So, as of late, I've been trying to get into not-so-old FPSes, mostly those that got overlooked and apparently kind of forgotten, and since GOG had a recent sale which included TimeShift and Singularity, I've been looking up a lot of stuff about those two titles. During the sale I ended up getting Singularity because it was cheaper than TimeShift and because it was developed by Raven Software, which I trust with FPSes way more than Saber Interactive, the developers of TimeShift (to my knowledge, their better-known games were all made after TimeShift, and it's basically Halo remasters after Bungie stopped working for Microsoft). Two specific articles I found very interesting were the Gamasutra TimeShift postmortem and an Eurogamer "remembrance" piece on Singularity.

The odd thing is that I had TimeShift on my wishlist ever since it got on GOG, but during the sale I ended up buying Singularity instead. This might have happened because I missed the release of Singularity on GOG, it apparently still has the same lack of attention and fanfare, today, as it did 8 years ago, when Activision barely supported and advertised it (and would then have the great guys at Raven perpetually stuck "assisting" in Call of Duty development). After some research about both games (twitch streams, Youtube Let's Plays, numerous articles on both titles), I ended up buying Singularity because I thought it was the better of the two. TimeShift is still in my GOG wishlist, but I'm finding it less interesting the more I think about it.

What are your thoughts on both games? I know neither of them reinvents the wheel, and both are kind of generic, for their time, but I still believe Singularity (the only one I played), at least, is a great FPS that still looks and plays great (despite what that guy in the Eurogamer article says, that the game is super ugly because of too much brown and too much bloom -- which I disagree with; the game still has a surprising amount of color, for its time, there are bright blues and reds and oranges, a good percentage of it is set in white laboratories, and even the dilapidated versions of those facilities are more gray-and-white than brown; as for the "too much bloom", unless you're playing the game on console, it can be entirely turned off on PC).

My issue with TimeShift is that it does, in fact, look VERY generic. The weapon design is lame (most guns look like plastic toys), the character models are laughable and look like something out of the id Tech 2 days, all blocky and hunched and... square, despite the developers claim that the tech they used was so great and how cool the material and fabric rendering of their in-house engine is (their postmortem of the game, on Gamasutra, is basically one dev praising the game and sounding completely oblivious to what was being made at the time their game was coming out -- I mean, Crysis was released one month later, for crying out loud; you don't get to say your game was the best thing since sliced bread, the year it was out, when it had to contend with freaking Crysis), the UI is some of the ugliest I've ever seen in an FPS -- and I've seen some ugly UIs during my gaming life --, the time manipulation powers could have been great (better than the ones in Singularity, even), if the devs would have let players actually play around with it, and not have them be preset based on the situation at hand (you basically press the "TimeShift" button and the game decides what's the best power to use; whether to slow, freeze or rewind time, the player has no choice in the matter). Some time effects do look impressive, like rain drops that reflect in real time slowly falling when the time is slowed down, but that's not saying much, when you won't be using the TimeShift powers all that often, anyway (plus, the ridiculously short timer on the time powers wouldn't give you enough time to appreciate it properly), especially considering how bad everything else looks, from cars to architecture to character models to weapons (seriously, even Psi-Ops has better character design -- and more varied, too --, and that's a 2004 game).

So, why do people keep mentioning TimeShift any time we try to talk about Singularity? To me, Singularity is clearly the better game out of the two; the story is better, the art design is MILES ahead, it plays smoothly like a charm, the time-control mechanics are ingenious and fun to use, the UI is slick and cool, it's not just your "brown and gray" shooter, like TimeShift clearly is... I'm not saying TimeShift is a bad game, by any means (I'm still keeping it in my GOG wishlist, maybe with a bigger discount I'll eventually get it), but I don't think it's fair to compare it to Singularity, when it's clearly a very inferior game. Yes, both have time-control mechanics, but Singularity, unlike TimeShift, isn't just copying F.E.A.R. and adding a time freeze and a time rewind (that the player can never freely choose to use). There was a time when video game tech advanced a lot more, and you could noticeably tell the differences in tech advance in the span of a couple of years; maybe TimeShift looks so much uglier than Singularity because of this: after all, it's a 2007 game, whereas Singularity came out in 2010. But considering Crysis is also a 2007 game and still looks better than Singularity, I don't see how this excuses TimeShift. Also, Singularity does NOT have health regen, you have to collect and use medpacks, whereas TimeShift does have that dreaded mechanic (not that I mind, but a lot of purists out there tend to hate on health regen in FPSes).

I think this is because of our notion of "overlooked". We want to be a part of a select few who played a game no one else did, and we feel like that automatically makes said game a "hidden gem". But sometimes we need to be objective and recognize the flaws in the things we like, or even understand that just because not many people played a certain game, it doesn't make it good or worth playing. I believe Singularity is unjustly overlooked, because, as "basic FPS" as it might be, it does a lot of stuff brilliantly, and it's one of those cases where it didn't have more exposure because of a stupidly complicated development cycle and the publisher not caring at all about the game (they had other plans for Raven Software, as I mentioned way above). But TimeShift, on the other hand, doesn't feel overlooked at all, to me... it might be one of those "OK, this isn't so bad when I've got nothing else to play", but an overlooked game, to me, has to be more than that... it shouldn't be "just OK", it should at least be good. And while I feel Singularity is pretty damn good, TimeShift feels just OK.

