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Even after Overstrike, Insomniac's Fuse continues to change
Even if you happen to be the biggest fan of Insomniac's Fuse, formerly called Overstrike and coming to consoles next year, you may have missed one little detail in the brand new video released by Insomniac and EA yesterday. Izzy Sinclair, the hacking and healing main character, has a brand new look to her clothing, something that's a little more casual than the tactical gear she was wearing on the previous preview footage.That's a change that came directly from player feedback, Insomniac's Ted Price told Joystiq yesterday, and he says there may be more coming. "We're continuing to tweak the game's look and colors," he suggested. Insomniac's fans have been very vocal about the change from the game's original concept back when it was called Overstrike, and Price admits that "there are always going to be questions about our tone shift and that's just something we accept."But Price also says that despite the back and forth about the game's tone, the development team is also getting clear input about the gameplay itself. "The most gratifying feedback we have gotten recently, he says, "has been from our playtests, where we see both the press here and overseas and then occasionally consumers play the game. We've been really positively surprised with how quickly people pick it up, how readily they begin working as a team and just how happy with how much fun they're having."%Gallery-168274%
Insomniac's Ted Price takes you through 18 minutes of Fuse
Insomniac Games president and CEO Ted Price narrates this video for Fuse, taking you through the four playable members of the Overstrike squad, their weapons, and their skill-based progressions. Also covered are the co-operative elements, including 'Fusion' mode which as Price puts it lets all four players become "Fuse-powered wrecking balls."
Insomniac wants Fuse players to 'take the universe seriously'
Insomniac's Fuse began as Overstrike, a colorful co-op spy game with a humorous flair. Fuse continues the co-op direction of the game, but has shifted its look to a style that tilts more toward realism than fantasy.Some internet reaction has labeled the new style powering Fuse as just another 'standard military shooter,' but Insomniac says it's not totally shunning the game's fantastical elements."We have our underwater bases. We've got missiles and volcanoes. We have a lot of exotic situations but at the same time we want people to take the universe seriously," Insomniac Creative Director Brian Allgeier told Joystiq at the 2012 New York Comic Con.But over-the-top elements still exist in the more mature-looking multiplatform game, as evidenced by the game's weapons and abilities.%Gallery-168274%
Fuse melds into new trailer
The new Insomniac IP formerly known as Overstrike is now called Fuse, and publisher EA just released a new trailer to solidify its rechristening. The video sees the Overstrike 9 team (made up of four people confusingly) come together to bring about carnage with a sci-fi twist. Fuse is scheduled to come out March 2013 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Ted Price on how Insomniac's Overstrike became Fuse
Last year at E3, Insomniac revealed a brand new IP called Overstrike, complete with a slickly animated trailer featuring four elite spy types using futuristic weapons to take down a robotic bad guy. After that, we didn't hear much about the game at all, save for a few recent rumors that Insomniac was rebranding it as a game called Fuse. It turns out the rumors are indeed true: Insomniac's Fuse is what Overstrike has turned into, and it's a third-person co-op cross-platform shooter that's coming to the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 in March 2013.Joystiq got to play a short demo of the game at Insomniac's Burbank, CA studio last week, and we also talked with president and CEO Ted Price about what's different about the new game, why the change was made, and what it's like developing for Insomniac's first non-Sony console game ever.%Gallery-165036%
Meet the new, familiar faces of Fuse's Overstrike 9 team
Insomniac's Overstrike team-based shooter has turned into a game called Fuse, due out in the first quarter of next year on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. And the four characters in the game's co-op team are in many ways the same four that we saw in last year's trailer, but they've changed a lot as well. The names might be the same, but the looks (in some cases) are different, and the weapons, now powered by the alien element "fuse," have seen changes.So here's your guide to the four co-op characters in Fuse, that make up the "Overstrike 9" team, dedicated to fighting the villanious Raven force around the world. Players will be able to play any of these characters in online co-op, and Insomniac has also created a function called "Leap" that will allow any player to jump, at the press of a button, into any character not already being controlled (so a solo player can jump into any character, two players can jump into either free character, and so on). And all of these characters not only earn experience upgrades as they play, but they also build up fuse power into a "fusion mode" (activated by anyone on the team) that then rewards unlimited ammo and extra functionality in their fusion weapons. Finally, in addition to each character-specific fuse weapon, each character also gets two conventional weapons to wield (one heavy and light, per character), and grenades to throw as well.Read on to hear where these four characters come from, and what you'll find their strengths and weaknesses are as you play through Fuse.%Gallery-165036%
