New and exquisite looking computer games are always something that we are on the lookout for, so that we can provide you with an in-depth hardware performance review. Singularity is a new first person shooter that managed to fly well under our radar even though it was developed by veteran Raven Software and published by Activision.

In fact it wasn't until a fellow TechSpot staff member pointed out Singularity as a game of interest last week that I even knew of its existence. Although Singularity is based on the Unreal Engine 3 - like a few dozen or more games released over the past few years - we were still keen to check out how current hardware handles it.

Singularity is getting released just today for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms, generating a lot of buzz as of late for its supposedly exciting single player campaign (we haven't managed to play the game in full just yet) and the gameplay paradigm that it presents, giving you a "Time Manipulation Device" to play with and use as a weapon.

Before we get into the performance results here is a little bit information regarding the back story.

The game takes place on a mysterious island known as "Katorga-12" where Russian experiments involving E99 took place during the height of the Cold War era. Sometime during 1950, a terrible catastrophe known as the "Singularity" occurred on the island, causing the island's very existence to be covered up by the Russian government.

The player controls Nate Renko, an Air Force pilot who is sent to investigate bizarre radiation emissions coming from the island, only to crash land there. After regaining consciousness, Nate finds the TMD (Time Manipulation Device) and discovers that the island is constantly shifting between the time periods of 1950 and 2010.

He also encounters Victor Barisov, the scientist in charge of the Katorga-12 experiments who reveals that a man named Nikolai Demichev is on the island to try to restart them on a much larger scale, which could cause an unthinkable disaster. During the quest to stop Demichev, the player has to deal with hostile Russian forces in both time periods, and the hideously mutated flora, fauna and former residents of the island, some of which have developed time manipulation powers of their own.