God
Benefactor
Super Combine
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Posts: 9,759
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« on: July 19, 2010, 09:56:26 am » |
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This is the first game, I have ever played from start to finish on a 360. And hell, for a first time experience like that, I think I chose a pretty great game.
Singularity, is a mash-up of sorts... Elements of Bioshock, Half-life 2, and every time traveling game pretty much in existence. While to some it may seem like they were "copying" other games. It seems to me, that they took the best parts of a lot of games and then put it together. And it payed off...
For the rest, I will do my best to limit any major story leaking.
You play as Captain Renko, a member of the US military sent to an island called Katorga-12. This island is the source of a revolutionary element called e-99. Once you are near Katorga a blast of energy knocks you about and then you crash land a helicopter into the island. From there, the game becomes a horror survival game.
You pick up some weapons, starting with a pistol. Then an automatic rifle, and some more basic weapons. While the initial layout is pretty generic, and all the weapons are fairly standard, you eventually get some cool guns. Like a remote control grenade launcher, a laser cannon, a mini-gun, and finally a sniper rifle which fires an explosive directionally controllable round. (you can manipulate it in the air, and move it to enemies heads, super cool) Well, these guns are pretty cool, but one problem arises. You don't often use more than the basic weapons. While I enjoyed the strength of a sniper rifle, or the grenade launcher. It just becomes too hard to use in situations where you have to fire quickly.
Hey, guns are cool, but wasn't there some cool hand device in all of the trailers? You're right! Yes, there is a device called the TMD, time manipulation device, and it's pretty neat. You can age an enemy to death, or spawn a ball of slower time that slows everyone but you. You can use a burst of pure energy that knocks enemies down or tears them apart. It can move objects, completely denying the existence of gravity! Hell, it's pretty much a... gravity gun... Oh yeah. Remember when I said that it's a lot like a lot of other games, well, this TMD can do things pretty similar to the gravity gun in Half-life 2. And it even has a similar end device much like the super gravity gun in hl2...
Aside from the TMD, you can also upgrade your weapons and even yourself. In a Bioshock-esque experience, you can use your collected e-99 to upgrade yourself. More resistant to bullets, or melee attacks, more health, all sorts of stuff. And you can upgrade the guns with "weapon tech" which is scattered around the game.
Back to parts of the story, you run around the island shooting the zombies that came about from the e-99 which mutates humans. That isn't a story leak, you learn that pretty early on... And then it becomes an action game where you shoot the Russians returning to the base, and then it's a horror story again, and then back to action at the end.
The whole premise of the game, is based upon you, Captain Renko, having changed the past and then going back to fix it again. It's well written and you discover more about the story from audio recordings and messages in a very Bioshock style, however, it's not as well written as Bioshock. And it doesn't seem to have the depth that one would want from a game like this.
The whole game only takes about 8-9 hours to beat, depending on how much scavenging you do for e-99 or notes and whatnot.
Singularity is based upon the unreal engine, looks pretty nice too. Good artwork, and a lot of detail in the mapping and texture work. The environments are really fleshed out too, a good amount of music also helps when you are playing to alert for an upcoming battle, or just set the tone.
Replay value, pretty low, because it is so short, it seems like you caught all of the story, at least I felt so. I would probably play it again though.
I thoroughly enjoyed the game, and I think that many other people could enjoy the game too.
Gameplay 10/10
Graphics 9/10
Sound 9/10
Replay 7/10
Overall 9.5/10
Random Rating 161361/1391999601 .33 repeating of course
Worth a try in my opinion.
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