Insomniac's 'Fuse' briefs all four members of team Overstrike
Okay Insomniac, now you're just being gratuitous. In the studio's latest bit of Fuse media – a mission briefing taken from the game – all four members of Overstrike's team show up after some gruff discussion about a "contact team." You know, "clean operatives with no ties to government" – sounds familiar, doesn't it?Those four operatives are listed as "Overstrike Team 009." It's sounding more and more like whatever "Fuse" is has at least some ties to Insomniac's Overstrike, a four player co-op shooter first introduced at E3 2011.Company head Ted Price wouldn't admit as much in a recent interview, but he was quick to point us to the official Fuse countdown site when asked about the whereabouts of his studio's new EA Partners game.
Breaking free with your own IP: Insomniac's CEO on what's next (besides Ratchet & Clank)
There's a big craze these days with independent developers, though the idea isn't all that crazy. Developers, as it turns out, like to own the stuff they create – Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac Games is no different. And here's something you might not know about Insomniac: the studio owns virtually none of the iconic characters or worlds it's created. Not Ratchet, not Clank, not the world of Spyro the Dragon. That last one cuts especially deep considering the vast riches Activision's reaped from its Spyro-based Skylanders game. The former two are Sony-owned.With Fuse (which we think used to be Overstrike) and Outernauts, Insomniac is pushing in a new direction. "For us, we're at the point in our growth as a company where we can own our intellectual property," Insomniac president and CEO Ted Price told us in an interview last week. "That's been gratifying for us because, as creators, controlling your own destiny – controlling the IP that you build – is important." Beyond its financial importance, owning IP also means unfortunate spin-offs of properties you created can't be farmed out to other studios (see: Resistance: Burning Skies).It's important to note what Price says about his studio not being able to own its previous projects. When Insomniac started in 1994, it produced only franchises owned by its publishers. Quite literally everything the company created up until Outernauts and Overstrike/Fuse was owned by outside forces. That's why you will assuredly see more Resistance games, despite Insomniac outright stating it won't work on any more (at least any time soon) – Sony owns the IP rights to the Resistance franchise and can do with them as it pleases.
Insomniac's 'Fuse' likely to be a reworked 'Overstrike'
With Insomniac president and CEO Ted Price obliquely teasing an unknown project called "Fuse" during his PAX Prime 2012 keynote last week, it wasn't too difficult to put together the teaser image he produced and the teaser video released last year (above) for EA Partners project Overstrike. Price wouldn't admit as much to us during a followup interview last week, but he didn't really need to."I'm gonna point you to Fusegame.com," Price answered when asked about Overstrike's long absence from the public eye. Is it still a current-gen game (it was originally announced for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3)? He wouldn't say. When directly asked whether Overstrike and Fuse are the same game: "I'm being cagey here because I want to be consistent with how we're answering these questions," he said, deferring to his PR manager.The PR man offered a bit more than Price would. "We're very deliberate in what we're showing right now, and that's why we're just pointing people to the website and saying, 'Hey, this is a process. We're going to share more information with you, stay tuned.'" That said, why in the world would the two guys be pointing us to a website for Fuse when we're asking about Overstrike? The answer seems pretty clear to us.Price additionally refused to answer whether Fuse is an EA Partners project – Overstrike is an EA Partners-published four player co-op game.Unsurprisingly, Game Informer is also positing that Overstrike is now named Fuse, calling it a "reworking" of the originally announced concept (what that means is up to your own interpretation). We'll presumably find out for sure when the Fuse website's countdown clock runs out in another seven days.And wouldn't you know it, there's an upcoming Insomniac press event offering hands-on time with an unannounced game. Sounds like we'll find out what the mystery is all about soon enough.
