By Jim Rossignol on April 28th, 2009 at 8:42 am.
A glove that can de-age things. Imagine what the Loreal face-scientists could do with that. Somehow, though, this is not a piece of cosmetics technology, but an item of military hardware in the hands of the protagonist of Raven’s forthcoming shooter, Singularity. In fact, de-ageing stuff is central to the hook of the game. We all thought it was about time travelling, but that’s not the whole story. The trailer beneath the cut shows our singular hero fixing decayed cover and bring a tree back to life. Not in that Okami way, but in very much an inevitable-physics-death-for-masked-enemies way. Go see for yourself.
28/04/2009 at 09:03 Gap Gen says:
Bringing a Soviet-era military installation back to life: Because you’re worth it?
28/04/2009 at 09:04 espy says:
It has a weapon that bends time, shoots plasma and is a gravity gun? It must be better than Half Life 2!
Bit sceptical.
28/04/2009 at 09:05 Babs says:
Looks pretty bland to me. And the de-aging in the trailer made it look like a completely pointless gimmick.
28/04/2009 at 09:11 Steve says:
As long as they can keep throwing original puzzles at you and not fall back to the same ones time-and-time again then this has the potential to be a pretty interesting game.
28/04/2009 at 09:17 bansama says:
Hate to say it, but I’m not impressed so far.
28/04/2009 at 09:24 Aubrey says:
If you can’t turn back time on baddies, until they’re babies and then drop kick them into bins: no sale.
28/04/2009 at 09:29 Wedge says:
Yeeeeah, can pretty much guarantee every use of this mechanic will be highly scripted and entirely telegraphed. Soooo, basically Time Shift 2? Which was not that bad a game actually, worth the $2.50 I paid for it at least.
28/04/2009 at 09:50 Mungrul says:
Huh, I’ve just realised something. Singularity is being made by Raven, who traditionally have had strong ties to id, yet it’s an Unreal Engine 3 game.
Go figure.
28/04/2009 at 09:55 DSX says:
Gotta agree with Aubrey, an enemy suddenly 5 years old in floppy adult clothes clutching an MG would be priceless. And easy to shoot.
28/04/2009 at 09:57 Theoban says:
I wonder if you could do this with your weapons
“Oh no I’m out of ammo! I know, I’ll regress my gun to a time when it had bullets!”
*SHAZAM*
“Mmmmm lovely bullets.”
28/04/2009 at 10:03 MonkeyMonster says:
Hmmm, from the trailer before I had thought it look interesting but as others have pointed out its now lookin a bit – oh look another broken gun blocking thing, I’l repair it and move forward another few metres…
That and a bloke with an automatic rifle/sub machinegun from 2-3 metres away on full auto v you with a pistol and nowt in between you.
I suspect it will be entertaining in bits – at least to try and do levels the “wrong” way in comedy stylee.
28/04/2009 at 10:17 Subject 706 says:
A little bit too much of “me to” in this. Seems like they have tried to tack on all the stand out mechanics of recent years. FPS devs should concentrate more on making the actual gunplay feel god imho, instead of focusing on gimmicks.
28/04/2009 at 10:24 Optimaximal says:
Based on the PCZone preview a few months back, yes, you can age or de-age bad guys, although they don’t turn into babies (because that would ire the censors)
28/04/2009 at 10:42 Gap Gen says:
Dead Space allowed you to dropkick zombie babies across the room, though.
28/04/2009 at 11:01 Spliter says:
Uh… I have to say that my expectations were a bit higher for the de-aging…
oh, by the way:
Oh look! it’s a gravity HAND! it’s so original! +_+
It looks like they we trying to rip Half Life 2 and TimeShift but got distracted halfway through with jiggling key chain.
I hate when a game mechanic is used so synthetically it has to be scripted and then repeated throughout the game to give it any value, even if it’s completely obsolete.
28/04/2009 at 11:11 Leman says:
I’ve always kinda enjoyed the output of Raven. They make great shooters with really solid core mechanics, they might not be bright sparkling lights of originality but they are fun while they last.
Im still kinda looking forward to this, it can’t be worse than Timeshift, mainly because its set on a Russian Island somewhere, which is always a plus point.
28/04/2009 at 11:20 A:\Big.bat says:
I’m having trouble getting over how generic this looks.
28/04/2009 at 11:53 Dezro says:
If you can kill a guy, bring him back to life, then kill him again, I’m sold.
28/04/2009 at 12:03 Bhazor says:
Did I just see a barrel that explodes?
Well I’m Sold!
But seriously it looks like great dumb fun. I been wanting me some of that ever since I finsihed Painkiller. Bring it.
Fuggin bring it.
