Activision’s Kekoa Lee-Creel has a few cautionary words for developers of new game properties. Basically, you shouldn’t expect your spark of originality to explode into a system-selling trilogy overnight: these things take time. Not to mention cold hard cash.

“Initial investment’s the big difficulty, initial investment to start an IP,” Lee-Creel told FPS Gamer during a preview showing of Raven Software’s Singularity, a gloomy, temporally disordered shooter for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. “Obviously they can take years of iteration to get it right, to really feel out the things that make it unique and special. So that’s a pretty substantial undertaking, it’s a risk, and it’s just money kind of ‘going’!”

“But I think the pay-off is definitely there,” he continued, presumably to the intense relief of Activision shareholders (not that they’ve got much to worry about these days). “There are plenty of franchises that have been built off a mildly successful first title, that have ramped into something hugely successful, and I think it’s a worthwhile undertaking.”

Lee-Kreel thinks Singularity has a decent shot. “I worked with Raven on Quake 4 as well, and they’re a fantastic team, so I’ve got a good new IP, I’ve got great marketing behind me, and I’ve got a great development team, so I’m pretty psyched. It’s a big deal.”

Having seen the game in action, we’re inclined to agree. Stay pumped for the full interview this week. Singularity’s out in Q1 2010.

1. Singularity Interview Extensive tongue-wag with Activision Producer Kekoa Lee-Creel on Raven Software's upcoming dual-timezone shooter....

Much has been said about the price tag of Modern Warfare 2 in the build up to its release, and not much of it publishable. But if a videogame’s worth can be measured by how much of it stays with you after you’ve put the pad down, then even the most indignant will have few complaints if this hugely anticipated sequel ends up delivering as much as the original did two years ago.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the original Modern Warfare was the fact that most people didn’t put the pad down, devoting untold hours to mastering its thrilling online component long after they’d come down from its monumentally brilliant, if brief, single player campaign. Having mastered such a winning formula, the last thing you expect are radical changes, and so it proves.

Picking up from where the 2007 classic left off, you’re once again on the trail of a Russian Ultranationalist leader as he plots the destruction of the West. driven by a desire to cause maximum mayhem to the West. Having spun the death of his predecessor as an act of martyrdom, and successfully convinced his followers of the tyranny of the West, Vladamir Makarov proves to be an adversary with an impressively evil CV.

Four by two of reinforced plastic is a soldier's best friend.

Shock tactics quickly become a feature of Modern Warfare 2, so much so that the game specifically checks – twice – if you’d rather not be subjected to scenes of gratuitous violence. Evidently revelling in its new Adult Only status, Infinity Ward waste no time in repeatedly pushing the violenceometer needle into the red, depicting the kind of shocking scenes we’ve long been used to in gritty dramas, but rarely get exposed to in games in such uncompromising fashion. Expect an ugly media frenzy to develop as the wider world wrestles with the ramifications of What This All Means. [We started without you, actually - Ed]

What it means in the context of the series is simple: that terrorism is an ugly business, and Infinity Ward hasn’t tried to mask the reality, or trivialise what it looks like. Whether it crosses The Line is perhaps a topic to wrestle over at length another time, but it’s hard to divorce yourself from how brutal some of the scenes really are, even when, in truth, it’s still some way from reality. The fact that it’s often unclear who the bad guys actually are, and that it’s you that’s pulling the trigger is, of course, the difference.

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You couldn’t ask for a more appropriate candidate than Wolfenstein for first FPSGamer review ever (cue flying champagne cork). The Wolfenstein series was to the emergence of our favourite genre what certain apples are to the Book of Genesis, for starters, and this iteration comes care of Raven Software, the venerable gun-cradlers behind such classic shooters as HeXen, Soldier of Fortune and Jedi Knight II.

Most importantly of all, though, returning frontman ‘B.J.’ Blazkowicz has to be one of the butt-ugliest bundles of polygons ever rendered. What better way to reinforce your love for the first person viewpoint than lacing yourself into the boots of Daniel Baldwin’s reptilian half-brother? If this were a third-person game, I’d have phoned an exorcist halfway through the tutorial mission.

Regrettably, B.J.’s letterbox mouth and caterpillar eyebrows aren’t the only things the new Wolfenstein has against it. Derivative to the core, this goose-stepping paranormal blaster settles comfortably in behind such second tier releases as F.E.A.R. 2 and Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. It’s no pea-shooter, but it’s a fair way from a BFG.

Halfway through, the game tries its hand at a haunted hospital sequence.

The Nazis are up to their accustomed evil shenanigans. This time they’re trying to ease wartime energy shortages by burrowing into something called the Black Sun, a bottle-green alternate dimension stocked to the rafters with demons and rechargeable batteries. Who will thwart such dastardly machinations? Special Agent B.J. Blazkowicz of course, but as the game begins he’s busy getting shot full of holes on a German missile ship in the English Channel.

Luckily enough, an ancient ‘Thule’ medallion B.J. pinched from the officer’s deck turns out to be endowed with bullet-blocking, Nazi-evaporating powers, and a brisk boat ride or two later the lad’s on his way to the fictional Polish city of Isenstadt to straighten everybody out.

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