even 'gravity-grapple' objects.
It's even possible to age Russian soldiers quite some decades, effectively turning them to bones and ashes immediately.
There's also a pulse mode available (replacing your melee attack) which blows your opponents to pieces.

Aging and rejuvenation are core parts to most puzzles on the island and the visual effects are quite impressive.

The pacing is nice overall and there are even some satisfying boss battles.

There's also a MP mode, which I didn't test. But the modes are extermination (death-match, I guess) and 'Creatures vs. Soldiers' which stakes TMD-users against Singularity's monsters, both parties are playable.


Overall I enjoyed Singularity, but besides MP there's not much re-play value.

The game features two endings (good and evil), which are basically two different final scenes. The 'good' ending is really nice though, and fits perfectly in that whole time-travel theme.

The SP adventure on Normal with listening to all audio logs/reading all notes and solving puzzles w/o walk-throughs took me around 8-10 hours.

To shooter fans I'd recommend a rental at least because it's an entertaining FPS with interesting game mechanics and a high fun factor.