Fusion: Genesis review

by Paul on Feb 26th, 2012

Back in the day I used to get this buzz when new games were announced. That feeling of pure “I cannot wait to get my hands on this” elation that would flood every waking moment, culminating with a hurried dash down to the shops on the morning of release. It’s something that I recently realised had been absent from my life for quite a while now, only to re-emerge now for some strange reason. The current generation of games are undeniably excellent but none of them has elicited that primal urge to bark at the moon in anticipation, I’ve just been content to follow the news stories, read the reviews and pick the game up “when the price comes down a bit”. Maybe it’s just because I’m getting old, but it still made me wonder what it was that could have triggered this long-dormant response now? What game has awakened the monster that now consumed my days? Fusion: Genesis, whilst not exactly a name that makes you want to scream out loud with joy, proved to be the answer. I don’t think the guys at Starfire could have chosen a more generic title if they tried but this is indeed the game that, after years of ambivalence, had me scouring the net for news trying to eke out every last detail.

The fact that Starfire is made up of ex-Rare staff won’t have escaped your notice and that may well have been the reason that my interest was snared so quickly. I don’t want to keep banging the Rare drum in this review but you can’t help but feel that if the fates had aligned differently we’d be seeing this released under the Rare banner if Kinect hadn’t bewitched the powers that be over at Twycross. Whatever it was that made the guys in Starfire decide to up sticks and go it alone I am so glad they did. Considering that this is the debut title for a new studio there is a lot to praise and celebrate here. There are nitpicks to be sure, which I will come to later, but all in all this is a confident, classy shooter and Starfire should be commended for their efforts.

Fusion: Genesis is set two hundred years into humanity’s future. We’ve just taken our first, tentative steps into the inky black of space and, as we are prone to do, we’ve started arguing, civil war has broken out and the various humans traversing the void have separated into five main factions made up of your typical space-faring community; an overseeing alliance, traders, smugglers, the space cops and the obligatory religious nutjobs. These all vie for supremacy with a mixture of battles, recon runs and missions to steal, deliver or protect cargo and it is here that we join the fray. You play as the apprentice to a renowned professor who has come across a secret that will unite the warring factions and usher in a new golden age, but five minutes into the game he is killed with this secret seemingly dying with him and you are urged to head for a nearby space station to speak with a contact who can offer more clues and guidance about what’s going on. So, piloting a bog-standard worker ship, off you go to the base in search of answers, zapping asteroids as you go.

After an introductory mission to help show you the ropes you’re offered to join up with any of the factions you wish with a view to progressing the story with missions assigned by that faction’s leader. Each faction has its own story which will take approximately five hours to complete. You can change factions at any time and overall I feel you’re looking at a campaign that will take over 15 hours to complete, give or take. There is a lot of variety here and considering the game is only 800 Microsoft Points this offers insanely good value for money. The factions each come with their own range of ships which you acquire as you complete missions and level up your pilot. However, switching factions means you can no longer access all the ships you’ve build up with your last faction and you have to start over which seemed a bit mean to me, although it does make sense from a plot perspective. But when all is said and done, having spent over four hours with one faction, building myself up with a good ship with all the mod-cons as I went, needing to default back to ‘basic-o-ship’ when I swapped factions was annoying.

The many ships that the factions offer you all look suitably ‘futuristic’ enough and there’s a nice boys toys feel about them, as if they belong in a Micro Machines space age box set or something. All can be upgraded and customised to a large degree, although the game stumbles slightly in that the process is not explained very well and, initially at least, I did find myself fumbling around in menus not quite sure what to do but once you get the hang of how the game operates it’s fine and does offer a lot of different variations to play with. Still, those early hours spent with the game are the most crucial and I can see some people with a low patience span not taking full advantage.

Each ship also comes with a Sentinel, an A.I. construct that will follow your ship around and as you level up will offer you a multitude of offensive or defensive options, all of which can also be upgraded. This is done by mining asteroids for crystals. There’s a variety of different coloured crystals, but to be honest I’m not really sure what these different colours do – they all seem to benefit you in the same way – but keep on mining them to increase the abilities and capacity of your sentinel. An interesting feature that the game has is the ability to buy or sell Sentients in an auction room that works in tandem with Fusion: Sentient, a Windows Phone 7 game. It allows you to trade on the fly and while it does hold a lot of potential, I don’t see myself getting too involved with that. It’s a good idea, but one that hasn’t been explored to its full potential.

