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Singularity |OT| - Anyone? No?

Roxas

Member
Just booted up the PS3 version this morning and there is a patch up (~350MB)

Any ideas what it could be? Seems a fairly hefty patch.
 

RoH

Member
Roxas said:
Just booted up the PS3 version this morning and there is a patch up (~350MB)

Any ideas what it could be? Seems a fairly hefty patch.

Booted this morning and my patch was only 40MB (PS3)

I'm playing on hard and find it to be a decent game, not mind blowing, and not a lot of hand holding which I like.
 
Just finished it, I must say I really enjoyed this game, wasn't even on my radar, I pretty much played it because I wasn't playing anything at the time, maybe I should have played on hard, was a bit easy on normal but loved it.
 

RoH

Member
Beat the game over the weekend, its decent. They left few plot holes, so i'm guessing a squeal is in line? Oh and the ending line was great, as soon as I heard it I made my decision and pulled the trigger.
 

mjc

Member
Does anyone have tips on how to survive attacks from those exploding spider things? I'm playing on hard so its even more frustrating when they gang up on you and its game over in two seconds. Some type of grenade would be super helpful with these guys but they move so damned fast that you have to use the statis to stop them. You step out of the bubble and you get mobbed. You stay in it until it expires and you get mobbed. Damn.
 
mjc said:
Does anyone have tips on how to survive attacks from those exploding spider things? I'm playing on hard so its even more frustrating when they gang up on you and its game over in two seconds. Some type of grenade would be super helpful with these guys but they move so damned fast that you have to use the statis to stop them. You step out of the bubble and you get mobbed. You stay in it until it expires and you get mobbed. Damn.

Throw down a bubble and pulse attack them from inside. Before the bubble closes, create another and move to it. The assault rifle is also good for picking them off from far away.
 
Picked this up for a £10 and I'm loving it - just completed it through on normal (
I killed Barisov
), and now I'm about to re-start on hard to finish off a few trophies and get the other ending. I was surprised at just how much I enjoyed it - the gunplay is solid (as was Wolfenstein, which I believe is using the same engine) and does a good job of scaling your power from lone soldier to time-manipulating bad-ass (even if you do end up wildly overpowered by the end), while the story is entertaining and keeps things running at such a pace that it never becomes boring. The game isn't perfect and has it's fair share of flaws, and it's doesn't do anything you won't have seen before (outside of some flashy physics set-pieces), but if you can find it for a reasonable price you could do a lot worse. For me Singularity is easily the biggest sleeper hit surprise of the year so far.
 

Plasma

Banned
Bootaaay said:
Picked this up for a £10 and I'm loving it - just completed it through on normal (
I killed Barisov
), and now I'm about to re-start on hard to finish off a few trophies and get the other ending. I was surprised at just how much I enjoyed it - the gunplay is solid (as was Wolfenstein, which I believe is using the same engine) and does a good job of scaling your power from lone soldier to time-manipulating bad-ass (even if you do end up wildly overpowered by the end), while the story is entertaining and keeps things running at such a pace that it never becomes boring. The game isn't perfect and has it's fair share of flaws, and it's doesn't do anything you won't have seen before (outside of some flashy physics set-pieces), but if you can find it for a reasonable price you could do a lot worse. For me Singularity is easily the biggest sleeper hit surprise of the year so far.

Where did you pick it up for £10? I've been waiting for it to go down in price for awhile.
 

desertdroog

Member
Finished the game this weekend, enjoyed my time with it. This is a quality linear shooter for the summer. If you can pick it up cheap, you won't be making a mistake.
 

itxaka

Defeatist
Rated-Rsuperstar said:
There's 3 endings.

Uh I only got 2. I guess the third is
shooting both of them and becoming the ruler of the world yourself?

Finished it today and I fucking LOVED IT.

Seriously, the game is pretty good on PC with everything maxxed. Some textures were not loading at all but I had a blast playing it.

The writings on the wall were pretty good in order to know what the story was going to end. The tapes and notes were not useful at all.

The guns were pretty good, except the shotgun. Only used it a couple of times.

Loved the end
shooting myself in the head, then seeing the island with the statue? Fucking awesome lol
 
The 1.1 patch fixes the texture load problem. Great game by the way. Makes me want to go back and finish Wolfenstein.

