Four-person co-op squad-based shooters have always struggled to gain traction among online gamers, because they rely on you and your mates shelling out for the same game and being committed to playing it. They're best enjoyed when you've got some time to kill, or some mates over.
Sadly, more often than not that means studios treat them as a cash cow and don't try hard enough - which is the case with Fuse.
On paper, and even in game, it has some interesting concepts. A team of mercenaries have to track down some brazen thieves who've nicked off with the new form of energy the game is named after. As it would be in real life, this energy has been weaponised. Each member of your squad will pick a central weapon which conveniently suits their play style.
But they're all interesting and that's the kicker. A gun which deploys a shield, allowing your squad to sit behind it and ping away is a great idea. Another turns enemies into walking wormholes which explode and take out other enemies. Each gun is well thought-out and brings something unique to the table.
Unfortunately this same dedicated approach is not put into the gameplay. Fuse simply adopts the formula and that's it. It doesn't try to advance the genre, it's just content to take your cash and hope you'll stick around to get your money's worth.
What makes this even more disappointing is it's made by the same studio which put out the incredible Resistance series, so you know the talent is there, it just wasn't used.
The offline, or online co-op campaign features six missions. It's about average length, but sitting through it becomes ho-hum very quickly. You almost want something to be broken with it, because it's the equivalent of the university student cruising through getting Cs. There's nothing wrong with Insomniac's work, it's just boring because it's blatantly doing the bare minimum.
The online multiplayer is easy to define as wrong though - it's almost an insult to the gamer who shelled out. There are a variety of maps but the gameplay is always the same - waves of enemies with an objective which changes from protecting an asset or taking down a big guy.
In the single-player and multiplayer, you can earn XP and coins which allow you to further a character's skills. The skills you buy in single-player are transferred online and vice versa, which is a nice touch, however it just means you can go online for an hour or two and then walk through the campaign feeling like you're Kanye West.
Fuse is the closest to getting what it's trying to do right since 2003's Brute Force, but it just needs that extra push in story or something to make the originality crawling below the surface pop out.
Two stars.
Fuse
:: Publisher: Electronic Arts
:: Developer: Insomniac Games
:: Format: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
:: Rating: R16
source: newshub archive
