History YMMV / Singularity

* MomentOfAwesome: It may not be permanent, but it's hard not to be awed by the TMD being able to repair '''an entire shipping freighter''' and ''raise it from the depths of the harbor'' in the fourth chapter, using a special platform to enhance its capabilities.

* AcceptableTargets:
** Surprisingly, despite the majority of the enemies being Soviet soldiers (either past or alternate-present), most of the recordings and flashbacks do quite a bit to humanize the Russians in general. We see recordings of a couple deeply in love, leftovers of friends playing chess, teachers taking care of schoolchildren, and so on.
** However, the evil masters of Katorga-12 were also intentionally exposing the children to E99 by putting it in their milk just to see the results, so while the people in general were human beings, the Soviet war machine was definitely run by evil bastards.

* FoeYay: In the final level, you can find early audio logs by Dr. Barisov and Dr. Demichev where they express the enormous admiration they have for each other. Although the two of them have a falling out when Barisov realizes Demichev is an amoral, power-mad loony, and Demichev realizes Barisov is not. Indeed, it seems Demichev made every effort to include Barisov in his plans for world domination, before finally getting tired of Barisov's HonorBeforeReason and deciding to just kill the guy.

* ThatOneLevel: "Escape the Sewers", which is where you first encounter the aforementioned Phase Ticks. The little buggers surround you very quickly and will eat up your health in no time. Meanwhile Renko has a bad tendency to perform actions like healing himself and refueling the TMD very slowly, during which you are unable to sprint as well, meaning you are at the mercy of the Phase Ticks until the action is complete (and because you don't actually heal until most of the "patching" animation is done, you can die whilst in the process of healing yourself). This combination of things, especially on Hard, makes this section a nightmare. Ultimately the best bet is to throw down a Deadlock in the center of the room, run into it, use the Impulse to blast any Phase Ticks that get caught in the bubble, then make a mad dash for the hallway and pray you have enough TMD energy to blast the remaining Ticks away as you encounter them until you reach the ladder at the end of the hallway, at which point you can breathe again.

* AcceptableTargets: Surprisingly, despite the majority of the enemies being Soviet soldiers (either past or alternate-present), most of the recordings and flashbacks do quite a bit to humanize the Russians in general. We see recordings of a couple deeply in love, leftovers of friends playing chess, teachers taking care of schoolchildren, and so on.

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: It's not hard to get through the entire game using only the Valkyrie assault rifle once you've gotten it early on, especially when you consider how quickly you can upgrade it. The plentiful ammo is also a point in its favor. In fact, despite the game giving you 7 normal weapons to choose from, there's really no reason to use anything other than the Valkyrie and the Volk shotgun; the Volk for blasting Zeks when they try to melee you, and the Valkyrie for everything else. Every other weapon in the game is simply too situational for general usage, with the exception of the Centurion revolver, which is just a plain useless joke weapon.

* ThatOneLevel: "Escape the Sewers", which is where you first encounter the aforementioned Phase Ticks. The little buggers surround you very quickly and will eat up your health in no time. Meanwhile Renko has a bad tendency to perform actions like healing himself and refueling the TMD very slowly, during which you are unable to sprint as well, meaning you are at the mercy of the Phase Ticks until the action is complete (and because you don't actually heal until most of the "patching" animation is done, you can die whilst in the process of healing yourself). This combination of things, especially on Hard, makes this section a nightmare. Ultimately the best bet is to throw down a Deadlock in the center of the room, run into it, use the Impulse to blast any Phase Ticks that get caught in the bubble, then make a mad dash for the hallway and pray you have enough TMD energy to blast the remaining Ticks away as you encounter them until you reach the ladder at the end of the hallway, at which point you can breathe again.

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!!The roleplay:
* CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming: [[http://singularityrpg.dreamwidth.org/475814.html?thread=51087014#cmt51087014 Rattmann tries to look on the bright side for once.]]
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* CompleteMonster: [[BigBad Dr. Nikolai Demichev]] is a former friend and partner of the lead scientist of [[GreenRocks E99]] experimentation on the island Katorga-12, Dr. Barisov. Initially coming to power thanks to the E99 project, Demichev uses that power to divert resources to Katorga-12. In an alternate timeline where he survives a catastrophic accident on the island, Demichev authorizes [[PlayingWithSyringes unethical experiments]] on people of Katorga-12 against Barisov's orders, putting E99 in school milk that was served to children to see what would happen or experimenting on workers who were affected by E99. He soon demands Barisov hand over the newly developed TMD (Time Manipulation Device), and when Barisov refused he branded him and scientists loyal to him as "traitors" and ordered their execution. Unable to find the TMD, Demichev decided to direct his attention toward "Singularity", a mysterious incident in the 1950s. After building a Singularity tower, Demichev started mass-producing E99 technology and weaponry, eventually convincing Premier UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev to launch an attack on the West. Bringing the world to its knees with a single E99 bomb, causing horrific casualties, Demichev leads a successful coup against Khrushchev to seize control of the New World Government and declare himself [[EmperorScientist Chancellor for life]]. Still keeping an eye on Katorga-12, and keeping his experiments going, Demichev authorizes horrible war crimes and executions as [[PlayerCharacter Captain Nate Renko]] tries to stop him. If Renko agrees to join him, Demichev will simply use him to destroy the Resistance before betraying him when he grows too popular with the people.

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: It's not hard to get through the entire game using only the Valkyrie once you've gotten it early on, especially when you consider how quickly you can upgrade it. The plentiful ammo is also a point in its favor.

