Singularity: Actually This Year


No, the game, not the bizarre nerd rapture. And anyway, it’s a manshooter news day, alright. Raven’s time-bending shooter, Singularity – which I maintain should have been called TIME GLOVE! – is actually being released in 2010. In fact, we can be more precise still: it’s coming out on June 29th. And there’s a new trailer, which is around here somewhere… Blimey, it actually looks moderately interesting. Some of the time-based transformations are pretty impressive and… well, if Raven can make a full game out of them then we might just be in for a treat. Also, I want to fight people by making them old.

44 Comments

  1. 17/04/2010 at 18:26 Dominic White says:

    The recent Wolfenstein game was (at least in singleplayer) a remarkably pleasant surprise for me. Very old-school kinda FPS, with the player carrying around an enormous arsenal of hugely powerful weapons (all with upgrades), and with a ton of superpowered magic on top of it. It was never easy, but I also felt sorry for the nazis the whole way through, because I have a magically empowed Kar9k that can explode an entire squad of soldiers into gibs.

    It also had the BEST LIGHTNING GUN EVER.

    • 17/04/2010 at 19:00 Heliosicle says:

      I really enjoyed it actually, going in with minimal expectations.

      The gibbage is what made it.

    • 19/04/2010 at 10:41 l1ddl3monkey says:

      Ditto – thought it was a good fun shooter. The end boss was balls, but the rest of it was good.

    • 19/04/2010 at 14:43 Dominic White says:

      The end bosses in pretty much every FPS I’ve ever played are balls. Every single western studio really should either not bother in the first place, or go and play every Contra game, followed by every game ever made by Treasure. Twice. While taking notes. MANY notes.

      Then they can try to design a boss. They should not be allowed until this point.

  2. 17/04/2010 at 18:37 hydra9 says:

    TIME GLOVE!

    Still ah, time for them to change the name.

    • 17/04/2010 at 19:57 Bhazor says:

      Oh aye, the developers have plenty of time on their hands still.

    • 19/04/2010 at 00:40 RedFred says:

      They should get stuck in with a hands on approach if they want to pull this off.

  3. 17/04/2010 at 18:38 Miker says:

    I always enjoy Raven’s shooters, even though they’re all rather repetitive. Jedi Outcast/Academy, Quake IV, Soldier of Fortune, etc. — all solid games, but they all turned into a grind by the end.

  4. 17/04/2010 at 18:50 Guildenstern says:

    Can I have nerd rapture instead?

  5. 17/04/2010 at 18:51 Aemony says:

    Holy shit! Are we already at the age of AIs?!

    Sorry, couldn’t resist. After all, the technological singularity is the next best upcoming thing in life after HL2:E3.

    • 18/04/2010 at 09:24 Supraliminal says:

      The next best upcoming thing in life?
      But then we are obsolete.

      OT:
      Looks great, but if I know Raven It’s going to be over scripted run in a tube.

  6. 17/04/2010 at 18:56 realmenhuntinpacks says:

    cue ‘smeg! He youthed me!’ ad infinitum

  7. 17/04/2010 at 19:05 Smee says:

    Oh man, I loved that music noise thing at the end.

    BOWAOW BOWAOW BOWAOW BOWAOW BOWAOW

  8. 17/04/2010 at 19:38 Flobulon says:

    This is gonna sound petty, but I hope there’s an option to flip the glove model; I think it would, for the first few minutes, sit with me a bit oddly to be using my right hand on the mouse to control my left hand in game.

    Yeah, that sounded petty.

  9. 17/04/2010 at 19:39 Frye says:

    I liked the last Wolfenstein aswell. It just felt as a solid title; nothing about the game is bad: graphics are pretty good, runs very smoothly indeed, good textures, good level design and it felt remarkably pleasing to kill enemies (the cheesy ‘Allo’Allo voice acting helped there). Proper craftmanship all over, not the kind of game you’d expect to have bugs. On the other hand, it wasn’t innovative or great in anything either, which is totally fine with me if it’s done this well.

    • 17/04/2010 at 20:09 Dominic White says:

      I’d argue that while it was merely good in the majority of aspects, the weapons were great. So satisfying to use. I briefly put a silencer on my Kar9k, but promptly removed it after realising that the unsilenced version sounds like a goddamn cannon. This huge thundering noise that shakes the earth.

  10. 17/04/2010 at 19:45 Jason says:

    You won’t be calling it the bizarre nerd rapture when the goo is converting your non-believer ass into computronium.

  11. 17/04/2010 at 19:49 Koozer says:

    It’s like a modern LEGO game crossed with the Red faction: Guerilla repair tool! Plus time trolls. I hope the plot is half decent; I mean it’s got Russians, time warps and an ominous blue explodey thing.

  12. 17/04/2010 at 19:53 Munin says:

    It doesn’t bode well for the game that there were once the titles Duality and Trinity, both eventually canceled..

