Joystiq: "Fuse's basic mechanics are functional, even interesting, but they're hamstrung by poor AI (on both sides) and boring encounters. Friends make things better, but even then this locomotive doesn't take long to run out of steam. Fuse is satisfactory at best and frustrating at worst, and a bare-bones shooter without any personality or flair."
Fuse from Insomniac Games is a co-op third-person shooter that is actually a blast to play alone, thanks to being able to switch between characters.
Yea the original vision was better.shame EA made them turn it into another cookie cutter FPS
Strong and powerful point apart from that the article says it was third person.
Whether self-published or under a larger company, these developers suffered their share of outside meddling.
Probably because Scalebound was a monumental failure on PG's behalf and not MS's. PG bit off more than they could chew and Kamiya is the first to admit that PG messed up. He went on to even thank them for showing up when trying to sell his next game and still having faith in him after the whole debacle.
Because it was a SP title yet MS - likely - insisted on four player co-op.
Hell, Square has yet to put FF14 on Xbox because of policy issue with MS, and yet they're the one's continually apologizing for it.
PG said "both sides failed" in the interview. Inaba and Kamiya were being stand-up guys, but Inaba definitely said Microsoft could have done better and that the game was shown way too early. Also, Microsoft wanted a massive AAA headliner, but did the team have the manpower or budget for a huge open world RPG featuring a 4 player Online co op mode? A human protagonist and a huge semi controllable Dragon, the largest bosses PG has ever done, an actual RPG story, and potentially 4 players and 4 AI/player controlled dragons on-screen at once with a 100 person team? PG was so overworked that executives got ill due to stress and took a leave of absence. Yet Microsoft didn't mismanage the project?
Microsoft showed Scalebound way too early and escalated expectations with an unrealistic CG trailer.
The game was far behind schedule yet Microsoft insisted on online mp.
The team was never equipped for a huge open/semi open world RPG featuring online mp/co op. Microsoft as a Publisher should've realized from the jump that 100 people to make a game of that magnitude was unfair and irresponsible. Not only did Scalebound get cancelled, but the team crunched for about 3 years and people had stress induced illness just to see their game cancelled. The team at PG worked their ass off, Microsoft mismanaged the project because they wanted a massive AAA at a budget price. Why do u think they hired Ninja Theory and Compulsion? Undead Labs and inXile? They want big games but they don't want to spend big money. In the case of Scalebound, it didn't work, and i blame Microsoft.
Crackdown 3?
GB demonized Sony for using Lair to promote Six Axis, but Microsoft used Crackdown 3 to justify the statements they made regarding Cloud tech. Microsoft mismanaged Crackdown 3 as badly as any game in recent memory. They sacrificed the game in order to shoehorn in native 4K and Cloud technology. The game had 3 independent developers working on it and the Cloud Engine technology that was supposed to be powering it was bought out by Epic along with one of the developers several months prior to release. It was a mess, Microsoft showed it too early, over-promised, and they showed a totally misleading Cloud tech demo which raised expectations to a level that was never going to be achieved. Microsoft also elevated expectations for Crackdown as if it was an A1 franchise. They originally promoted and positioned it as if Crackdown was a huge franchise when it never had been. The original gained notoriety because of the Halo 3 beta and Crackdown 2 was an utter flop. Neither game sold 2 million copies. When you position a game as a huge AAA system seller and its previous iteration sold just over 1 million copies and received bad reviews, something is up. The thing is, Microsoft tried to oversell a middle of the road franchise because they just didn't have much else. This also raised expectations.
How about Fable Legends?
Take a great AAA developer and throw them on Kinect. Then make them pimp their own franchise again by turning f2p and pull the rug right before release. Had a beta and everything. Why on earth wait so long to axe a game?
ME Andromeda
EA/Bioware took the team behind ME 1-3 and put them on that awful Destiny clone while they thought a ragtag team should have the keys to Mass Effect. Good job publisher/execs two fails for the price of one.
Anthem
The game that got Xbox fanboys hot and bothered at the Microsoft conference with even being exclusive. The game that doomed Mass Effect. The game that made ppl appreciate Destiny, which is hard to do in this day n age.
Its that there are so many examples of MS interfering in game production that has me doubting they'll do anything "great" with all the studios they've just bought.