P.S. Wolf used ID tech 4. This uses Unreal 3.
 

outsidah

Member
Just finished this today. Took me about a week of on/off. The game feels like some kind of bastard child of Half Life/Bioshock to me. The game didn't really introduce anything new and some of the tricks they give you to use I didn't end up using most of the time because the challenge wasn't really there. All in all, I still found it entertaining to go through as it kept me interested for a good part of the time. Unfortunately, I can't say that it feels like anything more than a rental.
 

Rolf NB

Member
Oh Raven. I thought I liked you. Wolfenstein in particular is awesome, but this Singularity business? Bullshit I say.

I'm stuck in the tick nest checkpoint on hard. The shotgun would be ideal here but I'm playing a game with a two-weapons-only system, I don't happen to have the one thing that works on me, and I can't get it. There's no way to backtrack to the weapons locker. There's no way to restart the level and forward-track to the weapons locker either. If I want to bring a shotgun into this room, now that I know that I should, I have to restart the whole game. Fucked up.

The enemies are foot-tall exploding kamikaze insects. But I never liked the flood. Nobody does. Nobody likes tiny shit enemies that require you to look down at the floor all the time while hanging on for dear life, and nobody likes exploding kamikaze bullshit. You think somebody would like both combined? Fucked up.

So I've made it out of that fucking room alive three times now. Hell of a fight. 15, 20 of these ticks? But of course there's no checkpoint, na-oh. If I die in the following corridor -- and I have developed a tendency to do so --, I'm back to that terrible room again. Fucked up.

So I edge forward through this corridor carefully, clearing all those monster generator bubbles from a safe distance. Turns out this is a pointless activity, because they'll just magically reappear whenever your scripting decides to send me ye'ole next wave. Fucked up.

Speaking of waves, your fucking kamikaze midget insects spawn right behind me in an area that I just carefully cleared. I looked into those pipes, and there was nothing in there just a second ago! Fucked up!

Your game is fucked up. You are fucked up and you done fucked up. I'm going to spend the rest of the evening building a magazine rack, just so I can push it over.
 

Rolf NB

Member
So I've done it. I've made it through this terrible nest and the following corridors, up the ladder, more corridors and up through the hatch, to the next checkpoint. All with 158 assault rifle bullets and a pistol which I didn't use.

By all rights, it should have been impossible. I only made it because I'm sort of an fps deity, obviously.

Checkpoint spacing really can make or break an fps experience. Weirdly enough, checkpoints have been much more frequent after this. Now they come not only at the door that leads to the next area or so, but even in the middle of some sequences where I wouldn't have expected them. Say, riding the crane platform, halfway through, there's another checkpoint. The chase sequence, almost every other room, another checkpoint.

The tick nest is not a single egregious oversight though. There were lots of instances up until that part that annoyed the hell out of me. Most notably the part where you receive the seeker. The checkpoint is before you clear the guards, before the 30 second bit of uninterruptible narration, before the cracking of the safe, so you'll always have to do that again, which is bad in itself. The real issue though is how far away the next checkpoint is. There should have been one immediately after leaving the big room, where shield guy gets introduced. You have to fight through so many waves of guys again if you fail there, it's just annoying.

Anyway.

The survival horror section was fucking amazing. Singularity's audio is really strong throughout, but there were some exceptionally tense moments there.
 

Hela

Member
Did you use the time slowing bubble (I can't remember what it was called)? Pop that, get in it, shoot the ticks, move on.
 

Rolf NB

Member
Hela said:
Did you use the time slowing bubble (I can't remember what it was called)? Pop that, get in it, shoot the ticks, move on.
Yes, but I used it only in the tunnel, to stop one group in front of me from fucking me up while I dealt with the second group behind me. I didn't have enough TMD energy to do much against the big swarm inside the nest proper. I could age two ticks and fully deplete my energy, but sometimes the tick would explode in my face anyway, so I'd lose the energy and not have a benefit from it. I also tried saving the energy and using it on TMD impulses, though then I'd usually still take lots of splash damage from killed ticks. The impulse range (without upgrades) is too short to pop them from far enough away.

I tried many times firing the slow-down at the door right before or after turning the crank, but it never helped me much. If I did it before turning, it would pop almost immediately as the ticks touched it. Trying to do it afterwards would get me swarmed. I fared better using those first few seconds to age and shoot ticks as they were still far away. I don't know if this is specific to the PS3 version, but it takes an awkward second or two after the crank animation until you can do anything again. Meanwhile those bastard ticks can cover quite a distance.

