Singularity – How to Manipulate Time and Shoot People

Let's recap the concepts first. E99 is a weird element featuring a lot of properties that seem to transcend the limits of modern physics. It's only found in one area, a remote island off the Eastern coast of the Soviet Union, called Katorga-12.

The Communist party is looking for an advantage over the United States, apparently winning the Cold War because of their bigger nuclear weapon arsenal. So, they set about mining E99 and testing it in order to unlock its full possibilities and then weaponize the element.

A lot of things go wrong and as a Special Forces soldier, you get to the island only to see helicopters crash and fellow soldiers executed in cold blood. And if this was not enough, the player gets access to the E99 powered Time Manipulation Device, a small gadget that allows gamers to control time, shock enemies and manipulate gravity to some extent. Its abilities are well integrated in Singularity, complementing the firearms that the player uses to take out their enemies and serving as a way to solve some puzzles along the way.

The problem of the TMD, the main unique attraction of Singularity (although some might argue that it's heavily inspired from the Portal Gun and the Gravity Gun introduced by Valve in half Life and Portal), is its being too limited.

This is a device that can be used to manipulate the structure of space and time around the player but only those things touched by E99 are influenced by it. Sure, limitations needed to be implemented to make the game playable and to fit the currently available technology but I would have much more proffered to have a game named Singularity much smaller but that allowed for more impact for the Time Manipulation Device.

This is a game diary. A full review of Singularity is also available on Softpedia.