Over-hyped, but not great.
Mars
Do u know that Kameo 2 was well into development when Microsoft axed it and forced Rare to work on Kinect games? Kameo 2 would've likely been a huge improvement on the already good original because the original in no way leveraged the power of the 360 considering it was actually developed as a GameCube game and merely brushed up for the launch of Xbox 360 when Microsoft acquired Rare.
So many terrible decisions by Microsoft and needless interference, it's astonishing that they were protected in this article considering how egregious they were. But then again, Gaming Bolt..
How about an article about the worst cases of a publisher mismanaging a developer? Rare would have to be top 5 and perhaps Lionhead? It's actually sad that a great studio like Obsidian is under the control of a publisher like Microsoft. If only PoE2 didn't flop commercially..
The list is
Deus Ex Mankind Divided
Halo 2
Dragon Age 2
Fuse
Haze
Telltales's The Walking Dead
Dead Space 3
Dungeon Keeper
Need for Speed Payback
MGSV
Star Wars 1313
Lair
Middle Earth Shadow of War
Overstrike looked like it could have been great, it had character and originality. Meanwhile fuse was so generic it should have been sold in a plain white box that just said "Game" on it.
Overstrike was my most anticipated game of the year. Then E3 came and EA stepped in and... the game died in my eyes.
GB says Halo 2 was terrible and they hail Halo 3 as being superior, but Halo 2 actually has a higher Metacritic and was actually a very fun game. I much preferred Halo 2 over Halo 3.
They rip Deus Ex MD yet if u ignore the overblown preorder controversy and the ridiculous little MTs it was actually received very well by critics. GB claims it had a poor reception, and it did commercially, but the game is an 84 Meta. It really didn't deserve to bomb commercially. If anything choose Deus Ex The Fall. Blame the publisher for turning a gritty, sophisticated stealth masterpiece into mobile trash.
I love me some Insomniac, but can we honestly blame EA for Fuse? Didn't Insomniac go multiplat in order to have more control? Yet EA made Fuse bad? I have to blame Ted Price on this one.
Sony wanted Six Axis implemented into Lair "allegedly" but Lair was flawed well beyond the Six Axis control scheme.
GB has a line where they say 'if u thought Ubisoft was above this" and then they mention Haze. Ubisoft is among the worst offenders, why would we think they are above mismanagement and greed when AC is ridiculously milked and their games are often stuffed with MTs? And who keeps buying The Crew? The Crew 2, a terrible sequel to a terrible game. Virtually every Ubisoft game is a "service" based game with MTs. Oh, and they've had numerous downgrades this gen. The funny thing is, ppl somehow slammed Sony for Haze.
Blame Disney for 1313, they were the ones who cut development once they acquired Lucas.
Project Hammer is another. Nintendo royally fucked over NST with that game leading to its cancelation and by that point, they were forced to change it to a Mii party game. Phantom Dust and Scalebound from MS as well. Sony with Lair.
Phantom Dust 100%. First Microsoft announces a Phantom Dust remake, then radio silence, then they announce a Phantom D remaster and ppl are confused as to what happened to the remake. Then, low and behold, Microsoft stealth releases a Phantom Dust port with no visual improvements and microtransactions. It was a disgrace. I bet the game is either delisted or shutdown by now. They showed a Phantom Dust CG trailer at E3, so i would imagine they had bigger plans for the franchise and something got screwed royally.
MS demanded a lot for a game that had a $5 million budget. MS wanted a bunch of multiplayer and the studio said they needed a bigger budget for that so MS canceled the game and shut down the studio laying everyone off. MS nearly put PG out of business with canceling Scalebound as well. Thankfully Nier saved them.
Sometimes, games change drastically between their initial pitch and the version players get their hands on. Such was the case with these five games that would have been totally different if they'd stuck to their original pitch.
Oh hell no, Borderlands is perfect the way it is, that gritty/serious vibe would have killed the game
if this game had the ff13 battle system it would have been a joy to play. it just doesnt seem like a ff game to me
Twinfinite you come with some pretty cool lists but the fact that they're multi page kills it.
