Taking place on an island off the coast of Russia named Katorga-12, “Singularity” tells the story of a mysterious installation built by the Russians in 1950 to harness and unlock the power of a newly discovered element — Element 99. As the story goes, Joseph Stalin was desperately seeking a way to gain superiority over the United States’ atomic bomb. Seeing an opportunity in Element 99, the Soviets waste no time in developing the element into a weapon of mass destruction. However, they soon discover that E99 has many other hidden powers which the Soviets soon learn to exploit — at a devastating cost.
One of the worst consequences of the Soviets’ unchecked ambitions occurs when the singularity at the heart of the E99 reactor explodes, releasing enormous amounts of energy that tear open rifts of time throughout the island and killing most of the inhabitants. 50 years later, the events have been completely covered up; no one knows about the island of Katorga-12 or what went on there. That is, until the United States detects a powerful surge of radiation coming from the region. As part of a Special Forces team, you are sent in to investigate.
As a shooter, “Singularity” is great. You get a wide variety of weapons with plenty of cool features that all inflict a ton of damage. You can plainly see when an enemy is being hit as he reacts with fluid animation, giving you plenty of feedback about the effectiveness of your hits. You can aim for the head and get a gory, one-shot-kill, or aim for the legs and leave them crawling around on the ground. In one case, I used a sniper rifle to target a soldier’s weapon and blew his arm off. Satisfying? Yes, very. After playing so many games where an enemy barely even flinches at being shot, it was nice to see enemies that reacted in different ways to being hit in different areas. “Singularity” gets it right in that it never forgets that it’s supposed to be a shooter. But then you get a very special weapon that helps escalate “Singularity” beyond being just another shooter: The Time Manipulation Device, or TMD.
The TMD is a device that straps to your wrist and can be used to pick up and manipulate objects in time and space. You can use it to “age” an item — turning it into rusted-out junk, or pull it back to good-as-new condition. This sets up a wide variety of puzzling situations where you must use the device to rebuild bridges, vehicles and other objects. Of course, it also makes for a devastating weapon. Rapidly age a soldier into dust and bones or mutate him into a hideous, hulking menace and then watch him turn on his fellow soldiers and do your dirty work for you. It also affects already-mutated creatures in different ways, making for some unique scenarios that you never have to play the same way twice.
Unfortunately, I can’t ignore the fact that it did seem a bit derivative. Namely, it seems to borrow a lot of elements from “BioShock” and “Half-Life 2.” The atmosphere and the way the story unfolds are straight out of “BioShock,” which ruined any feeling of authenticity that might have made me feel like I was really in a Russian base. Meanwhile, the singularity that ominously hangs just on the horizon seems, at least, inspired by “Half-Life 2,” among other things, such as crazy scientists and a sexy female counterpart. But who cares? This game is fun! It’s a great sci-fi/action game with some decent puzzles and plenty of memorable scenes.
I’m glad I played “Singularity”; I genuinely enjoyed my time with it. It’s a good, solid shooter with some interesting ideas. I just wish they would have dug a little deeper and given us a little more.
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