you know, I remember when this game was first announced XP man it makes me feel old somehow XD it's too bad the game didn't perform well, it looked amazing back then.

EDIT: I went ahead and got the game. it's actually not half bad, just not great. It's a flaming ball of adequacy.

if you go to various gaming boards you'll see this game is surprising a lot of people. it's basically bioshock + half life 2.

i actually thoroughly enjoyed the game while playing it, and on the 360 version, the MP community is quite active.

is the game flawless? no. it's nothing fresh, but what it does do, is take established elements and implement them well enough to satisfy but not blow away. i'm already going through it for the second time lol.

also, the game's time shifting between 1955 and 2010 gets kind of cool tbqh. especially when stuff you did in the past shows up when you come back to the future. theres 3 possible endings too.

Glad I didn't pick it up right away after seeing the trailer. But I'll probably still get it once it's under $20.

[b]I must admit I finished it last week (on Hard :D) and quite enjoyed it, kind of reminded me something between Half-Life and BioShock only with a smaller play area.

Totally rips off Half-Life 1's "choice" ending too (I won't say anymore though)

It was an enjoyable game, nothing breathtaking, but I liked it more than Metro 2033 a few months ago.[/b]

[quote=Guru Larry][b]I must admit I finished it last week (on Hard :D) and quite enjoyed it, kind of reminded me something between Half-Life and BioShock only with a smaller play area.

Totally rips off Half-Life 1's "choice" ending too (I won't say anymore though)

It was an enjoyable game, nothing breathtaking, but I liked it more than Metro 2033 a few months ago.[/b][/quote]



thing is though, you can reload the final checkpoint and watch all 3 endings back to back, it's funny. easy 90 gamerscore that.


i also greatly enjoyed metro 2033.

i'd give singularity and metro both an 8/10, but i love these kind of sci fi games.

Yeah, I love Metro 2033 as well, can't wait for the sequel, Metro 2034. I ordered the Metro 2033 book off Amazon, I should be getting it pretty soon.

I thought Metro 2033 was one of the best single player FPS I've played in a while.

i know this is off topic but did u like system shock 2? or dungeon lords?

It really doesn't look that bad. It's nothing amazing but it doesn't seem like a bad game. At least it has some kind of... *sigh* I hate saying gimmick... "gimmick" that makes it more interesting unlike so many shooters I've seen that have very little interesting mechanics to them. I wouldn't praise it but I also wouldn't really put it down. But then again, I have Scaler, Malice, and Kya: Dark Lineage so I'm the kind of gamer that can still love B grade games.

What a shame. I thought it looked cool.

Maybe I'll pick it up in a year.

So Raven Software's last game is just avarage FPS game. That won't save them.

The game is way to easy, even on hard, for it's short lenght.
The "time altering" idea had so much potential, but all you get is the same 3-4 different "puzzles". Age crate, carry crate, restore crate, new room.

Spot on sage, couldn't agree more.

[quote=steveosk8s]
also, the game's time shifting between 1955 and 2010 gets kind of cool tbqh. especially when stuff you did in the past shows up when you come back to the future. theres 3 possible endings too. [/quote]

3 possible endings... all watchable with a simple savegame-reload... now thats what i call replayvallue.

The time shifting 50 years back only appears about three times in the whole game.

Hearing it's from the developers of Wolfenstien '08 is all I needed to not buy it.
But the fact that it's just a communist Wolfenstien, with genericness intact and a barely original mechanic, I'm not even going to touch it.
Why would anyone buy this paint-by-the-numbers shit above... three, I'd rather play a shitty weird game than a "SAEV TEH WURLD FROM DESE ZOMBIE KLANZMEN,YOU MACHO BROWN-HAIRED MUTE"
(Phew, got that out of my system)

Keep in mind, the developers of Wolfenstein 08 (Raven Games) were also the developers of Elite Force 1, Jedi Outcast, and Quake IV. They can be really good given the right material.

and also Doom and the original Wolfenstien

Id made Doom, not Raven. Sorry.

that's what they want you to think ;)

I've played a few too many FPS games lately, so I would rather not buy one unless it is astounding. From everything I've heard, Singularity is not amazing or even great. It's just fine.