28/04/2009 at 12:16 SirKicksalot says:
Raven = instabuy
Also, Timeshift is awesome.
28/04/2009 at 12:19 Darth says:
Its the gravity gun with a gimic, then?
28/04/2009 at 12:23 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
So you just keep shooting until there is too much shooting you, then you look for something that looks like its dead or broken, you restore it to its original state, and continue shooting. fun…. >_>
28/04/2009 at 13:26 SirKicksalot says:
Better than just shooting like in many other AAA titles.
28/04/2009 at 13:51 Malagate says:
@Dezro, I agree with that sentiment. The best part, for me, of the first Soul Reaver was the ability to impale vampires so that they die, and then pulling out the weapon so that the vampire comes back to life! A detail that made me smile, there’s not many (if any) other vampire based games I can think of where you can do this, even Legacy of Kain sequals I don’t think you can do it.
28/04/2009 at 15:03 tekDragon says:
Geez… didnt I do that exact same sniper sequence in HL2 multiple times?
28/04/2009 at 15:06 yutt says:
New idea (Portal, Braid, Prototype) = gimmick
Improving old ideas (Dead Space, Demigod) = rehash, stealing, rip-off
I love gamers. It is like you’re programmed with canned negative responses.
28/04/2009 at 15:29 BooleanBob says:
This comment thread is everything I read RPS for.
<3
28/04/2009 at 15:32 Lack_26 says:
I hope that there are some decent puzzles, but more so, I hope that everything can be ‘de-aged’, say, rusting paint on a wall becomes fresh again.
Could make fights more interesting. You walk into a area, completely derelict, by the end of the fight it’s half ultra-new with pieces of crap bits still littering the area.
28/04/2009 at 15:50 Aubrey says:
nice one yutt.
There’s a difference between good innovation and under-explored/developed innovation, though. Prey had portals in, but it took Portal to genuinely revel in the mechanic, and exploring them fully.
Will Singularity fully indulge in its own mechanics, or just dip its toes? Because so far, I’m just seeing a tool to change the states of objects in one-off (albeit gleeful) ways. Will that link into other systems properly? Will it create a dynamic range of possibilities? Or will every interaction just feel like a one-off solution to a combat puzzle?
Knowing raven, it’ll be a decent shooter at its core. I suspect they won’t be able to fully explore the implications and affordances of their mechanics (for reasons exactly like the rewind-to-baby idea being way too censorable, or just because they may not have the resources to fully explore it freely).
28/04/2009 at 16:03 yutt says:
That’s fair Aubrey, but the responses are basically knee-jerk reactions to a single out-of-context video. Half-Life 2′s gravity gun had the same gimmicky quality, but it had fun uses and didn’t tarnish the totality of the Half-Life 2 experience.
I feel that gamers are far too ravenous to find minor quibbles from marketing movies and screenshots so they can criticize.
28/04/2009 at 16:11 l1ddl3monkey says:
I’ve enjoyed most of Raven’s output over the years so am prepared to give this a try. Not sure about the magic hand gimmick but their shooters are normally solid enough that I’ll play them for the gunfights. If only they’d make another decent SOF game like SOFII – still some of my most favourite gunfights ever in a game.
28/04/2009 at 16:40 Jeremy says:
I’m not sure you can condemn this game for having a “gimmick”. Every video game in the history of all video games has had a gimmick, either borrowed or created. I’m sure this will spawn all sorts of “but not this game” comments.
For me, being able to revive a tree and have it fling a train car.. well, that ranks as a pretty awesome gimmick to me. Also, considering that this little vid was probably made with the goal of showing off that gimmick, I would say it is successful in its aim.
Until then, I’ll do the unimaginable. Not make a snap judgment based on 1 minute and 9 seconds of video.
28/04/2009 at 17:26 Dave says:
Looks like potentially a good time to me.
28/04/2009 at 17:31 Erlam says:
I’m trying my best to not imagine what people will do to female characters via the ‘de-aging’ ability.
The game itself looks pretty interesting. Yes, the abilities look somewhat scripted, but if you claim to like Half-Life 2 at all, you can’t bitch about that.
28/04/2009 at 18:24 army of none says:
Feh… could be cool, but looks pretty generic.If they put in a crapton of the turning back time and let me use it on whatever I want instead of just using it to trigger some set pieces, I’ll consider it.
28/04/2009 at 18:44 Nick says:
I pretty much never used the gravity gun in HL2 unless I was forced too.. I didn’t like it. Shun me.
28/04/2009 at 18:51 Hulk Hogan says:
A game about ageing things would of interested me allot more, like causing a baddie to age until all that’s left is a pile of dust (THAT WAS ONCE A MAN! OH YEAH! HULKSTERS GOT IT!)