* CompleteMonster: [[BigBad Dr. Nikolai Demichev]] is a former friend and partner of Dr. Barison, the lead scientist of [[GreenRocks E99]] experimentation on the island Katorga-12, Dr. Barisov. Initially coming to power thanks to the E99 project, Demichev uses that power to divert resources to Katorga-12. In an alternate timeline where he survives a catastrophic accident on the island, Demichev authorizes [[PlayingWithSyringes unethical experiments]] on people of Katorga-12 against Barisov's orders, putting E99 in school milk that was served to children to see what would happen or experimenting on workers who were affected by E99. He soon demands Barisov hand over the newly developed TMD (Time Manipulation Device), and when Barisov refused he branded him and scientists loyal to him as "traitors" and ordered their execution. Unable to find the TMD, Demichev decided to direct his attention toward "Singularity", a mysterious incident in the 1950s. After building a Singularity tower, Demichev started mass-producing E99 technology and weaponry, eventually convincing Premier UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev to launch an attack on the West. Bringing the world to its knees with a single E99 bomb, causing horrific casualties, Demichev leads a successful coup against Khrushchev to seize control of the New World Government and declare himself [[EmperorScientist Chancellor for life]]. Still keeping an eye on Katorga-12, and keeping his experiments going, Demichev authorizes horrible war crimes and executions as [[PlayerCharacter Captain Nate Renko]] tries to stop him. If Renko agrees to join him, Demichev will simply use him to destroy the Resistance before betraying him when he grows too popular with the people.

* JustForFun/XMeetsY: meets Z meets W meets A. As far as gameplay goes, it's sort of a greatest-hits compilation of the best shooters of the previous several years, with elements from everything from ''VideoGame/BioShock'' to ''VideoGame/Left4Dead''. Thematically, it's ''VideoGame/BioShock1'' plus ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert Red Alert]]'' with a bit of ''VideoGame/{{Stalker}}'' thrown in.

** ParanoiaFuel: The first time you meet the "Echo" Zek, he jumps and takes a stab at you, after which he vanishes. If you have the Spikeshot rifle, you can use the thermal scope to look behind you... and see that ''he's still there''. He stalks you for most of that chapter, and most people don't even know he's there.

* CompleteMonster: Demichev, to put it mildly.

* NightmareFuel: The Reverts and those ''sounds'' they make.
** If you look closely, you'll see that some Zeks are made out of ''2 people fused together'', probably the same person in 2 different timelines.
** You spend the entire game reverting tapes to hear messages. One of those tapes, for no apparent reason, suddenly causes a very short cutscene with a screaming corpse in your face. You'll hesitate to approach the next couple of tapes afterward.

* NightmareFuel: The fates of anyone succumbing to the Black Rock plague, but ''especially'' [[Webcomic/{{Homestuck}} Vriska Serket and John Egbert]]. thanks to their {{immortality}} justifying they could still be killed, but it not counting unless the death was [[HeroicSacrifice heroic]] or [[KarmicDeath just]], they ended up dying repeatedly and being revived constantly, with the plague still intact. [[KillItWithFire Then Original Universe Dave burnt their house down, with them still inside.]]
** The SHODAN+Dead Space events. See BodyHorror.
* TearJerker: Let's put it this way, a "Gamzee Made Me Cry" thread showed up on anoncomm during the black rock event.
** Rattmann tends to generate these.
** Karkat's breakdowns over not being able to protect his friends. He flips from silly (smashing piles of [=GPSes=] because they were "serving the robots" or ranting off a parody of TimeCube) to heartbreaking [[MoodWhiplash so easily.]]
---> I SAW US DEAD
---> I SAW US DEAD SO MANY GODDAMN TIMES AND IT JUST KEEPS HAPPENING AND WE'RE ALREADY DEAD THERE'S NO FUCKING CHANCE BUT I'M TRYING TO WARN YOU IDIOTS AND I CAN'T LET HER FUCK US OVER AGAIN.
---> NOT AGAIN.
---> NEVER AGAIN.

---> NEVER AGAIN.

* NightmareFuel: The fates of anyone succumbing to the Black Rock plague, but ''especially'' [[Webcomic/{{Homestuck}} Vriska Serket and John Egbert]]. thanks to their {{immortality}} justifying they could still be killed, but it not counting unless the death was [[HeroicSacrifice heroic]] or [[KarmicDeath just]], they ended up dying repeatedly and being revived constantly, with the plague still intact. [[KillItWithFire and then Original Universe Dave burnt their house down, with them still inside.]]

** Karkat's breakdowns over not being able to protect his friends. He flips from silly (smashing piles of GPSes because they're "serving the robots", going on giant TimeCube-influenced rants) to heartbreaking [[MoodWhiplash so easily.]]

** Rattmann tends to generate these.

** The first half hour or so of the game plays out more like a SurvivalHorror game than a sci-fi shooter. Your helicopter goes down and you find yourself alone on a deserted island where it becomes increasingly obveious that something has seriously gone wrong here. You find only a pistol to defend yourself (along with the knife you start with) and start seeing ghostly flashbacks of what happened along with notes and messages left by the people who died there. [[spoiler:Then you get jumped by something that looks like a cross between a zombie and the Slinder Man, which you have to shoot off.]] Then you get to the school where things are even worse... At least its near here that you get some heavier firepower and meet up with your buddy Devlin.

* HighOctaneNightmareFuel: The Reverts and those ''sounds'' they make.

* PlayerPunch: Barisov's ending. As the details start slowly adding up, Devlin, who made himself fairly useful in fights, voiced the confusion the player was likely feeling in the early part of the game and was [[spoiler: eventually murdered by Demichev, and is now alive and well, thanks to you,]] says, "Isn't that right, ''[[spoiler: Comrade]]?''" This moment tells you what's going on before [[spoiler: the statue does, and it's your own buddy obliviously saying [[YouCantGoHomeAgain You Can't Go Home Again]]]].