It is unfathomable to me that more games don’t come out between June and August. It’s a perfect time to avoid the crowded fall release schedule most devs and studios cling to, as if major retailers like Toys ‘R Us and EB Games still stock their shelves and display cases with boxes. No games come out in the summer! It’s such a missed opportunity to grab the limelight and put out something incredible!

That is, if you’re releasing in our digital-only present. In our physical media-prominent past, a game like “Singularity” being dropped in late June was a death knell. And that’s a real shame because “Singularity” is incredible and should have been the start of its own franchise.

Raven Software’s Russian sci-fi dystopian FPS is a torch bearer for the likes of “Black,” “Bioshock,” “Half-Life 2,” “Dead Space,” and “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” I’m sure it even inspired the amazing single player campaign of “Titanfall 2.” There’s just so much cross pollination and shared DNA between all of these games, and “Singularity” fits in like a glove. It deserves to be mentioned alongside of these other games.

The vibes, the mood, the setting, the storytelling, the environmental puzzles, the pacing, the level design; those things are all top notch (for 2010, at least) and most of the gaming audience missed it. Just missed it wide, could not be bothered to play such an innovative and fun shooter with brains and something to say.

The star of the show isn’t the enemies (a mix of standard troops, armored super soldiers, mutated monsters, all of which phase through space and time) but how you deal with them. And it isn’t the environmental storytelling or puzzle design, it’s what the game gives you to handle and explore them with. It all stems from the inciting incident and the lynchpin of all the story threads: going back and forth between the 1950s and 2010.

The time travel affects your decisions and who you shoot, and you can even manipulate individual objects like safes or ammo boxes for extra goodies. The game gives you a gravity gun-esque glove for some telekinesis fun (throw explosive barrels! Grab a health pack from afar!) and the ability to slow down time, turn enemies into dust, or force push back bullshit. It’s immensely fun, and there’s enough dolled out over the course of the eight hour campaign to keep things fresh.

There’s a great atmosphere to the entire proceedings, especially the non-linear hints at what’s really going on, the portals to pre-Cold War era Russian labs and facilities, and the guns you collect that have more to do with “Ratchet and Clank” than a typical “Battlefield.” And of course, there’s big boss fights, turning rusted and hollowed out trains into day one tech using super powers, giant electrical towers that shoot lightning and shit, it’s fucking banger after banger as far as I’m concerned.

But Activision is a gaping maw that only devours games which sell 20 million copies, and spits out anything creative or original. It was only a matter of time before they folded Raven Soft into the COD support mines, and it makes me sad. The same thing is happening now under new Activision, Microsoft, which is just gutting any studio that didn’t produce a gigantic hit. Maybe it was a lack of marketing push, maybe it was bad timing for not finding the right audience, but I can’t imagine how a game like “Bioshock” goes on to be a mainstream hit and this doesn’t.

What exactly is bad about this game, you might be wondering? Well, there is a lackluster nothing of a multiplayer tacked on. It’s even more useless and wasteful than “Bioshock 2’s” offerings. There are some holographic ghost flashback scenes you can walk through, like “Bioshock.” Wow I really keep referencing earlier, better games, aren’t I? Well it’s only reverential, since this game has great gunplay (better than any Bioshock!).

It’s more akin to an early COD game. There’s a great feeling pistol, AR, shotgun, sniper, a flipping gatling gun you get, and of course there are some cool things you can do besides shooting bullets. Like tossing CO2 tanks to freeze enemies so you can telekinesis blast them to bits with your temporal hand gadget. With findable perks to buy, upgrades, rewarding secret paths, audio logs, multiple endings, and that gorgeous gatling gun, there is way more here to cherish and celebrate than denigrate. Just that bad multiplayer, really. That you can skip entirely (the servers don’t work, so lol good luck playing it anyways).

The game is available on Steam (I got it on deep discount, and it still runs great), and should be experienced. Sure, it doesn’t have the best shooting or enemy AI, but it’s a charming as hell game with tons of fun ideas and is memorable for its legacy. That being keeping the hopes and dreams of a “Half-Life 3” alive. Someday we will get it, but for now, this is all we have left.

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Image credit: “Singularity”