EDIT: Epic fail, I posted this in Gaming Discussion instead of Reviews. What an excellent first post!
Those that live in the US have to wait another week, but it's already out here in the UK. I've browsed the forums before but never signed up or posted, decided to sign up to do this review.
It would be easy to dismiss Singularity as a rip off of other games. You shoot guns with your right hand and use special powers with your left hand. You see ghostly echoes of people's actions shortly before they died. There are audio logs lying around the place, and audio logs, health packs and ammo all glow and shine just like they do in Bioshock. Some of yours powers are like the Half-Life 2 gravity gun, and the game is set in a facility that is very much like a Russian equivalent of original Half-Life's Black Mesa.
So why is it so damn GOOD?! This game is the most entertaining first person shooter I've played in the past couple of years!
It seems that the developers didn't borrow from other games because they were unimaginative, but because they saw features in other games that were good, and they were determined to make their game overflow with concentrated liquid awesomeness, originality be damned. They show off the fact they've got imagination because the game succeeds in surprising you every few minutes. They've clearly taken a leaf out of Valve's book because like Half-Life 2 and its episodes the game changes every few minutes to keep things interesting. That might be a change of scenery, or new types of enemy, or new weapons, or new special abilities, or getting time warped back to the 1950s, or a new plot revelation, or whatever. Some of the bits with mutants and zombies managed to make me jump as well.
The dialogue and characters won't win any awards but they aren't bad either, while the actual plot of the game is pretty clever. Obviously a plot about time warps and changing history isn't going to be terribly plausible, but so far there haven't been any plot holes or failures of logic, and there's been some decent twists. I wasn't surprised to learn that it was written by an executive producer of the tv show Flash Forward. (It appears that as well as a producer he's a pretty competent writer.) Apparently the game also has three different endings (though you choose them in the last level, Deus Ex style, rather than it being based on decisions throughout the game).
I'm a third of the way into the game I think, and so far the story still seems to make sense, and the gameplay just seems to get better and better. I've heard the game is supposed to last between 6 to 10 hours, and it looks like I'm leaning towards the 10 hour mark, as I like to explore. There's loads of audio logs, video recordings, ammo/health/upgrades all over the place.
Furthermore, it looks like the multiplayer might be intersting too. I haven't had a change to play it yet, but I look forward to giving it a try later. Rather than an obvious team deathmatch game, instead it is like Left 4 Dead versus mode or the classic Half-Life mod Natural Selection, as you have a team of soldiers versus a team of monsters. The soldiers have high tech equipment that lets them teleport or cloak or shield themselves, the mosnters... are monsters with all the melee goodness that entails. Oh yeah, did I mention this game has full dismemberment? Powerful weapons can put a hole in someone or blow off limbs or heads a satisfyingly gory way.
The first reviews from websites and stuff are in, Eurogamer's given it 8 out of 10, Gamereactor Sweden has given it 9 out of 10, and some random dudes on youtube called WeTheGamerz have given it 8.5 out of 10. I haven't given it a score, but I can say that I'm very happy with my purchase.
Those that live in the US have to wait another week, but it's already out here in the UK. I've browsed the forums before but never signed up or posted, decided to sign up to do this review.
It would be easy to dismiss Singularity as a rip off of other games. You shoot guns with your right hand and use special powers with your left hand. You see ghostly echoes of people's actions shortly before they died. There are audio logs lying around the place, and audio logs, health packs and ammo all glow and shine just like they do in Bioshock. Some of yours powers are like the Half-Life 2 gravity gun, and the game is set in a facility that is very much like a Russian equivalent of original Half-Life's Black Mesa.
So why is it so damn GOOD?! This game is the most entertaining first person shooter I've played in the past couple of years!
It seems that the developers didn't borrow from other games because they were unimaginative, but because they saw features in other games that were good, and they were determined to make their game overflow with concentrated liquid awesomeness, originality be damned. They show off the fact they've got imagination because the game succeeds in surprising you every few minutes. They've clearly taken a leaf out of Valve's book because like Half-Life 2 and its episodes the game changes every few minutes to keep things interesting. That might be a change of scenery, or new types of enemy, or new weapons, or new special abilities, or getting time warped back to the 1950s, or a new plot revelation, or whatever. Some of the bits with mutants and zombies managed to make me jump as well.
The dialogue and characters won't win any awards but they aren't bad either, while the actual plot of the game is pretty clever. Obviously a plot about time warps and changing history isn't going to be terribly plausible, but so far there haven't been any plot holes or failures of logic, and there's been some decent twists. I wasn't surprised to learn that it was written by an executive producer of the tv show Flash Forward. (It appears that as well as a producer he's a pretty competent writer.) Apparently the game also has three different endings (though you choose them in the last level, Deus Ex style, rather than it being based on decisions throughout the game).
I'm a third of the way into the game I think, and so far the story still seems to make sense, and the gameplay just seems to get better and better. I've heard the game is supposed to last between 6 to 10 hours, and it looks like I'm leaning towards the 10 hour mark, as I like to explore. There's loads of audio logs, video recordings, ammo/health/upgrades all over the place.
Furthermore, it looks like the multiplayer might be intersting too. I haven't had a change to play it yet, but I look forward to giving it a try later. Rather than an obvious team deathmatch game, instead it is like Left 4 Dead versus mode or the classic Half-Life mod Natural Selection, as you have a team of soldiers versus a team of monsters. The soldiers have high tech equipment that lets them teleport or cloak or shield themselves, the mosnters... are monsters with all the melee goodness that entails. Oh yeah, did I mention this game has full dismemberment? Powerful weapons can put a hole in someone or blow off limbs or heads a satisfyingly gory way.
The first reviews from websites and stuff are in, Eurogamer's given it 8 out of 10, Gamereactor Sweden has given it 9 out of 10, and some random dudes on youtube called WeTheGamerz have given it 8.5 out of 10. I haven't given it a score, but I can say that I'm very happy with my purchase.