One sticking problem was that I kept getting stuck on shit while running backwards shooting. The ticks themselves can fully block your path, even though they're so small. I had 50/50 experiences trying to jump over them. I didn't feel comfortable running at them while shooting, but that turned out safer than the other way around in the end.

It's really an unfortunate combination of enemy type, weapons available to me at that point and lack of a checkpoint right after the big fight.
 

Rolf NB

Member
They did it again! Same thing, phase ticks spawning in waves, having me run backwards up a couple flights of stairs while trying to aim at close above ground. And yet again, a ginormous stretch to the next checkpoint, and yet again it starts in a locked-off space with no weapons locker.

Was this game built by two sub-teams, who alternated between levels? Sure feels like it.

It wasn't so hard this time though, as I had maxed out my damage resistance in the meantime. I swear, that tick nest must have taken 30+ tries (and felt more like 200).

I'm back to having fun though. Most of it is really good. Just a few more checkpoints here and there, no spawning behind my back, less doors automatically closing behind my back, and maybe a weapon wheel like RFOM, and it would be perfect.
 
So did they ever release the update on Steam yet? I've been waiting to finish it because the huge texture streaming issues just got so bad I couldn't stand it. In the end it seems like they never even bothered patching the Steam version last I checked.
 

tiddles

Member
Rated-Rsuperstar said:
Throw down a bubble and pulse attack them from inside. Before the bubble closes, create another and move to it. The assault rifle is also good for picking them off from far away.

Anyone having trouble with the ticks, do this! I'd forgotten about using the time bubbles and was tearing my hair out... this section is really hard if you don't stay inside the bubbles, even when playing on Normal difficulty.
 

tiddles

Member
Finished it today, excellent game - it's a bit of a mashup of existing games, and quite linear feeling at times, but has tons of variety, and no one section outstays its welcome (except maybe those ticks... ;) ). As others have mentioned, it gets better as it goes along, rising to an epic sense of drama at the end - I loved
the way the raised ship decays while you're still in it, and the parts at the end where you lay waste to the Russian forces when you're fully powered up.

The multiple endings were a bit cheesy, although I enjoyed seeing them play out (I hit Continue from the menu and replayed the last section over until I had seen them all...) My first choice was kill Barisov AND Demichev - I shot Barisov first, saw the cursor was still red when I held it over Demichev, and thought "I wonder if..." :D

I did expect a bit more of a twist, though - all the messages that said "Don't trust him..." etc led me to think that Barisov would turn out to be the bad guy. One thing I didn't get - who was it that actually left the messages?
 

tiddles

Member
Hela said:
Did you use the time slowing bubble (I can't remember what it was called)? Pop that, get in it, shoot the ticks, move on.

That turned out to be one of my favourite powers in the game... create a bubble, freeze a bunch of enemies, get inside and riddle them with bullets from several sides, remove the bubble and watch them collapse in a bloody heap (even the tough guy enemy types)... :D
 
tiddles said:
One thing I didn't get - who was it that actually left the messages?

Did you not see the final video after the credits?
Kathryn wasn't dead, just trapped in 1955 - you see her writing the notebook Mir-12 uses to help Renko, but the chrono notes on the walls were written by the first version of Renko to go back in time, the one who you see get crushed in the burning building as you save Dimichev at the very start.
I think. For an FPS game, the story is surprisingly complex. :lol
 

tiddles

Member
Bootaaay said:
Did you not see the final video after the credits?
Kathryn wasn't dead, just trapped in 1955 - you see her writing the notebook Mir-12 uses to help Renko, but the chrono notes on the walls were written by the first version of Renko to go back in time, the one who you see get crushed in the burning building as you save Dimichev at the very start.
I think. For an FPS game, the story is surprisingly complex. :lol

I thought that's who it might be, but I wasn't sure... when the notes on the walls say things like "don't trust him", are they talking about Demichev? Or Barisov? Or somebody else?
:D
 

tiddles

Member
LongDongJunon said:
But his brother doesn't know how to use numbchucks.