I was never all that interested in the game anyway. The concept sounded cool, but I had a feeling it wouldn't be fully utilized. It seems my prediction was generally true.

Anyway, nice review Sage. It's always good to hear another opinion on a game. :)

[quote=steveosk8s] [quote=Guru Larry][b]I must admit I finished it last week (on Hard :D) and quite enjoyed it, kind of reminded me something between Half-Life and BioShock only with a smaller play area.

Totally rips off Half-Life 1's "choice" ending too (I won't say anymore though)

It was an enjoyable game, nothing breathtaking, but I liked it more than Metro 2033 a few months ago.[/b][/quote]



thing is though, you can reload the final checkpoint and watch all 3 endings back to back, it's funny. easy 90 gamerscore that.


i also greatly enjoyed metro 2033.

i'd give singularity and metro both an 8/10, but i love these kind of sci fi games. [/quote]

[b]Exactly what I did, as I thought it'd be funny to be a dick and just kill everyone at the end! Then thought "oh, Shit. Do I need to play the entire game again to get the good ending?".[/b]

[quote=Entamrik]Hearing it's from the developers of Wolfenstien '08 is all I needed to not buy it.
But the fact that it's just a communist Wolfenstien, with genericness intact and a barely original mechanic, I'm not even going to touch it.
Why would anyone buy this paint-by-the-numbers shit above... three, I'd rather play a shitty weird game than a "SAEV TEH WURLD FROM DESE ZOMBIE KLANZMEN,YOU MACHO BROWN-HAIRED MUTE"
(Phew, got that out of my system)[/quote]
[b]
I'm still totally gutted about how disappointing Wolfenstien was. Return to Castle Wolfenstien was one of my all time favourite games, and consider the Multiplayer to be the best MP game on the original Xbox second only to Halo, So I was devastated at how much they fucked it up.[/b]

I'm curious Sage. More often than not, you recommend rentals for games you review. What in your opinion makes a game worth holding on to?

i think this game would be better if it focused more on time manipulation puzzles, but it did'nt. it is just avarage fpp shoter with little something extra...

liked the bubble that stops time inside it thou,
used it all the time

I really liked it, sure it wasn't the best looking game or the most original and yes it felt a bit gimmicky

but it was [b]fun[/b]

And as uninspired as the story was, the 3 endings were pretty cool

Fun isn't everything. Any game can give you fun, but when its fun that's completely worth $60 and is high quality, then its something special.

And this game is not one of those games. No matter how much you want to say it was fun, even though in the sentence beforehand you mention how pretty much every other aspect of the game has a problem with it.

Again another sage review I couldn't disagree with more. yes i would say this is a rent due to its length and sparse multiplayer, but the multiplayer that is there is really fun and the single player was very enjoyable. Also i guess the PS3 version was shit cause I played it on the 360 and I thought it looked good. Not as good as something like Uncharted 2 or Gears 2 but it was above average. Its a very, very good rental or a good perchance when it drops in price.

I had given up on your reviews but decided to give them another chance after seeing you in Kickassia and seeing some of your hilarious fanfic readings.
This was a bad review, excellent vocabulary aside you skim through describing the gameplay, story and graphics saying that its fun but you also complain to make yourself sound good. I think you have gone into the trap lots of reviewers do fall into and have started to add complaint just to sound cool, if the game was decent you should be professional enough to accentuate that in your review. Try being a bit more objective when you describe the game don't just put in pretentious bullcrap just because everybody else does it.

You know what?
Im so disappointed in this game. Im all behind Sage on this one, however i thought the design of the island was more creepy and grand than he gave it credit for.
This was given to me by a friend, i never even heard about it. He told me it had some timetravel elements but was very reluctant to say anything, insisting i tried it myself.

When I first started this game, it felt like Bioshock. You could loot boxes. Simular healthbar, decayed 50's enviroment. It even had a plane/helicopter crash! The feeling i had when i first entered Katorga 12 was almost equal to when i first entered Rapture. The setting, not knowing what would happend and being sucked into this time state was totaly new to me. It was genuinely quite spooked, going through very first part of the game(the prelude or whatever)
However even long before I reached the TMD. Raven managed to kill all that by introducing you to one of your team mates. Giving you tons of weapons and ammo, and dispatching enemies with ease.

