Whilst watching the debut trailer for Insomniac’s upcoming four-player co-op, third person shooter Fuse, when you’re not being stunned by the genericness of it all, you’ll be thinking to yourself, “This looks weirdly familiar…” And that’s because it is. Fuse is the dramatic re-invention of a game Insomniac showed off at 2011’s EA press conference at E3; Overstrike. That game had a strong art style, humour, potential, it looked fun…
This… Well, in my opinion, doesn’t. For a start, it looks super generic and actually rather ugly as all hell. If it weren’t for the weapons that the protagonists were holding, you could easily confuse this with any other cover based third person shooter that’s done the rounds recently. Secondly, there is no humour in this trailer. Where once there were quips and physical humour and The Hives blaring on the soundtrack; there’s grey, explosions, grunts, Inception-style “BWAAARRRMM”s and hip-hop for a soundtrack. So, there goes another selling point.
And, lastly, it just looks no fun. I know that trailers can be misleading and that the actual game could be a tonne of fun with a major undercurrent of humour; but they are important in shaping your view of a game. Plus, the game launches in March so it needs to make a strong first impression or it’s going to get buried by God of War: Ascension and Gears Of War: Judgement. Well, it made a strong first impression with most gamers (if YouTube commenters and like/dislike bars are to be believed anyway) alright, but it’s not a positive strong impression.
Fuse launches for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in March 2013. (Side note: is anything coming out after Q1 next year?! Seriously!)