On the other hand, his brother does have the good sense not to be trying to get past the tick room in Singularity... :lol
 
tiddles said:
I thought that's who it might be, but I wasn't sure... when the notes on the walls say things like "don't trust him", are they talking about Demichev? Or Barisov? Or somebody else?
:D
I would guess she was talking about
Barisov. That's the only thing I can think of that makes sense since there are no other main characters and you should already know not to trust Demichev since he shot Nolan North in the head.
 

kittoo

Cretinously credulous
Finished it and loved it. Great atmosphere, decent story, decent graphics. But the best part was that while it didnt do anything new, it was never boring. I always wanted to go further! A shame that this was so under the radars for almost everyone.
BTW, I didnt find ticks frustrating all that much, maybe cause I was playing on easy and on PC.
 

Diseased Yak

Gold Member
I bought this off Amazon for 360 a month or so ago, and finally put it in today.

DAMN! This game is awesome! Only about 2 hours in, but sheesh, this is one fun game. The atmosphere is amazing. Reminds me of Resistance crossed with Bioshock.
 

NIN90

Member
Just finished it on PC. Great game.

About the ending:
Why couldn't Renko just shoot Demichev when his other self carried him through the fire instead of killing his other self?
 
NIN90 said:
Just finished it on PC. Great game.

About the ending:
Why couldn't Renko just shoot Demichev when his other self carried him through the fire instead of killing his other self?
Yeah I don't know. I tried doing that on my 2nd run through the ending but it doesn't let you.
 

mm04

Member
I picked this up during the Steam sale at a great price thanks to a kind UK GAF'er. I was a little nervous about the purchase because of the mixed reviews and other than Borderlands GOTY, it was the highest priced game I bought. But you get caught up in the frenzy of it all and I pulled the trigger anyway.

I'm glad I bought it because I'm liking it a lot more than I thought I would. As others have mentioned, there's a Bioshock type vibe with it. I'm enjoying the narrative and I dig the art style as well. I really like the difference in the settings and colors when dealing with mutants as opposed to humans. It's a lot more vibrant when you're dealing with humans and I appreciate the contrast. Especially when you
go back in time
. I like the weapons and the varying uses of the TDM as well. I'm about 4 hours in, so things could change, but I'm liking it a lot so far.

To top it off, it looks fantastic on my rig. I'm running it at a full 1080p, highest settings with CCC enabled 4x AA, 16x AF and triple buffering and it's a constant 60fps. I also like the subtle touches of dropping the fps to 24fps when viewing a film reel in game.

I only paid $17, so it was definitely a good buy. But when you're buying all sorts of games on Steam for $5 to $7.50, it kind of skews your view on what's a cheap price and what isn't. Anyway, it's definitely worth giving it a look, especially on PC. I'm liking it so much I'm tempted to try Wolfenstein as well, which is going for about $17 on Amazon for the PC version.
 
Picked this up for a tenner and finished it over the weekend. It doesn't really get going until you get the time gun. The opening seems ridiculously stingy for ammo - I was running around trying to melee the blue zombie things because I'd run out.
The controls are a bit ludicrous - two functions on left stick click and three on the right? :lol
The weapons seemed a bit weedy - possibly as a result of them being upgradeable, they all start out a bit crap. I only used some of them to get their achievements. :O
Nice that it ended
without some stupid boss. I was expecting Demichev to change into some sort of super mutant.

Some nice ideas, but let down a bit by some underwhelming FPS elements.
 
I used that right bumper attack (the one that replaced the melee, sent out a little shockwave.) I don't remember the phase ticks being that bad although I was playing on easy.
 
I'm considering picking this game up tomorrow from Best Buy, but I had a couple of questions before I did...

1) Is it worth buying at 40 dollars? Reviews for the game are pretty good, but I'm wary of buying games at full price that I'm not a hundred percent on... but then Best Buy dropped the price, so I was curious.

2) Does the SP come to a satisfactory ending (cause with the sales, I doubt there'll be a sequel) or are there obvious sequel hooks or whatever?
 

Grisby

Member
I still love the thread title, :lol . Shame, a lot of people missed out on it though and Activision gave it no love.

Also, the ticks were not that bad for me either. Just used a time stop bubble on them and bam.
 
NotTheGuyYouKill said:
I'm considering picking this game up tomorrow from Best Buy, but I had a couple of questions before I did...

1) Is it worth buying at 40 dollars? Reviews for the game are pretty good, but I'm wary of buying games at full price that I'm not a hundred percent on... but then Best Buy dropped the price, so I was curious.

2) Does the SP come to a satisfactory ending (cause with the sales, I doubt there'll be a sequel) or are there obvious sequel hooks or whatever?
1) I'd say so. This was my surprise hit of last year, I enjoyed it greatly.