All the aspects of this game was underplayed. I can live with that, however what annoys me the most is how rushed this game feels, even though was supposedly finished before MW2, but was postponed, so it would not compete with the supperior MW2.

This could have been an awesome Survival Horror Game. It could have some awesome puzzles with the TMD. It could have a unique story.
It has none of them, and for that, i can barely call this worth trying out.

I kinda liked the game...

Aside the fact that THE DESIGN WAS TERIBLE. Ofcours, most of you would not understand... but besides the propoganda posters and AKs in the hands of russian soldiers nothing had a soviet tune to it... Once again, somebody forgot to do their homework... it all reminded me of american 30s I saw in movies and not soviet 50s.

I don't get why none of the reviews I saw discussed the PC-version. I played it, the graphicks were far supperior to the console versions and had little to no bugs.

The feel of this game was just azing. The vibe was awsome and I was hooked for the entire game, the story may not hold up very well when you think about it, but it hadles a subject you shouldn't think about to mutch. It's a realy clever and enjoyable game! I would recommend it to everybody. The PC-version at least.
I hope Raven continues down this line, and I hope critics would look at the PC-versions more often!

Agh at the "gaming equivalent of vapor". The stilted and often long-winded phrases don't do it for me. The whole review has a contrived feel. Creating a video review does NOT mean reading a written review. Yeah you are supposed to lose some fanciful diction (unless you're a born and very well-read public speaker who can even make THAT sound natural) for a more natural flow.
Then again certain video reviewers at Gamespot.com and Gametrailers.com (despite all reviews being read by the same guy) do the same thing and they still haven't gotten a memo so I'm clearly in the minority.

It's your "job" to nitpick.
But I have to agree, you've become very very bitter imho. Even more than Spoony.
And because of your serious voice in your reviews it's almost sad to watch them.
Spoony is nitpicking the shit out of bad games or even decent ones. But at least he's funny.

Long story short : You focus too much on the flaws of games.

I've watched hundreds of reviews on this site but never cared to sign up - but I had to for this.

This game had one of the most interesting storylines with many little threads of sidestory weaved into a tapestry of entertainment that I cannot possibly comprehend how you could say negative things about it. Sure, it doesn't have much replay value, but nor does BioShock. After I beat this game I immediately praised it as a more worthy successor to BioShock than BioShock 2 was.

This game mixed a pseudoplausible story centered on science fiction elements with a post-apocalyptic setting that didn't require the whole world to be decimated as most do. It was a unique experience that had me thinking until the end, and I pity you for not having the depth of mind to experience this game properly.

I've posted this little rant to offset the fact that you're now hurting sales of a game that I find excellent, as I am sure many others shall, and I want it to sell to the point where a sequel (perhaps following the alternate ending in which you start rebuilding your own nation) would be created.

I couldn't even force myself to go any further than the first 30 seconds or so of this review.. for your sake, I hope it was exaggerated in an attempt to garner attention.

So, you immediately discredit my review...after only watching thirty seconds?

A valid point - but tell me, did you shift gears and start praising the game? Unless you did, it doesn't make much of a difference in my above rant.

He praised and jeered aspects of the game almost equally. It would behoove you to actually watch the whole thing before going postal on it :dry:

look the game was good, but it wasn't a masterpiece. sure it'd be great to see a sequel but you don't have to jump down Sage's throat about it. Once again, you must bear in mind that these are his views and opinions on the game, and he was simply sharing them with us because some of us have similar concepts of what makes a good game. If you do not agree with him, fine. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and all are equally right. But you just can't go bashing the guy because you disagree. Otherwise we start heading down the Twilight path, and I don't want to see anyone subjected to that.

I apperciate another opinion, always good, but I don't agree with it at all.

This game is awesome. Sure, it's not original or long. But it takes awesome established good games, mixes them together, and adds one of the most fresh Time Mechanic i've seen in a while, while adding an original story.