You make money to buy more guns and ammo by making and ageing wine.
Bonus mini game: Stalk Michael Jackson and instantly age children as he begins to make his move on them. Watch his angry reaction while safely hidden in a mailbox.
HULK HOGAN JUST HULKED THIS GAME UP FOR YOU!!!
28/04/2009 at 19:42 Cingulairity says:
What’s with the screenshot in the post? Is that some guy that exploded when thrown into a wall, guts all hanging out?
28/04/2009 at 19:47 JonFitt says:
@Lack_26 “I hope that there are some decent puzzles, but more so, I hope that everything can be ‘de-aged’, say, rusting paint on a wall becomes fresh again.”
That’s exactly what I thought. All I saw in the trailer was it used as a glorified switch to turn two identical broken walls into identical fixed walls, and trigger a lift/catapult contraption.
It looks more like Prey’s fixed portals than Portal’s portal-mechanic.
28/04/2009 at 20:10 SirKicksalot says:
I find it annoying how so many people mention Portal instead of Narbacular Drop when talking about this particular gimmick.
It’s a bit of shame that Prey didn’t implement the original portals idea.
28/04/2009 at 20:19 Dr. Nerfball says:
@ Sirkicksalot: I find it annoying that no-one mentions Timesplitters 3′s gravity hand when they think of gravity controlling gimmicks, seeing as it came before the gravity gun (or “the claw”) =P
28/04/2009 at 20:28 yutt says:
The thing many gamers refuse to understand is, game design is based on iteration. Without Prey’s portals we might have never had Portal. Without Catacomb 3D, maybe we’d have never had Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM.
Instead of criticizing new ideas, we should celebrate that new ideas have been made. They won’t be fully fleshed out in the first implementation, even in the best situation, but they are still worth having.
Maybe I have too abstract of a view, but I see every game “gimmick” as an idea available for a talented future designer to fully flesh out.
28/04/2009 at 20:35 Hmm-hmm. says:
I think what bothers many (me, at any rate) is not that it doesn’t look passably okay, but that it appears to be just that and nothing more. An ageing device could do a huge amount of things. As such, the suspicion that it’ll probably be a generic shooter with an ageing gimmick is somewhat.. downputting to me.
28/04/2009 at 20:38 Starky says:
@ SirKicks, and Doc. Nerf
There’s a good reason for that, both of those games sucked. N-Drop for good reason it was a low budget student thing to simply get the concept across – and thankfully it did; having gotten them all hired then going on to make the stunning game that is portal.
Narbacular Drop (aside from having a stupid name) may have had the idea, but it was roughly hewn in clay. Portal was that concept done in marble and polished to a mirror.
Timesplitters wasn’t a real gravity gun anyway, there were no real physics involved.
@Yutt,
Not just videogame design, but every kind of art medium, be it music, film, painting or even something as simple as dance.
Someone has a small but good idea, someone else takes that expands it, stretches it, twists it, another then adds to it, another refines it, someone else splits it into 3 and combines it with something brand new.
It’s how genres, styles, movements and era’s are born.
28/04/2009 at 23:25 Adventurous Putty says:
POWER GLOVE!!!
28/04/2009 at 23:30 Lord_Mordja says:
Well. You certainly know it’s in Russia because the Rs and Ns are backward.
28/04/2009 at 23:54 Ashbery76 says:
Gimmick.
29/04/2009 at 00:17 Tei says:
This looks like a BAD half-life2 mod. I hope the game is nothing like that. This video: Hype -100 points.
29/04/2009 at 00:49 Serondal says:
This had so many typos ect that I just totally removed it. I’ve had 3 hours of sleep in the last 3 days so I’m just going to withdraw my comment.
29/04/2009 at 03:08 Tei says:
Gravity Gun + Exploding barrels Doom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SceAIDtzT0s&NR=1
29/04/2009 at 09:09 negativedge says:
This is more or less everything wrong with modern game design.
29/04/2009 at 09:58 MonkeyMonster says:
So basically its changing rooms/worlds with a gun… You gotta get in quick – upgrade the decor and run out without being killed :)
29/04/2009 at 11:05 Optimaximal says:
I was originally under the impression that you only had your time hand and possibly a pistol, thereby requiring clever use of the mechanic.
In the middle of the film, he stood toe-to-toe with a bad guy and emptied a clip into it – I lost interest.
29/04/2009 at 12:02 DMJ says:
Interest level – Hmm. Nah.
There’s a lot of discussion about gimmicks in this comment thread, so here’s my take. A gimmick is something added to be a bullet point on the back of the box. Generally it is useful once or twice, and either disappointingly irrelevant, or annoyingly and artificially repetitive. I think if the game could be rewritten omitting the feature without losing its heart, it’s a gimmick. Take out the time-warping “stasis” feature from Dead Space, and it doesn’t lose much. Take “bullet time” out of Max Payne and you amputate the game’s soul.