I was happy with how Prey turned out, but there was a reveal for Prey 2 and it looked awesome. They should still develop that concept into a stand alone game.
woof. and this is coming from a site I genuinely respect. Insomniac stick to Sony. I hope if your excursion with multiplat has taught you anything it's that you may expose your games to a wider audience but the price you pay is extreme genericness to appeal to said population. It's just not you Insomniac..ya gotta be free to be weird. Make mo' Ratchet on the PS4! And make a new IP that doesn't have the personality of a dustmite. You knooooooow everyone still wants Resistance.
Binary Domain
It wouldn't have mattered if the game was scoring 9's across the board......the game was always destined for commercial failure for just too many reasons to list.
Get back to Sony with your tail between your legs Insomniac, & start building Ratchet back into the formidable, Mario-rivaling platformer that it was. And give me my Resistance 4.
Hopefully Sony will still be interested in them, even though there stock has slipped, due to a massive quality decline, & the fact they knocked several buyouts from Sony back. I mean, most companies would watch a company like Insomniac die a horrible death, due to that whole pride & respect thing, & the fact that Insomniac slapped them in the face, several times by knocking back there buyout propositions, then the ultimate kick in the teeth of going multiplatform, as well as releasing half assed iterations of one of there most beloved IP's & huge game for Sony consoles & there fans, in the Ratchets.
I hope Sony swallow that pride & scoop up Insomniac, with the only creative restriction being that they start making great AAA games again, as it would be a shame to see Insomniac be gone from this industry, & it would be even more horrible to see there creative talents be bought by like an EA, MS, or the like that would constrict there creative talents. Sony are known not to do that, that is why they had such a good working relationship over many years & still do, to a point......But, the fact is, when Insomniac knocked back that last offer from Sony, Sony's attitude towards them had to have changed, & turned there backs on Insomniac to a degree, as they had other 1st party exclusive developers to cater to.....I don't blame Sony for this, as they were suffering in a big way in all areas of business, & marketing games for Insomniac would have been VERY low on there priority list, as the returns wouldn't have been as formidable as what an exclusive inhouse title would bring in.
A lot of the blame is just bad luck, & bad decisions from both really.....as Sony probably should have backed the Resistance series more, as the potential for big sales is obviously better in a FPS loving dominated era, so Sony may have gotten better income from the series, even though they would have to share the profits more, as opposed to an inhouse title that wasn't a part of such a dominant selling genre.....even games like MS:Apocalypse in the racing genre, or Starhawk in the TPS genre, that copped horrible sales....it may have been the better decision from Sony to go with Insomniacs games, more whole heartedly in marketing......But, when I look back, Sony's marketing for there own titles was abysmal at best....I mean, Starhawk is a classic & AAAA game for me, & if marketed properly (OR AT ALL), would have helped sales...same with Twisted Metal, Socom 4, MS:A, Killzone 2&3, & so many other Sony exclusive games....I mean, if any did sell well, it was either through word of mouth, or IP association, as the most important tool, in television advertisement has been virtually non-existant from Sony this gen.
I mean, aggressive tv commercials for some of these games would have meant far better sales for ALL there games. Ratchets, Sly Coopers, LBP's, & such kid friendly titles should have been played non-stop during early morning & Sat-Sun kids shows & cartoons, & games like Starhawk, Twisted Metal, Resistance 2&3, MS:Apocalypse, Socom 4, & others should have been slotted into tv programs that were time appropriate & content appropriate.....& what I mean by that last bit is, that if Commando is airing on a certain tv channel, then throw the Socom or Killzone ad in there, or if Fast & the Furious is on, advertise bloody MS, or GT or both would be even better, & if Death Race is on 1 night, then throw Twisted Metal ads on in between, War Of The World's, then chuck Starhawk ads on.
Same goes for tv, if Biggest Loser is on, advertise Sports Champions, or Idol, The Voice, then bloody Singstar ads, if the history channel is airing hours of WW2 doco's, then advertise the fitting titles.....I can't see why ALL developers & publishers haven't flaunted this idea...I mean, your appealing to the demograph that could most potentially be interested in your game.
I wish game studios could come up with more original ideas that make their game stand out from the other games.
I think everyone's getting a bit tired of the same old generic shooting games where you move from area to area shooting more people/monsters/robots. You know what I'm saying?