A taste of Ratchet & Clank Collection
The PlayStation 2 saga of a lombax and his faithful robot companion arrives at retail and on PSN in North America August 28. The Ratchet & Clank Collection adds a little HD graphical polish to the first three games in the series for $29.99. It includes Up Your Arsenal's multiplayer – without the need for a PS2 online peripheral.
Insomniac and EA's Outernauts begin Facebook exploration today
Outernauts, the adventure RPG from developer Insomniac (Ratchet and Clank, Resistance series) and publisher EA, launched today on the solar system's most used social networking site. The game sounds like Facebook Pokémon, as players "capture and train exotic alien beasts for battle.""By bringing the breadth and elements of console gaming to a social game, we hope to give our fans – both old and new – a unique gaming experience on Facebook," said Insomniac founder Ted Price.Go ahead and try out the game now while your teacher or boss is distracted.
Sony: 'No definitive plans' for Resistance series, no games currently in the works
The folks who created the Resistance series, Insomniac Games, are no longer working on it. This much we know. But what of Sony? The Japanese publishing giant owns the intellectual property rights to the Resistance series – as evidenced by the recent release of Resistance: Burning Skies on Vita, developed by Nihilistic – but is it planning on any more series entries? "We have no definitive plans," Sony Computer Entertainment Europe producer Daniel Brooke said in a recent interview.That isn't to say the series is done, of course. Brooke's full answer was, "The Resistance franchise has been exciting to work on, but as for the future we have no definitive plans," which sounds an awful lot more couched to us than straight up saying the series is done with. Considering Sony's five games deep on the franchise and the latest entry was billed as a sell-point for the Vita, we're not counting out Resistance just yet. After all, those Chimera are awfully dexterous.
Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault is Insomniac's next PSN game, arriving this fall
Ratchet & Clank are heading once more into the space breach, this time waging a "Full Frontal Assault" against space crabs with gatling guns, it seems. Insomniac head (and general nice dude) Ted Price took to the US PlayStation Blog this afternoon to announce "Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault" for PlayStation Network, alongside plans to launch the game "this holiday season."Aside from the artwork you see above and the logo we've dropped in the gallery below, Price offered few details on the game. He said it'll be a "fun-sized" R&C title (like Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty before it), and that the game will return to "the series' classic feel, camera, controls, and weapons, while innovating and giving you a whole new way to play." What that means is another question altogether. Price also said that the game will feature online co-op, but kept details similarly slim.%Gallery-156436%
Outernauts is new Facebook game from Insomniac and EA
Insomniac Games (Ratchet and Clank, Resistance series) and Electronic Arts have teamed up on Outernauts, an adventure role-playing Facebook game. Outernauts are sent out into the galaxy to capture and train "exotic alien beasts" and unlock the secrets of the ancients while fighting in asynchronous battles."As we have demonstrated for nearly twenty years in the console games space, we're confident we can help evolve the definition of a game experience on Facebook," said Insomniac prez Ted Price. "With Outernauts, we are delivering a deep story with real RPG strategy, coupled with Insomniac's signature sense of humor."The game popped up across galactic radar relays this past February following copyright registrations, and could be seen in stars after the creation of Insomniac Click. Outernauts will launch this summer and is currently in closed beta.%Gallery-155029%
'Resistance: The Trilogy' pops up on Amazon France with May 16 launch
Normally when we report on retail listings outing a game, said retail listing is quickly pulled down to avoid embarrassment. In the case of Resistance: The Trilogy, well, apparently Amazon France isn't too concerned. A listing – one that's still live as of this writing – for just such a game popped up on Amazon France, spotted by UK site CVG.The listing puts a May 16 launch date and a €59.99 ($79.99) price tag on the unannounced bundle, which we're guessing means a May 15 launch here in North America (and a likely $59.99 pricing). You've probably already guessed as much, but the product listing confirms the trilogy as a repackaging of the three Resistance titles already available for the PlayStation 3. With such a revealing product page, we expect to hear something more official from Sony as the day goes on. We've reached out regardless in the meantime.