29/04/2009 at 13:49 PC Monster says:
…Aaaaand that’s my fears about another Raven shooter all realised with one short video. Raven, bless ‘em, simply cannot produce quality above ‘good’. Id are the geniuses and innovators: Raven were always the lucky lapdogs who got to play with Id tech, were competent in their own right and were skilled enough to not make a bad game but consistently failed to reach Id’s level. SOFII was perhaps their finest hour but I predicted in an earlier thread – and now see – that despite the clever theme and interesting premise, this shooter looks to be Just Another FPS with an interesting, but ultimately hollow, twist.
But let’s not judge too harshly until release: perhaps later previews will demonstrate a little more imagination and fundamental gaming opportunities than the copy/paste scripted events we saw here.
29/04/2009 at 14:59 Jacques says:
Half Life 2 was filled with scripted events and repetitive puzzles (see-saws by the sea shore anyone?) and yet it is one of the most highly praised games. The AI was static, the guns were generic, the environments felt drab, but it was still a good game, hell, a great game. We got short bits of story and dialog (which were much better done than most today and of its time) fed between firefights and explorations to lead to firefights. The gravity gun was interesting, but wasn’t totally original, or completely un gimmicky. I could have done most of the things the gravity gun could do in Deus Ex with the muscle aug, albiet physics was lacking and you could stack boxes on their corners and they never fell over.
The Singularity device will of course only affect certain objects, creating age states for every bit of scenery in the game world would fill several blue ray disks and require a lot of resources (see: Crysis, but even more demanding). It’s disappointing, yes, but its also disappointing in HL2 that I can chuck giant saw blades, conveintly placed around me, at zombies, and they only ever dismember at the torso, no matter where I shoot them. Also, the gravity guns inconsitency in being able to life objects. A person weighs between 110-250 lbs, a collection of short “I” beams weighs about 100lbs or more, so why can I lift the latter all I want and not the former at all? There are no degrees of lifting, only can and cannot. Also it can’t affect a good majority of the game world, like the singularity device.
This is a trailer meant to show off a feature, what do you want? We saw the same thing with an early super gravity gun trailer for HL2: Episode 1, but I didn’t hear any crap about how gimmicky it was.
Portal is probably the most open device, because it doesn’t alter the environment, it adds a doorway to another place within it. Theoretically you could remove its limitations on relfective objects and be able to use it on anything short of a moving surface/ person/ small object, all of which have problems being projected upon by a portal which shows an instance of the world at the other end.
Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
best star wars game to date
made by Raven
counterpoint
Jedi Knight III: Jedi Academy
not the best star wars game to date
also made by Raven
you win some, you loose some, ball keeps spinning
Note:
Portal was drawn from narbacular drop
29/04/2009 at 16:53 PC Monster says:
“Half Life 2 was filled with scripted events and repetitive puzzles (see-saws by the sea shore anyone?) and yet it is one of the most highly praised games.”
Not by me. It’s also ‘good’ rather than ‘great’. Valve’s second outing has failings galore, the gravity gun being one of them, as you’ve explained. Being forced to lob explosive balls at Striders in the second expansion and then having to whip out a pistol and shoot at them to make them asplode was also really infuriating and made little sense to me: it was just a pale excuse to bring the awkward gravity gun to the fore again and felt like one more instance where the workings of the game were laid bare, shattering the illusion of Gordon’s world.
I’ll take your point about Jedi Outcast though – I’d forgotten that one was theirs. Perhaps I was a touch harsh.
29/04/2009 at 17:24 Jacques says:
My post isn’t soley directed at you, but at the many people sighting “GIMMICK!” “GIMMICK!” You appear to simply not like new game mechanics unless their perfect. In which case, good luck on your search.
Albeit, I’ll hand it to you that the strider busters didn’t make much sense, but neither did a military grade SMG being inaccurate enough to miss a human target at 10 feet shooting distance. However it did play alot better than the SMG (M something in HL2) and the end fight came out better for it. Gordon’s imaginary world was broken for me as soon as I looked down and saw no feet, no legs, no torso, and when I stare into the water, an antlion’s reflection splashing next to me, I can’t see anything but the water and the environment it reflects. And the shotgun was far more effective at detonating the strider busters, it takes so little damage to set one off… but I get what you’re saying.
Despite the gravity gun not working up to spec, it was fun for me, particularly setting zombies on fire. Sure it had flaws, but it still functioned.
30/04/2009 at 16:20 Jetsetlemming says:
That trailer did nothing for me.