Oh, I thought this was a thread about theoretical physics.

Shit.

+1 for this wall of text! :-P

And not available in Germany. :-(

Well, it's a forum, not a chat room :P I feel like I have enough time to expand on an idea on a single post.

And since you apparently joined in 2012, you probably remember when GOG release threads were walls of text, too, not just the sad blurb they tend to be, today. You actually felt like every game hitting GOG was being celebrated as a big thing, instead of the PR talk we get now (sometimes the people in charge of the release news threads don't even know the games they're writing about, which happened for Ys Seven, for instance, when they called Adol -- the main protagonist of the Ys games -- a girl, and the post started with "the fire dragons await", when in game there's only ONE fire dragon: it's the FIVE dragons, not the "fire dragons").

You pretty much summarized my wall of text, with the added bonus that you ACTUALLY played TimeShift, while I only watched a whole bunch of video walkthroughs and live streams.

I agree that neither is overlooked to the point it should be included in one of those absurd "best game you never played" lists, but Singularity should at least be experienced by FPS fans. TimeShift might be "just fine", but with all the games we tend to have in our backlogs, do we really need to waste time on "just fine" games? I've been thoroughly enjoying Singularity; oddly enough, I care about some of these characters and I want to see how the story unfolds, I feel invested in this world and the things in it, and this is a cool thing to achieve when you're only developing a "mindless first person shooter". Sure, it's no Bioshock, it's no Half-Life but, then again, it isn't trying to be; which makes all the things it manages to pull off great feel all the more impressive.

On that last note, I'd like to add that from what I've seen of TimeShift, it does feel like "poor man's Half-Life 2 trying to be edgy", or "F.E.A.R. minus the horror parts meets Half-Life 2 knockoff".

So you claim that Singularity is the better game but have not actually played TimeShift and wrote this entire wall of text comparison based on second hand information?

Sure. Fine. Whatever.

I bought and played through Timeshift when it came out and enjoyed it very much, even though I didn't think it was great by any means.

It took me quite a few years to buy and, then, some more until I played through Singularity. I think I didn't like the story a lot, but did enjoy the gameplay/combat.

A second play through Timeshift is something that I put somewhere in my TODO list, but nowhere near "priority level: play first". Maybe if and when I play it again I'll have a better perspective and an updated opinion of it.

I don't "claim" anything, I stated my opinion, which is admittedly biased and based on second hand information, but I'm not trying to sway people's minds, this topic is open to debate and discussion, and you're more than welcome to speak your mind and tell us why you think TimeShift is better than Singularity, instead of being a cynical run-of-the-mill internet dweller just trying to be all smarty-pants about what I wrote.

I think I have the right to my own opinion on TimeShift, even if I didn't play it; I can look at a game being played and draw my own conclusions on how it looks, how the art direction goes along or against my personal sensibilities and taste. Never did I mention how TimeShift plays, because I have no way to know (though most people I watched streaming it said it is serviceable enough, but not really one of the best FPSes they had played).

Go outside, enjoy the sun, the weather; there are more things to do on the internet than trying to make everyone else feel bad and inferior by constantly pointing out stuff you disagree with, in this way you and others keep doing. Feel free to discuss this issue if you want, but try not to be annoyingly contrarian and antagonistic just to prove how better than me you are (or how worse than you I am) because "I'm not entitled to an opinion since I didn't play one of the two games up for discussion".

I was curious about this game since its original release but never had the opportunity of play it, so I bought it during the sale and I just finished few days ago.
I totally agree with this, except for the story but mostly because I didn’t liked the endings that much (except for something that I don’t want to say to avoid spoilers)

My main complains are that I agree to a certain point with the “brown color” that eurogamer mentions and I think that the distorsion effect that occurs, for example when there is an explosion close to the player, was too much especially during a boss battle (I ended disabling it)

But for the rest it was really nice. The TMD is a great addition and I love the animations for the time effects on objects, the combat it’s nice and there was a good variety of enemies. Also the short duration wasn’t bad for me (about 7 hours on normal)

Looking at metacritic, Singularity has a rating of 76 while Timeshift has a 71.

User score is nearly idential (7.7 vs. 7.6) , which surprises me.

I've played the retail versions of both and the biggest pluses of Singularity are clearly atmosphere, story and art design, making it the overall better of these two games. I'd rate Singularity "good" (around 83/100) and Timeshift "above average" (around 72/100).

Timeshift is not a bad game, but generic it is. It is short and linear and there's no exploration, no secrets and no collectibles. It feels very reduced to the absolute minimum and I'd only recommend it to people who like FPS games and who have already played everything else. Certainly no waste of time, but you're not missing much here, IMO,

I´m with shaboo_de here. Played TimeShift and I can say it has a very consoley feeling. Aiming is a bit clunky and clearly designed for game pads with aim assist. And despite some seemingly open areas it´s a corridor shooter at it´s heart.