Ratchet and Clank HD collection in NA this fall, Europe in May
The Ratchet and Clank Collection, an HD roundup of Insomniac's popular PS2 platformers, has been made official by the PlayStation Blog (Amazon spilled the sprockets earlier this month). The bundle, which includes Ratchet and Clank, R&C: Going Commando and R&C: Up Your Arsenal, will be available May 16 in Europe (as The Ratchet & Clank Trilogy) and "this fall" in North America."I know it's a little bit later than the spring European release, but it's because we have something very special planned for our North American fans to celebrate the 10th anniversary, and we'll share all the details very soon," Insomniac Games' CEO Ted Price wrote on the US PS Blog.All three titles will feature 1080p HD support (720p in 3D) and Trophies, along with the online, competitive multiplayer component from Up Your Arsenal. Ah, the internet was still such a new and magical place back in 2004.
Ratchet and Clank HD listed on Amazon France
A Ratchet and Clank HD Collection was spotted and pulled from Amazon France. Eurogamer grabbed an image of the listing before the takedown, which had a May 16, 2012, launch date.Since this is the Ratchet and Clank HD Collection, we take it to mean it includes the original game, Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal. It'd be a bonus if Deadlocked -- the Jak X of the series -- were also included.Ratchet and Clank being MIA from all the HD collections that Sony's been pushing out over the years has been a little odd. Anyway, none of this HD collection talk is official until Mr. Zurkon says so. Mr. Zurkon has the last word on everything.
'Outernauts' trademarked by Insomniac, could be part of EA Partners deal
The wily gentlemen at NeoGAF have spotted a copyright registration by Insomniac Games for something called Outernauts, supposedly a new game the developer is working on. If you thought the company was already working on "O-something," you're also right: Overstrike was announced at last year's E3. But Outernauts is new, and Insomniac has also registered "outernauts-game.com," and "outernauts-game.net," so the game, as they say, is afoot.There's more, too: A Google search for the recently unburied title revealed a wiki page that was apparently meant for EA Partners marketing planning, and revealed both Overstrike and Outernauts, along with "Respawn" (probably the new project from the studio of the same name), The Secret World (which EA is publishing with Funcom) and "Populous," which might be a new version of that old strategy series. And as if all of that isn't enough, the wiki page was created by one "pmarineau," which matches up to Phil Marineau, who happens to be EA's director of marketing.Whew! Did we mention that the NeoGAF folks were wily? We've contacted Insomniac for comment on this one, but it's unlikely they'll confirm at this point. We'll probably just have to wait for the official Outernauts announcement to know what it's all about.
Price: Insomniac is done with Resistance, Sony isn't
Insomniac CEO Ted Price went to the YouTubes for a "face to face" with Resistance fans about his declaration that the developer is done with the franchise. There was apparently some confusion with fans that believed the series, owned by Sony, would end after Insomniac moved on."We believe that Resistance has reached its logical conclusion, in terms of the story we wanted to tell," Price said. "However, that doesn't mean the Resistance franchise isn't continuing. It's already in the capable hands of Nihilistic. And with Sony's shepherding we know it will continue to live on and expand."Nihilistic is currently working on Resistance: Burning Skies for Vita, available sometime this summer. Insomniac is moving on to multiplatform co-op shooter Overstrike.
Insomniac done with Resistance
Insomniac CEO Ted Price has said the company is done with the Resistance franchise."We won't be making any more Resistances," Price told VG247. And that's that.The company previously announced it's moving on to multiplatform projects like Overstrike, a four-player co-op shooter, which will hopefully pan out as a more substantial and integrated experience than the company's previous grand experiment in multiplayer co-op, Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One.At least Insomniac ended its work on the Resistance franchise on a high note. Resistance 3 was easily the best in a series that had been trying to find its footing this entire console generation.