  13. 17/04/2010 at 20:00 Johnny Ridden says:

    I don’t care for Raven’s recent games but ‘Bizzare Nerd Rapture’ totally nails singularity theory to the proverbial cross.

  14. 17/04/2010 at 20:15 Magic H8 Ball says:

    Haha, anyone still remembers the viral vids they did to promote the game? When was that?

    So much of hype wasted…

    • 17/04/2010 at 21:16 SirKicksalot says:

      Yeah, I remember the viral campaign. It was one of the best I’ve seen. But it started too early…

  15. 17/04/2010 at 20:15 Paul O'Hara says:

    Admittedly, I’ve not known about Singularity, but I’ve seen a couple of ads on the Gamestop website for the game. I do like what Raven Software has put out over the years, but I don’t know about supporting Activision and it’s CEO, since they’re listed as the publisher.

    • 17/04/2010 at 21:41 GT3000 says:

      I wouldn’t worry to much about it. Boycotting a publisher only hurts the developer in the end. I may suggest something more subtle like mail-bombing.*

      * = Disclaimer: I do not endorse the use of explosive or violence to justify your point.

  16. 17/04/2010 at 21:16 Pantsman says:

    Hey, what’ve you got against bizarre nerds?

  17. 17/04/2010 at 21:38 GT3000 says:

    I find it ironic that a videogaming blog is calling other people nerds. Here’s to hypocrisy!

  18. 17/04/2010 at 21:52 iQue says:

    I… I can dig this.

  19. 17/04/2010 at 22:58 Vitamin Powered says:

    Oh wow… this game still isn’t out? For some reason I thought it’d been released a year or so ago.

  20. 17/04/2010 at 23:37 Alexander Norris says:

    I really wish they’d get rid of the gravity gun function. It just seems stupid. Can we accept that it’s not new or innovative any more, and hasn’t been since 2004?

    On the other hand, the piloting-bullet-in-flight power looks neat. I just hope the time glove is actually useful and not just a stupid gimmick that exists purely to make you press one more button than you’d otherwise have to and then watch some shiny lights for a bit.

    • 17/04/2010 at 23:46 Dominic White says:

      “I really wish they’d get rid of the gravity gun function. It just seems stupid. Can we accept that it’s not new or innovative any more, and hasn’t been since 2004?”

      That’s a downright bizarre statement. So, what would you have them do? Go back to the players interaction with the environment being limited to shooting things, and picking up objects equal to or smaller than an office-chair? A physics-manipulator gives the player a lot more options. That’s why they included it, not because it’s what Half-Life 2 did.

    • 18/04/2010 at 05:56 Pantsman says:

      I just wish they’d get rid of the shooting bullets function. It just seems stupid. Can we accept that it’s not new or innovative any more[sic], and hasn’t been since 1992?

    • 18/04/2010 at 08:26 Optimaximal says:

      Unlike Pantsman who is going for sarcasm, I wish they actually did remove the gunplay. It’ll be good, but boring.

      Portal showed us that a game based entirely around a single weapon can be great – Using TIME GLOVE! 100% exclusively would be brilliant, especially if it had a load of features such as shielding, gravity gunning, time distortion etc.

    • 18/04/2010 at 22:47 Alexander Norris says:

      This is a game about shooting people and using time manipulation to solve puzzles (also occasionally shoot people). It isn’t a game about lifting bricks with a gravity gun.

      Sure, if it turns out the gravity gun is used consistently throughout the entire game and you can interact with most things, it’s probably a good idea to leave it in; but it just seems like it’s yet another gimmick that’ll end up being underused and detracting from the game#s quality.

  21. 18/04/2010 at 01:13 Lord_Mordja says:

    FPS developers really need to get more creative with their monster designs…

  22. 18/04/2010 at 02:44 The Dark One says:

    A time glove is cool and all, but at this week’s episode of Fringe, truly hip time travel has to feature horrifying metallo-flesh implants and internal Faraday cages.

  23. 18/04/2010 at 06:57 Ken says:

    I can’t wait to play this game.

  24. 18/04/2010 at 08:38 Jorlin says:

    Looks nice…

    Am I the only one not seeing a PC logo next to PS3 Xbox/Xbo live at the end of the trailer…

  25. 18/04/2010 at 08:47 Skippy says:

    Is anyone else struggling to see this as anything but a slightly fancier version of the distinctly average ‘Timeshift’?

    All I really want from time-manipulation in vidjagames is Quantum Leap: The Game.

  26. 18/04/2010 at 10:34 Ehetyz says:

    Looks like a mix between Timeshift, and Raven’s Wolfenstein, both of which were perfectly enjoyable old-school shooters. I’ll take this over the usual cover-system drek any day.

  27. 18/04/2010 at 12:55 IM19208 says:

    No PC LOGO on the trailer…

    • 18/04/2010 at 14:11 JKjoker says:

      i noticed that too, it usually means several months between console and PC release, sigh…