It has fun gameplay and decent graphics. And a okay multiplayer feature.

Only a rental if your worried about length, even though I played it again multiple times. A buy if not.

This game can also be a test, and low sales and bad reviews are going to screw up the endless possiblites of a sequel where they can fix and add things to make it better.

Good thing other critics are giving this game high reviews, get people to play.

Beware! TL;DR ahead! :P

I can see where you're coming from when it comes to Singularity, and I do agree with some points, but I figured I should throw in my perspective on a few things as well.

(note, I have the PC version)

First, you mention "unfinished textures" and the like. Are you sure that isn't just the Unreal 3 Engine being glitchy? Because I've seen a great many times where there WERE finished textures, but because I was far away, they weren't loaded, and for whatever reason they didn't load properly as I got closer, so they looked like garbage, even though I could go away, come back to it in 3 minutes, and see that area as it was supposed to be.

I can't argue much against some models being uninspired and lazy looking and the congested level design, but, I could say some of the same things about Bioshock, too. Bioshock also had congested levels and you had limited inspiration for its mooks (Big Daddies were the closest exception, and that's not saying much). At least in Singularity, they throw something new at you every once and a while. Not true once you got past Arcadia in Bioshock, final boss aside.

I would like to give a shoutout though that while the soldiers and mutants weren't too interesting visually as enemies, the levels made up for it, particularly in areas where you could contrast 1955 with 2010. Maybe it's just the detail freak within that went into squee mode, but I had fun exploring Kotorga 12. Particularly when E-99 oddities were prevalent.

I do have to agree on the voice acting and the unnecessary audio logs. I'd also extend my feeling of unnecessary audio logs to the regular notes of paper throughout the game. Yeah, every once and a while you'd find some useful info, but not always.

You basically summed up that you thought the story wasn't special and "shoddily written", fair enough, I could see why you would say that, but it's within my opinion that Singularity had one of the better examples of the consequences of time travel than some other stories, while also being interesting enough to keep players going (did for me, at least.) The only area which really irked me about Singularity's plot resided in the limited endings. I could think of two more options that should've been possible, but both were rendered invalid or impossible. Likewise, even though the plot was simple and straight-forward, it did leave me guessing as to what direction it was going to turn for specific moments. I felt that helped keep my interest as I played through. The cryptic messages on the walls helped for that, too.

As for gameplay, I was honestly quite glad to see an FPS that, at least a teeny bit, goes back to roots. Tactical shooters have congested the FPS market to such a degree that any that aren't are a breath of fresh air, and Singularity was no exception. We both were glad to see health packs make a return, at lea...

The texture problem is to do with the UIII Engine. The developers didn't write the streaming code just as effectively as they meant to - it's why the PC version was taken off of the Steam store and delayed - it's not all that common on the PC or Xbox 360.

I played through this game on the PC and really enjoyed it. Story is good - especially if you listen to the audio logs and read all the notes scattered around - and the characters have good voice acting. The game was poorly ported to the PS3 with the graphics problems - it looked great on PC and from what I hear from a friend, pretty good on the Xbox 360 as well.

On both PC and the Xbox 360 the multiplayer has a good number of players and is relatively lag free. I found the game modes to be quite good and interesting. The way they used the humans and mutants against each other for team based games with race specific classes really mixes things up.

I'll admit that there aren't many game modes or maps but the multiplayer is fairly enjoyable.

Replay value is there, levels are fun enough to play through again. Like most single player games, you'll need to leave it a while before doing it again but it's well worth playing through again.

TMD was well done it's fun to use and doesn't just feel like a tacked on gimmick. My only problem is that it wasn't used enough. I was hoping for much more time control than just aging objects, making them younger or slowing them down. That's one improvement needed for the next game.

I found that the story was pretty interesting, especially with the two endings. I'd like to see them add more story to the game by releasing a comic or release a cartoon or something for it similar to what was done with Dead Space. A sequel could work - though they'd have to consider the endings for the first game and possible cater to each one. It might not be just as rich in features as some games but it is enjoyable enough and shows great potential to become a great series if they make a sequel.