2) It has 3 satisfactory endings! No really, they're excellent. Better than most game endings these days. It's easy to see them all too if you don't want to replay the whole game, you can just load the last checkpoint.
 
Neuromancer said:
1) I'd say so. This was my surprise hit of last year, I enjoyed it greatly.

2) It has 3 satisfactory endings! No really, they're excellent. Better than most game endings these days. It's easy to see them all too if you don't want to replay the whole game, you can just load the last checkpoint.

Alright sounds good :D

I'll grab a copy tomorrow or day after if it snows.
 
Got the game today.

It's pretty cool so far. I'm not too far into the game, I just got the TMD which is awesome. The atmosphere of the game is great, I like the visuals, the story is interesting so far. My only con so far is
the silent protagonist. I hate silent protagonists. When the bad guy shot Devlin in the head just before Nate had to run while handcuffed, I was annoyed that he didn't say anything or whatever.
 
NotTheGuyYouKill said:
Got the game today.

It's pretty cool so far. I'm not too far into the game, I just got the TMD which is awesome. The atmosphere of the game is great, I like the visuals, the story is interesting so far. My only con so far is
the silent protagonist. I hate silent protagonists. When the bad guy shot Devlin in the head just before Nate had to run while handcuffed, I was annoyed that he didn't say anything or whatever.
Ah I like silent protagonists, especially in FPS's. I think it's weird when they talk but I'm controlling everything else they do.
 
Neuromancer said:
Ah I like silent protagonists, especially in FPS's. I think it's weird when they talk but I'm controlling everything else they do.

The thing is, they have a name and a face and an occupation. Other people interact with them, but they're just... flat. At least if the character speaks, I can sympathize and understand their point of view. Just running around shooting shit and not acknowledging anything is... borderline sociopathic. There's no reaction to anything, and I feel more disconnected than anything.

Very rarely does silent protagonists not bug me (Half-Life and Bioshock may be the only games with silent protagonists that don't bug me). But nevertheless, the other aspects of Singularity's narrative sorta make up for the main character never speaking. I particularly like how the island creepily semi-shifts between the past and the present. That is cool. Really liked the burning building sequence and the subtle changes after. That was really awesome.
 
NotTheGuyYouKill said:
The thing is, they have a name and a face and an occupation. Other people interact with them, but they're just... flat. At least if the character speaks, I can sympathize and understand their point of view. Just running around shooting shit and not acknowledging anything is... borderline sociopathic. There's no reaction to anything, and I feel more disconnected than anything.

Very rarely does silent protagonists not bug me (Half-Life and Bioshock may be the only games with silent protagonists that don't bug me). But nevertheless, the other aspects of Singularity's narrative sorta make up for the main character never speaking. I particularly like how the island creepily semi-shifts between the past and the present. That is cool. Really liked the burning building sequence and the subtle changes after. That was really awesome.
I like silent protagonists because (as dumb as this sounds) I can kind of pretend to be that guy. Once he talks, it's not me anymore.

But anyway yeah they did a good job with that stuff and I'm glad you're enjoying it.
 

Diseased Yak

Gold Member
Finally finished this tonight (360 version) after playing it off and on for the last week or so. Really enjoyed it. Lots of neat graphical effects and some decent puzzles. I liked the plot, too. Overall, a solid 8/10 game for me.
 
Finished it earlier today (got all three endings as well).

That was kind of awesome and fun. But attempting to think hard about the different events gives me sort of a headache.

Ok, so let's assume all those Chrono-messages were written by Renko... because the narrative that we play isn't Renko's first attempt at re-writing history, right? Those footsteps you follow are a previous Renko's (I think), and the notes have to be from him... so all the endings are canonical in the sense that each attempt to re-write time just makes him fuck up more and more... I dunno why he didn't just travel back to 1950 and just kill both Demichev and Balisov... unless he's still stuck in a time loop... or one version of him is stuck in a time loop, continuously going back to try and alter history again and again. Perhaps I've got it wrong. I thought it was Devlin shouting at you the first time you save Demichev (though it's not really the first time, is it?), but it's Renko! So I guess the whole silent protagonist thing I mentioned doesn't really work here. And each ending is messed... first I killed both, and then just Basilov, and then Demichev, and each on the future is still messed up. The final level where everything is warping back and forth and tearing up was awesome.

Will there be a sequel? I hope so... there's gotta be so much more to what's happening.
 
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