POSTED 11/8/10


SINGULARITY

Activision
PS3 (also on Xbox 360, PC)

Fuck political correctness, when it comes to superpower fisticuffs it’s classic Cold War, Yanks versus Russkies action that gets the juices flowing, and Singularity has more juices than an entire chain of Boost franchises.

If you want a simplified précis, think Bioshock meets TV’s Lost. We’re talking first-person shooter, whereby you’re Nate Renko, a US black ops soldier sent as part of a team to investigate a weird power surge detected within a Soviet no-fly zone. WHOMP! Your chopper’s downed by another weird pulsation, and you’re dumped on a derelict island once known as (and probably still known as, just the Russians have hushed its very existence up), Katorga-12.

Cue exploration, where little-by-little you begin to piece together the history of the place via tape recordings (they built those suckers to last back in the ’50s!), notes and even instructional flicks. It seems the Soviets unearthed a new element, E-99, which made Uncle Sam’s nukes look like soggy sparklers. But as they tried to harness the power of this new discovery, they pushed things too far and kablooeyed the joint. Then there’s the icky mutant, z-word-like creatures shambling about – meh, nothin’ a good shotty can’t fix.

Some may dismiss Singularity as just another so-so FPS, but you’re rewarded the more you immerse yourself. The key difference to similar games is the presence of time ripples caused by those aforementioned pulsations, which literally transport you back to a 1950s era of endeavour mixed with uncertainty that adds a stark humanity to the desolate wasteland you’re trundling about in 2010 – a year you inadvertently alter substantially quite early on.

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