My first impressions upon playing Raven Software’s first person shooter was that of “Oh boy” from Quantum Leap, Dr. Sam Beckett’s trademark response from the late 90′s TV show. Singularity has got a few of the same elements: traveling back in time, manipulating various timelines, events that affect the future. Oh, and creepy monsters that want to eat your face off. Okay, Quantum Leap doesn’t have those monsters, but that is what makes Singularity slightly better! Read on for the review.

 Singularity tells the tale of Soviet Russia during the Cold War era, where scientists began work on a secret military project that would make the Atom bomb look like child’s play. Back then, the evil Uncle Sam had just dropped two bombs in Japan and had effectively ended World War II. Seeing how these massive explosions ended the war and what power it gave the U.S., the Russians went out to start their own research for weapons of mass destruction. This would turn Russia into a nation to be feared.

The base of these operations took place on a remote island called Katorga-12. Somewhere in their experiments, they happen upon an ore that only grows on this island: E99. They continue to test the capabilities of this time bending ore and start to experiment on humans, when something goes wrong. Imagine that! Slowly the Russians begin to inject the families and the children of the scientists who work for the project. Chaos, devastation, and death devour the inhabitants of island with the Soviets scrapping the project, killing everyone involved. This is known as the Singularity event.

Singularity surprised the hell out of me with its great ambient sound effects, creepy story, setting, and distinct mash-up of other great games being combined. I’m surprised this game isn’t getting the press it should be, because it’s a damn fine ride. One that reminds me of Raven’s previous title Wolfenstein. Raven took all of the cool time-bending weapons, veil powers and dark forces and put them into Singularity. If Wolfenstein was their first foray into the “dark arts”, then Singularity improves upon the studios knowledge and takes things one step further.

The main pull of the game is the TMD (Time Manipulation Device). This E99 technology allows you to rapidly age or decay objects or people. This weapon takes a little getting used to in combat when you need to pull off things quickly, but after the tutorial it’s really a piece of cake to move and play with things. The TMD’s only downfall was that it lacks the ability to be used on anything and everything. This would have been epically awesome. Sadly, you have to directly target enemies or key objects in the world in order to use it. This could get tricky at times with people behind cover or running around. Surprisingly though, it still never got old for me. Just using the TMD to age a demon monster into brown decaying ash was enough to keep me interested in the game and keep me moving through it.

I hate to keep making comparisons to Wolfenstein, but having played that title before, the similarities in Singularity are quite obvious. Russians dabbling in crazy alien-like technology is not unlike the Germans doing it in Wolfenstein. The cool time manipulation device is not unlike getting Veil powered weapons in Wolfenstein. Even the story about the past timeline intertwining with the present is that of the veil “world” intertwining with the world of Wolfenstein. Raven definitely knows how to make a great compelling shooter, and they’ve done that in Wolfenstein and they continue the trend (and improve on it) with Singularity.

The gun controls are nice and tight, and include some of the most satisfying headshots known to date. I almost want to stop writing this review and go get my hands on that sniper rifle again to slowdown time to shoot a soldier’s heads clean off. Time slows, the sound slows down an octave, and all you are left with is a decapitated body with no head. Awesome. The visuals are also stunning, with Raven definitely knowing how to make a quality game environment. This dark setting definitely comes through in Singularity, with the haunting ambient sound effects and the sometimes pulse pounding musical score leading up to a great package.

Sadly though the downfall of Singularity is the ability to keep the player intrigued for so long with this “surprise factor”. The dark eerie setting is great for the beginning part of the game, but the newness quickly seems to wear off around the 6 hour mark. The overall pace of the game is nice, but there really aren’t any more scary jolts or not knowing what is coming around the corner after that point.

Throughout the game you’ll be collecting little snippets of E99 tech on Katorga-12 to upgrade your weapons and add different attributes to your character Renko. These little caches of tech, the inclusion of “upgrade stations” throughout the island, and the ability to upgrade your health and TMD device reminded me a lot of collecting Adam from Bioshock. It doesn’t necessarily mean another playthrough – although the multiple endings does – it does add some depth to what looks like another first person shooter with a few gimmicks. And about those multiple endings I mentioned? You can just load up the last save point before the end of the game and choose a different path to see the three endings.

At the time of this review nobody plays the multiplayer mode, so I’m not even going to mention it. Nobody plays it! I sat for twenty minutes trying to collect six people (Yes that’s right six!) to start up a match. Any match, multiple times. Our lobby would occasionally get to five people and be so close to starting, but one or two of the other players would get itchy trigger fingers and abandon us after sitting there for so long. This would knock us down to three people waiting for another three players and after that I just gave up. Who knows how long that would have taken to wait? Multiplayer is there, but think of it as an empty menu item at this point. Good luck trying to play it.

It’s really sad that a great game like Singularity (minus the multiplayer) was put out to little or no fan fare. It’s probably up there as one of the most underrated games I’ve never heard about but played. Raven Software knows how to make a great solid shooter (minus a few bugs I encountered) and they have done just that. It’s definitely worth at least a playthrough, but I seriously doubt I would have payed $60 for it. With that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed my stay on Katorga-12 with Sgt. Renko. Singularity’s story is definitely intriguing, the gameplay is tight, focused, and it looks great. These are all things needed to make a great game. Singularity has got all of these nailed down, so why haven’t you heard about this game? Definitely go pick it up for cheap (I see it as a great buy at $30 bucks)!

[A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.]

Singularity is available now for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC for $60.00.