Singularity is what happens when crackpot Cold War sci-fi and gritty contemporary realism have a punch-up. Brought to you by Wolfenstein dev Raven Software, the game takes place on a mysterious Russian island facility with a highly volatile temporal signature. Besides shooting people in the face, players can manipulate time itself with the imaginatively titled Time Manipulation Device, tapping into the facility’s dark mid-century past. FPS Gamer recently lent its lungs and ears to a roundtable discussion with Activision’s Kekoa Lee-Creel. Results below.

FPS Gamer: So how does it feel to be working on one of Activision’s few original properties?

Kekoa Lee-Creel: As you said, Activision doesn’t do new IP often so it’s a huge deal for me, I’m really glad to be working on it. 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.

And it’s been crazy, but the thing about Singularity is that it was brought in by Raven when it was just a demo – they did this prototype of it, to show the concept. They wrote out the concept, they brought it into Activision and they showed it off, and Activision bigwigs were pretty impressed by the whole thing, and they thought this is going to be great.

So they tested the concept, and it was one of the highest-testing concepts in Activision history, which is a pretty big deal – we’ve had some good concepts come through. So that’s what led to the greenlight, so it’s not trivial, it’s not something they would have taken on lightly, because it’s a pretty big investment.

FPS Gamer: How important is new IP to the industry?

Lee-Creel: I think it’s absolutely critical. I personally am a hardcore gamer, I like playing things that I haven’t played before. I think if the industry doesn’t invest in new IPs, good ideas, then we’re really going to be playing the same game over and over again in a few short years when everything dies off.

A solid 7.6 on our Weird-Shit-O-Meter.

So I’m really glad to be part of it, and I’m really glad that other people are doing it as well. Even if it hasn’t always been met with the most substantial financial success, like there are other games out there that came out this last year, and they’re great ideas and I’m really glad they were made, and they’re fun and different.

FPS Gamer: Ray Muzyka from BioWare once told us that new IP rarely makes its money back straight away, but becomes profitable over time.

Lee-Creel: Sure, initial investment’s the big difficulty, initial investment to start an IP. 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. 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.

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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.

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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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