Don't let the unoriginal first few hours to fool you.The game is a lot of fun and may cause addiction.
So,Singularity was a kind of tower where a doctor called Borislov worked at a device that could manipulate time aka TMD(Time manipulation device).It grants the user a bunch of time-related powers to use,such as deadlock(which creates a sphere that stops time) and even gravity-related powers such as well....as the game says "gravity" which obviously allows you to control different objects(that are used to solve puzzles).But there was one huge mistake.Some nazi dude(sorry can't recall it's damn name :( ) killed doctor Borislov,because of the TMD,and guess what happened:the nazis won the WW2,incredible no?.
The game starts with you and a buddy on a helicopter,then somehow the chopper is mowed down and you wake up on the island Katorga-12(the island where Borislov made it's research about the TMD,and where the Singularity tower is located).Trust me the intro is freakin' scary with tons of in-your-face pop ups of mutated inhabitants of the island.Oh I forgot to mention that you were meant to retrieve the TMD from a secret vault on Katorga-12 so you can travel back and time and stop the nazis to win the war.And from then on you'll be battling mutants and all sorts of wicked monsters.
Well,the gameplay mainly consists of solving puzzles and shooting,and having fun with your TMD of course.And that's all that Singularity has to go for.That and the TMD,because without the TMD the game wouldn't be half as good,it's like Portal without the portal gun,see?
You can carry two weapons at a time,but fortunately there is a pretty wide variety of weapons.And the coolest of all is that E99 prototype gun that Borislov gives you earlier in the game.Not only that is the most powerful(1 shot-1 kill) but you can actually control the direction of your bullets.It's like the bullet cam in sniper:ghost warrior combined with the ability to bend the bullets around corners in Wanted:Weapons of Fate,and that is really fun and cool to use.About the other weapons,let's say you've seen them before,yet they're fun to shoot and even more to hear them.Speaking of sound,the voice acting is very solid,especially the face expressions that the NPCs make when they talk.
One really creepy thing about the game isn't the game itself but that chick Kathryne that is CLEARLY she is there to help you as Alyx Vince was in half-life 2,and that's...you know,kinda shocking but to truly understand what i mean you must play the game.
Overall,the gameplay is very satisfying and occasionally scary(especially the first level O_o) which is full of opportunities to use the TMD,and that's pretty much what you'll do in the game,using the good ol' time manipulation device.
Visually speaking the game puts the Unreal Engine to work,and i am glad Raven Software learned from their past mistake with Wolfenstein(where they used the old and dated Id Tech 4 engine).The game looks gorgeus,the bloom is applied where it should be,the character models look great and they are animated even better.The textures are great too but sometimes they look kinda unpolished and lacking detail.
The big surprise comes from the optimization.It's done really really well and I don't have an airplane rig but on 1024x768 with pretty much everything maxed-out i got a smooth framerate with occasionally frame-rate ditches and drops.
Singularity manages to survive on the competitive FPS market and though it does break little new ground,it is memorable and at least a must rent.