- Joined
- Jan 2, 2007
- Messages
- 1,067
As they say, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I'm not really playing many games lately and although my wife has bought a few games I'm conserving most of our extra cash, but a friend who knows I was mildly interested in Singularity got me a copy. I was curious mostly because I like Raven games; I even liked last years "Wolfenstein" for what it was as a silly gory sci-fi shooter even if it was a bit too consolized. I was also hoping that Singularity might have righted the wrongs of Timeshift and given us a good shooter with time control mechanics.
Starting up Singularity, I wasn't impressed. The first hour of the game has a plodding pace and decides to rip off BioShock of all things. We're dropped into a desolate, abandoned town created by a scientist with a noble vision who discovers something with amazing powers that ultimately screws them and there's lots of 50s style propaganda lying around, ghosts of people who died and audio recordings of people acting paranoid. Then the mutated humans come and you shoot them. Yawn.
It's a shame that the first hour or so is so mediocre because once the game cuts to the chase it actually becomes fairly entertaining. The part where things suddenly start to get good is when a big Russian man in a silly bearskin cape shows up and kills your annoying friend and you are forced to hop away from soldiers with your hands tied and are suddenly thrown into a world full of Red Alert style weird science that ultimately results in you getting a little device thingy on your arm that screws with time with objects.
It's not like other time manipulation games where you pause, fast forward, or rewind time on the game as a whole and maybe that's a good thing because while I still want to see TimeShift: The Good Edition, having objects and characters go forward or backwards is a bit more interesting and so far there have been a few clever physics puzzles and such that rely on that concept and there's no denying the tongue in cheek nature of the game.
As I said it feels like something the creators of Red Alert would ponder up, while it doesn't throw in so much silly dialogue it no doubt drops any pretensions of horror and seriousness and has you aging people to death, screwing with the environment I.E. aging a bridge so it collapses beneath enemies feet or using a rare but fun seeker weapon that apparently uses Patsies magic bullet.
There's no denying that it's a very basic shooter. While not as derivative as Wolfenstein, it still keeps it as simple as: Bad guys. Kill. Kill. KILL! but the time mechanics and difficulty keep it fun, plus it shakes things up by taking you between timelines where the enemies have different varieties etc.
The graphics are bad. They're arguably worse than Wolfenstein if you can believe, while there are some decent environments the game is simply outdated visually and there are a lot of graphical bugs. While you can still change most settings like resolution/anti-aliasing etc, there's no texture settings and the textures are broken and like to bug out. Often times enemies will come in with NO textures and would embarrass the Strogg from Quake II. Often when you die (Which is often due to the game being relatively difficult, though a good challenge is fine in my book) the game will load and you'll be transported into a smooth, matte world where people were born without faces and are made up of green and beige skin carrying grey sticks that make bad things happen to you. Strangely the bullet-impact gore effects always remain in high resolution, and as entertaining as they are from the cathartic standpoint they can be... weird and sometimes even creepy, I was using a shotgun for a bit, blasted a foe and the damage model appeared on his face; essentially I tore out his eyes and mouth yet he was still able to scream Russian verbal insults and see me like nothing had happened.
There's also a weird sound problem where, even when the settings are all maxed on both my computer and the game, you can barely hear anything. I often have to press my headphones really close to my ears to hear what people say or hear baddies/monsters. I'm hoping they fix this in the future.
I might review it but I'm a bit pressed for time and probably won't get to play through it all for awhile because at most I've been able to play 2-3 hours a week since life has been pretty consuming lately, but if I don't take ages I might do a review.
If you are patient and don't mind relatively mindless shooters, its fun, but if you are tired of shooters and like a bit more spice it won't super-impress you. Then there's the fact that it starts off awful, but once you finally get that time device it actually starts to get fairly fun. Let's hope it stays that way.
Starting up Singularity, I wasn't impressed. The first hour of the game has a plodding pace and decides to rip off BioShock of all things. We're dropped into a desolate, abandoned town created by a scientist with a noble vision who discovers something with amazing powers that ultimately screws them and there's lots of 50s style propaganda lying around, ghosts of people who died and audio recordings of people acting paranoid. Then the mutated humans come and you shoot them. Yawn.
It's a shame that the first hour or so is so mediocre because once the game cuts to the chase it actually becomes fairly entertaining. The part where things suddenly start to get good is when a big Russian man in a silly bearskin cape shows up and kills your annoying friend and you are forced to hop away from soldiers with your hands tied and are suddenly thrown into a world full of Red Alert style weird science that ultimately results in you getting a little device thingy on your arm that screws with time with objects.
It's not like other time manipulation games where you pause, fast forward, or rewind time on the game as a whole and maybe that's a good thing because while I still want to see TimeShift: The Good Edition, having objects and characters go forward or backwards is a bit more interesting and so far there have been a few clever physics puzzles and such that rely on that concept and there's no denying the tongue in cheek nature of the game.
As I said it feels like something the creators of Red Alert would ponder up, while it doesn't throw in so much silly dialogue it no doubt drops any pretensions of horror and seriousness and has you aging people to death, screwing with the environment I.E. aging a bridge so it collapses beneath enemies feet or using a rare but fun seeker weapon that apparently uses Patsies magic bullet.
There's no denying that it's a very basic shooter. While not as derivative as Wolfenstein, it still keeps it as simple as: Bad guys. Kill. Kill. KILL! but the time mechanics and difficulty keep it fun, plus it shakes things up by taking you between timelines where the enemies have different varieties etc.
The graphics are bad. They're arguably worse than Wolfenstein if you can believe, while there are some decent environments the game is simply outdated visually and there are a lot of graphical bugs. While you can still change most settings like resolution/anti-aliasing etc, there's no texture settings and the textures are broken and like to bug out. Often times enemies will come in with NO textures and would embarrass the Strogg from Quake II. Often when you die (Which is often due to the game being relatively difficult, though a good challenge is fine in my book) the game will load and you'll be transported into a smooth, matte world where people were born without faces and are made up of green and beige skin carrying grey sticks that make bad things happen to you. Strangely the bullet-impact gore effects always remain in high resolution, and as entertaining as they are from the cathartic standpoint they can be... weird and sometimes even creepy, I was using a shotgun for a bit, blasted a foe and the damage model appeared on his face; essentially I tore out his eyes and mouth yet he was still able to scream Russian verbal insults and see me like nothing had happened.
There's also a weird sound problem where, even when the settings are all maxed on both my computer and the game, you can barely hear anything. I often have to press my headphones really close to my ears to hear what people say or hear baddies/monsters. I'm hoping they fix this in the future.
I might review it but I'm a bit pressed for time and probably won't get to play through it all for awhile because at most I've been able to play 2-3 hours a week since life has been pretty consuming lately, but if I don't take ages I might do a review.
If you are patient and don't mind relatively mindless shooters, its fun, but if you are tired of shooters and like a bit more spice it won't super-impress you. Then there's the fact that it starts off awful, but once you finally get that time device it actually starts to get fairly fun. Let's hope it stays that way.
