Review: Fuse (PS3)

By Wayne Webb

Fuse is an old style game that allows you to play with other people locally and not just online. This feature alone makes it a bit of a throwback to an age when you could play with other gamers in your living room and cooperate to get the game at its best rather than the cut throat, death-match world post Halo or Call of Duty.

By Wayne Webb

Fuse is an old style game that allows you to play with other people locally and not just online. This feature alone makes it a bit of a throwback to an age when you could play with other gamers in your living room and cooperate to get the game at its best rather than the cut throat, death-match world post Halo or Call of Duty.

Fuse is a near future military team shooter – not quite first person – that rockets along inside a world made from highly detailed graphics and often stunning environments. You play as a member in a team of four and you can swap between the four different player types with their own specialist skills almost at will. It would be useful to swap out when you are brought down, so you can revive the other ‘you’ but they left that part out unfortunately. When you are playing with others you can then get to know your team mates pretty well and know who will come to save you when you are in trouble. The AI has a few problems in this area, sometimes all over the place when trying to keep you alive, other times seemingly indifferent or oblivious to your failing health. 

Fuse has another element that separate this from other games, a fictional alien technology that upgrades you, your team and your weapons to almost magical strength. Fuse weapons and upgrades soon make all the difference in dispatching the harder enemies, and the endless streams of fuse-enhanced bad guys. These weapons are fun, exciting and brutally effective engines of destruction and add to the visceral feeling of getting in and getting the job done. However, it can get to be a bit of a grind deploying an endless hail of bullets, finding new ammo and starting over again, especially on the bigger bad guys that are like mechs, or on the bosses. Like most games of this nature, grind for long enough and hard enough and you’ll get through it.

The story links you through the missions, there is plenty of good voice acting and back story to go around. So while it may be a cliché gung ho military team story, it’s delivered with such style and care that you are forgiving of the predictable lines and the unsurprising twists in the action, and you just get on with enjoying the game.

Fun enough to play on your own, but the game really comes to life when played with others. It’s rare to have a four player co-op shooter on the market so if you are hanging out for some team shooting action, this is your best bet out there now.

Pros: Big on graphics, weapons, action, story, teamwork and good for playing with three friends.
Cons: Team mate AI unhelpful at times, repetitive grinding action sequences occasionally

3.5 Shacks Out Of 5