"Super Collection: eighteen in one". Game review

When I start to think, can’t the developers hire just one consultant from Russia and create decent inscriptions, avoid absurd plot twists, and show Soviet schoolchildren in a Soviet cartoon instead of some monstrous Pinocchio-like freaks — I realize I’m going down the wrong path. I need to look at everything differently. Preferably with other eyes…

For example, how we looked at Wolfenstein (2009). No one said, “Absurd, the Germans never summoned spirits to fight against Americans!” So it’s no wonder that the Soviet General Secretary wears a creature cape reminiscent not of the proletariat leaders, but of the leaders of a large tribe in the years before our era.

In general, the amount of nonsense in Singularity is about the same as in Wolfenstein. And how similar and different these games are, we will find out today. Right from this review.

A brief summary of the plot. The USA possesses an atomic bomb, and in the USSR, everyone fears a Third World War, where the Americans could simply wipe the Soviets off the face of the Earth in one, two, three. But happiness! Soviet scientists have discovered a new element — E-99. It’s better than bombs and better than sex. E-99 is a magical substance, for the study of which the government creates a special city-laboratory, where the entire Soviet people are invited to live and work.

However, the experiments fail, the base-city closes, and decades later, the Americans find this little island and, fearing a repeat of the Chernobyl disaster, send marines there (who else would prevent an ecological catastrophe, if anything — radiation can be shot down…).

The flight, however, turns out to be quite unsuccessful. An anomaly takes down helicopters, and the main character, “one, completely one,” finds himself on an island that clearly has a lot of what he never wanted to encounter.

A sweet little town, Katorga-12. Monumental monuments, huge buildings. Now all this is overgrown with ivy, cracked, and covered with dirt. We walk through the dead research center, looking around. It’s clear that this place used to be very significant. Perhaps history could have been made here.

We even find archival recordings. On tape, someone’s important voices tell us about a bright future, that the proletarians will become the superior beings. And if we watch the newsreels, we can see that there was almost an institute here for creating an ideal world, where the best workers and peasant women lived.

And now here — only monsters. We read notes in which parents write that their children are turning into beasts: cruel, uncontrollable. And from a little room with a child’s bed leaps out a huge creature, letting out a terrifying roar and trying to shred us with its giant claws. If we walk through the school, we’ll find decaying little corpses in the classrooms, and in the corridors, we will stumble upon lurking mutants.

The first forty minutes of the game are not Singularity, no. This is Bioshock. Either the third part or maybe some two and a half, the first three quarters... But this is definitely not some other shooter, as every detail is executed in the spirit of the project from 2K. The monumental style of the city, its current stale atmosphere, the town-monsters, and the dreadful, sometimes tragic episodes, when we see dead children and what they have turned into…

But as soon as we pick up a gun and find a partner, the atmosphere evaporates somewhere. There’s no horror, the monsters are no longer someone’s children, nor former scientists, but just creatures that leap out from behind our backs, always at the moments we open another door. Perhaps this is already F.E.A.R..

But then other soldiers appear, more shooting... And before us is notF.E.A.R., but some trash action movie. Or maybe not even trash, but where we and our partner take on all. Yup, and they call themselves a legion.

Sometimes, however, instead of this game, we accidentally start “Anabiosis. The Dream of Reason.” Here we have flashbacks that allow us to fix the distant past and thus change the present, and an overall mood of decline. It’s just that it's not particularly cold, and otherwise — pure “Anabiosis”.


Until we start playing Half-Life 2. Suddenly, a beautiful girl with a gun (and a bright silver Orthodox cross on her chest) comes to our rescue, telling us that her friend, an old professor (who may, of course, be her dad, but it’s suspicious…), has an idea on how to fix the mess that has started in the world.

In short, what Singularity is — it’s quite a riddle. For quite a long time, we are playing something like “The Top 100 Action Movies of 2005-2010.” With sudden shifts from one game to another. It’s quite surprising because Raven is making a unique project for the first time: not a sequel, not in a well-known universe. One can imagine a meeting in their office: “Gentlemen, hold on, we’re not making a sequel, — everyone looks around, — PANIC.”

And we first see something somewhat special only when we find a mobile time manipulator (MVP), which allows us to play with time. To be more precise — to age or rejuvenate objects.

The thing is potentially cool. We restored a destroyed bridge, walked across it. Great. But it seems all tasks boil down to this. Sometimes a dumb puzzle interrupts the action elements. Like, age a barrel, make it flat, shove it under the gates, then apply a rejuvenating cream, and the entrance will open.

Creative use of the MVP is practically nonexistent. The device only works with those objects that were affected by the substance E-99. And, of course, the developers were not stingy in applying it only to various useless barrels, plot ladders, generators, and other switches.

So we won’t be able to have fun with it. The device is extremely boring, even though it seems to have such magical abilities.

However, the MVP is so wonderful that it is also trained in various other magical tricks. For example, it allows lifting and throwing objects (hello, gravity gun!), freezing time at a certain point where enemies cease to move and where bullets don’t fly in, we can age enemies (more precisely: kill humans, while slowing down monsters) and show us where we should go.

Here the game, however, starts to resemble Wolfenstein a lot. Only in the previous project from Raven, the “magic” was unique. Moving between different worlds, slowing down time, all kinds of other global cool things. Here everything is by the template; there’s nothing we’ve not seen somewhere before. There’s nothing that makes us say, “Wow” and be amazed.

In the end, we are faced with a simple shooter that tries to seem unusual. But Singularity is simply super standard. Even the variety of missions here is extremely predictable and identical. Sometimes we are scared, then we are thrown to fight only people, then forced to crawl through sewers, given to a boss, allowed to shoot people again, but this time with a sniper rifle…

So what do we end up with and how do we play this? I don’t even know how to describe it. I want to remember other games, to say that there’s something from here, from there, and from there. I hardly ever face such a template game.

But if we step to the side from descriptions and harsh criticism and simply ponder at the level of: “interesting/uninteresting,” then rather… it’s interesting. It doesn’t strain, it doesn’t force you to do the same tasks over and over again. And the MVP is constantly being upgraded. At first, we simply push opponents away, then slow them down, we can freeze time near them, or we can even turn them into ice cubes. The enemies themselves also change. Sometimes we get thrown back into the sixties, and there we see Soviet soldiers in authentic uniforms. Then they will give us a gun with remote-controlled bullets, and within a few minutes, we are fighting some monsters again or trying to figure out how to defeat the boss.

At the same time, sometimes we are treated to a cranberry compote or even syrup. So there’s no desire to yawn, but there’s also no urge to applaud. Not once throughout the game do we feel like saying, “Well done developers, great idea!” Even after we receive the portable aging-rejuvenating device, there are no special emotions. You feel yourself within the confines, knowing that they won’t really let you do anything. So we’ll be fixing barrels and levers throughout the game…

So if you need just a shooter for simple gunfights, to kill some time — then why not try Singularity. Sometimes developers so magnificently adopt foreign ideas that you don’t even want to remember where they “borrowed” them from.

And about the nonsense... So let it be. It just brings a hearty laugh to the whole apartment when the greatest city in history, where the Soviet government invites the masses to live and promises them a happy life, is called KATORGA. And there are plenty of such “treasures.” You can share in the comments and laugh together. In this regard, it’s an excellent game. Red Alert is much duller; there's grotesque there, and here — everything is with a serious expression. I love “Vorono!”

But those who want to “see” this — wait for the video review. It will be coming soon.