The game plays just like you’d expect of a typical twin-stick shooter. Not that this is a bad thing of course, just that you know exactly what to expect, and there’s lots of enjoyment to be had zooming around blasting enemies. Starfire expands on the concept by assigning additional weapons and items to the face buttons and you find that as you level up, with a maxed out Sentinel backing you up, you can be quite formidable, taking out enemies with ease. However, the missions fall into a bit of a rut as you advance. Such is the nature of space travel and the story Starfire has built up around the game there’s obviously only so much you can do, and I have no complaint with that but the problem is with the frequency in which the same type of missions keep cropping up one after another – eventually it starts to grate. If Starfire had made the mission log order a bit more jumbled up then it would have all been a bit more palatable.

What sets Fusion: Genesis apart from its shooter brethren is the incorporation of MMO-style features. While in single player, if you want to, you can have your options set so that either your friends or anyone can join in your campaign if they are online with you. It definitely adds a new element to the campaign having your friends playing with you, although you get the feeling that Starfire have not really followed through with this idea as much as they could have. Get a couple of mates online with you all co-ordinating your efforts and it’s all great fun but have players randomly pop in and it can be hard tracking them down. The game only allows for one active mission at a time so it can be annoying having to go through your friends mission when you’ve got your own waiting to be taken on, especially when there’s four of you all debating how to proceed. Multiplayer holds more promise with Legion War being a big all-in battle against the forces of the Dark Legion as they storm Alpha Base. There’s also a PvP arena where only members of two of the factions can enter in a big free for all. These are both a lot of fun, especially when you can team up with friends and plan tactics and I enjoyed these a lot.

Visually the game is just amazing. Stunning backdrops of space stations, distant nebulae and star systems dominate the screen, with your small ship suitably dwarfed by the universe and it all looks incredible. Many times I would stop just to take in all the beautiful backgrounds and a quick note to Starfire; some desktop backgrounds of these vistas that could be made available for download on your website would be greatly appreciated. They really are quite brilliant. The ships all tie in thematically with their factions and while some parts of the HUD are on the small side it all adds up to great presentational style that really immerses you in the game.

A quick note on the soundtrack; Steve Burke has worked wonders here and has captured the grandeur of space perfectly. One interview I read online had him mentioning that the brief was to capture the essence of Star Wars. Not in the main theme itself, but in the incidental music that sets the mood throughout John Williams’ score. I totally see what they were aiming for and Steve has nailed it. In addition to this Star Wars vibe, I got shades of Hans Zimmer, Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner all coming through in his pieces. There’s one really quite excellent track in particular that sounds like it’s come straight off the Wrath of Khan soundtrack. Big and bombastic in some areas, quiet and melancholy in others, the music is excellent and it now holds pride of place on my iPod. It is available for free so you really have no excuse to download it and give it a listen.

I had very high hopes for this game. Having played through it I am not disappointed. You have to admire Starfire for what they’ve tried to accomplish with this release. There’s lots of content in here and Starfire have tried to bring a lot of disparate elements together that other developers would have failed to implement properly. The game is good fun to play, the theme is one I have a high interest in and personally I feel it’s one that is aching to be developed in more detail and fleshed out beyond the twin stick shooter format. Incorporating the MMO elements into the game is also a masterstroke. However, what it all boils down to for me is the fact that, as good as Fusion: Genesis is, there’s a lot of great ideas here that have not been followed through to show off the full extent of Starfire’s vision. There is a lot of enjoyment to be had for those willing to invest the time but I can’t help but shake the feeling that there’s so much more to be achieved within this world that Starfire has built. I can only hope that we’ll get a chance to see a sequel that allows this vision to be fulfilled. Starfire certainly deserve the chance to build upon the foundations they’ve laid here and I would urge you all to give the game a try and see for yourself.

4/5

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