Preview: Fuse

I must admit that I didn’t have Fuse on my radar until the recent EA Asia Pacific Showcase. I’ve heard bits and pieces since; apparently, it was introduced under a different name — Overstrike 9 — by developer Insomniac Games early in its development cycle, and has since become the game (some) of you know today.

I feel stupid for not being excited about (well, some of…) this game until now.

Insomniac, best known for Ratchet & Clank, are shortly releasing this new IP that’s geared toward four-player co-operative play. At the Showcase, Brian Allgeier, Creative Director at Insomniac, described Fuse as a mixture of Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol’s teamwork and dry humour with the weapons of District 9. That description works for the most part.

Fuse boasts a campaign that has humanity tracking down the titular fuse, an alien substance (I think) that’s quite high in demand as a potential source of energy. Fuse is quite the remarkable material; it fuels various new weapons constructed by humanity, called xenotech, with amazing results. Each of the four main characters in the game wield different types of xenotech, each with completely different offensive or defensive characteristics. Our heroes — formerly the Overstrike 9 — wield xenotech in the fight against a shadowy organisation hell-bent in their efforts to take over the world.

My favourite of the four main characters was Dalton Brooks, who wields a weapon that produces a kinetic shield. The shield can be carried and moved around, providing cover for your team of four, or deposited in a specific spot, immovable. Best yet, the shield is activated with your controller’s left trigger, and after taking enough abuse, you can use the right trigger to fire off a kinetic wave from the shield that decimates opponents in its path.

Each of the other Overstrike 9 teammates are… well, kinda boring. There’s a sniper, a healer and a stealth class character to round out the team, but none of the other main characters are nearly as fun to play with as Dalton.The stealth guy wields a crossbow that doesn’t seem to have much effect, the healer didn’t seem that proficient at healing, and the sniper… truthfully, is forgettable. Apart from Dalton, the rest of the squad are far too generic for my liking.

Sadly, we weren’t able to trial the game’s 4-play “co-petitive” mode, called “Echelon” as planned, so us media types hit up a single-player campaign alongside three AI teammates. The circumstances did mean that we got to make great use of the game’s “Leap” functionality — you can swap your character out for any AI-controlled teammates mid-game without pausing gameplay. If I used all the ammo that poor Dalton had, I could easily swap to another character who still had plenty. The AI teammates weren’t overly smart, but nor were they stupid… it’s just that playing without human teammates just made the game feel quite hollow. I am confident that the game would be quite fun when playing in a group of four friends (even if they’re matchmade, air-quote “friends”).

One thing I did enjoy about the game was its difficulty level; I was playing on normal in my hands-on, and that was quite challenging when controlling one member in the group of four. I have a feeling normal will be too easy with four humans working as a team… but that won’t be said if you upped the difficulty from there. Mid-tier mech baddies were hard enough on the default difficulty.

As for Echelon itself, the short demonstration we were treated to made the mode look like a more offensive-minded version of “Horde”. Being “co-petitive”, you’ll need to work as a team to destroy waves and waves of enemies. Killing baddies causes them to drop loot which can only be collected by one member of your squad. In short, you’ll need to balance teamwork (to beat the level) with greed (to level up your character). To add another layer of complexity to the game, character progression is across the board, so you’ll need both Fuse XP and Fuse cash to get a great character load-out no matter what mode you choose to play in.

All up, Fuse has a lot about it that’s generic, but it still might prove quite fun and challenging in the end. There’s a bit more polishing to be done until the game’s release in March, so I’ll save a final verdict until then.