Maybe EA consumer research (aka: marketing) has determined that ‘funny’ shooters don’t sell well? See also Army of Two getting rebooted. Because the world needs more gritty shooters!
Frame it what way? All I was saying was that the revision is vastly less interesting than the first version. They just changed it because nobody cared. To the worst possible thing they could have done. Now people care, but in the bad way.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see if the personality came through the changes intact, but yeah, not really liking the stylistic changes.
The original video had charm, characters that seemed interesting, and made me smile. This last one… meh. It’s not about change; it’s about going from hmm, that is kind of interesting to just another game in the pile of realistic military shooters competing for the call of duty crowd.
It’s weird how attached people seem to be to the original trailer when, at the time, it seemed to get a pretty resounding “meh”, owing mostly to its utter lack of actual information and a lot of eye-rolling at the attempts at humor.
Some people liked it; some people didn’t.I know there is a record of me in this thread saying I liked it then and looked forward to the game.
Focus groups do the best trolling: Always Independent: The Story of Insomniac Games - IGN
“The game started out with a much more stylized and campy direction. We were actually going for something on the level of Ratchet & Clank, except with humans,” Allgeier said. “Maybe it was going to appeal to gamers who, we thought at the time, might be in their late teens. The industry’s changed quite a bit… We would focus test the game in front of a lot of gamers, and get their opinion. These are people that regularly play PlayStation 3 and Xbox games. We started to discover that everyone thought this was a game for their younger brother. We would hear this from 12-year-olds. So we decided that we needed to make a game that had an older appeal.”
12 years old want to be playing Call of Duty and other “adult, edgy” games like that. Not surprising.
It’s changed again.
Now, ironically, Fuse has changed less than any other IP that we’ve built. But this has been a much more public change. I know a lot of people have had fairly strong reactions. It’s interesting, too — since we released a trailer two months ago, we’ve made major changes to the look of the game. We’ve added a lot more color. That’s been in response to fan feedback from this first new trailer that we released. I think when people see it again, they’re going to be surprised at how much it’s morphed one more time. But that’s the development process. That’s what we enjoy. That’s how we get to a final product that we’re truly proud of.
“people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
-Steve Jobs
The bastardisation of this game’s concept is oddly hilarious to me. Reminds me of Scorcher VI Global Meltdown : Here We Go Again. Again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX4G13bOURA
FUSE has been delayed. Originally set for a March launch, it’s now Q1 FY2014 aka April-June 2013
Reviews are out. Mediocre all around.
No surprise.
Despite the mediocre reviews, the guns and leveling up still have me interested, but I really want to run the campaign 4 man coop. Is anyone else still interested in this, and maybe setting up a team of 4 to play through the campaign?
Chris Woods
Haven’t heard squat about this since the name change. Just seems like there was too much change and confusion from start to finish.
I love the start of the Eurogamer review. It actually makes me want to not bother reading the rest of the review, and never read about Fuse again:
I still wish they had made the game in the original video.
Yeah, that looked a lot more fun and interesting. I was thinking a spy Borderlands type game.
I’ve been playing this for a few days, and I can confidently say if you’re looking for a 3rd person shooter with RPG mechanics, this one is great! If you don’t want to point guns at peoples faces, though, or you prefer 1st person, this game doesn’t really do anything all that new. I like the perks a lot better then Borderlands perks, mainly because it’s more common to get stuff that feels new/interesting. While a lot of the “+10% damage for 5 seconds when you kill a guy” is probably actually really significant to someone who understands the system better then I, it’s not as fun as “+2 grenades and 50% bigger explosions” to me. They’re both just stats, it’s just the grenade one feels way more significant I guess.
One thing it does do that’s pretty neat is with your special weapons. They all have ammo, like any gun, but you can find ‘Fuse Canisters’ which give infinite tech ammo to everyone within radius. You can pick 'em up and carry them around, FF: Crystal Chronicles style, so the entire team can just hold down the fire trigger for their cool guns. Of course the game throws something like a trillion guys at you during those parts, and it’s pretty fun to just plow through everything without worrying about ammo management.
Overall I don’t play shooters that much, so this one has been sweet. It’s also pretty challenging, but the team revive mechanic makes it not just a constant “restart from checkpoint” fest.
Chris Woods
Chris,
I’m really glad that you like it. I may give it a go sooner or later. My brother back when he was at Insomniac (and before he formed ByteSize) helped work on this in the concepting stages. Back then I think it was going to be a more metal gear solid type spy game, with the big innovation being co-operative stealth and ratchet type guns. He only told me this recently (as he didn’t want to blow any secrecy obligations) and he left before they had even really finalized the project, but I know that he watched it from then on with great interest, and hasn’t enjoyed some of the pannings its received in the media. He loves the guys at Insomniac.
(Also, we are both big fans of TCG’s and can’t wait for Hex. Best of luck with that.)
I shouldn’t be surprised that there has been no interest in this ever since it got reworked as Fuse. Turned out to be a mediocre Gears of War clone. Too bad.