Has Insomniac lost its spark?
Fuse began life as a different game by the name of Overstrike in 2011. It looked like a comedic third-person shooter by the minds of Ratchet and Clank, fast-forward to 2013 and it changed its name and identity. No longer is it funny, itâs more of your typical military third person shooter with a clichĂ©d story about a energy source called Fuse which an evil organisation have stolen, itâs sadly completely forgettable and the characters arenât as cartoony or funny as they were when the game was known as Overstrike.
In terms of a third-person shooter, Fuse doesnât do anything that wrong. It works well…although itâs better with a friend or two as the AI is a joke. If you do play solo though, you can switch between characters at will and upgrade their abilities with XP earned via missions and kills. Unfortunately to upgrade characters abilities you need to be selected as them, so you may have to switch between them to upgrade the one you want…which seems rather clunky.
The campaign is brief too and forgettable. Itâs nice that each character has their own specific weapon that helps with combat and teamwork, but the combat itself isnât that great…itâs actually quite dull and repetitive with its settings, itâs a case of âbeen there, done thatâ but itâs been done much better by the likes of Gears of War. It even has a Horde-esque multiplayer mode which while enjoyable, is not nearly as good as it should be.
It doesnât help that the visuals look quite dated either, thereâs definitely an identity crisis with this game…it doesnât know if it wants to be a serious shooter or one with comedy value and coming from Insomniac, itâs hard that they got it so wrong. The voice-acting isnât funny; it can be painful at times due to bad lines and bad acting.
The Verdict
Fuse feels like an experiment to me, one that suffered from too many changes and the end result wasnât worth it. If it stayed as a cartoony shooter with a Team Fortress 2/Ratchet and Clank look to it and a half-decent story, it would have been much more memorable. Instead itâs just a bog-standard third-person shooter and one that is forgettable in every way.
