BombsOverBaghdad
2013
Fuse is the kind of game the word ‘mid’ was made for. It’s not bad and you can even have some fun with it, but it’s got nothing to get excited about and after you’re done with it you won’t think about it ever again.
Fuse’s main problem is how it’s boring in spite of itself. One of the playable characters has a weapon that turns enemies into wormholes, something straight out of a Ratchet & Clank game, and it gets old much, much faster than you’d think it would. The final boss features you fighting a giant mech on the outside of a space station, yet is somehow completely unremarkable. This game just has such a derivative energy to it, it’s like if you asked a computer to generate a 7th generation third-person shooter. You and your generic squad mates killing generic enemies in generic locations as part of a generic ‘save the world’ plot.
Insomniac Games was arguably the hardest working studio of the 6th and 7th gen and this is not a compliment. In the 17 years between the release of the studio’s first game, Disruptor, and that of Fuse, Insomniac pumped out 18 games. Their 19th, Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus, was released the same year as Fuse and on top of that, Insomniac was conceptualizing and pitching Sunset Overdrive while both games were in development. This short turnaround time between games meant Insomniac had to leave a ton of stuff on the cutting room floor simply because there just wasn’t time to implement it, and I can’t help but think of how this culture of crunch affected Fuse. Had it been given more time in the oven, would we have gotten something more fleshed out, more exciting? Perhaps, but this is the game we’re left with. One that has been completely forgotten and deserves to be.
Fuse’s main problem is how it’s boring in spite of itself. One of the playable characters has a weapon that turns enemies into wormholes, something straight out of a Ratchet & Clank game, and it gets old much, much faster than you’d think it would. The final boss features you fighting a giant mech on the outside of a space station, yet is somehow completely unremarkable. This game just has such a derivative energy to it, it’s like if you asked a computer to generate a 7th generation third-person shooter. You and your generic squad mates killing generic enemies in generic locations as part of a generic ‘save the world’ plot.
Insomniac Games was arguably the hardest working studio of the 6th and 7th gen and this is not a compliment. In the 17 years between the release of the studio’s first game, Disruptor, and that of Fuse, Insomniac pumped out 18 games. Their 19th, Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus, was released the same year as Fuse and on top of that, Insomniac was conceptualizing and pitching Sunset Overdrive while both games were in development. This short turnaround time between games meant Insomniac had to leave a ton of stuff on the cutting room floor simply because there just wasn’t time to implement it, and I can’t help but think of how this culture of crunch affected Fuse. Had it been given more time in the oven, would we have gotten something more fleshed out, more exciting? Perhaps, but this is the game we’re left with. One that has been completely forgotten and deserves to be.
2017
The publisher practically begging MatPat to make a Game Theory video on this game is somehow the least embarrassing thing about it.
I’d rate it a 3.5 but any game with giant spiders is a no go for me
2011
My only real experience playing Minecraft was when I was 14 and played a cracked version I had downloaded onto my grandmother’s laptop, and to this day it’s still some of the fondest memories I have of playing a video game.
2004
I’ll be real, I only bought this game because it included a copy of Colin McRae Rally 04, the best rally driving game ever made. This game’s pretty good too.
2003
Throughout my short time writing on Backloggd, I’ve often found that the more I like a game, the less I have to say about it. This is the end of the review.
2007
Rating based on the movie, the game is garbage
2007
Heavenly Sword was a project borne into a rough situation. Being one of the PlayStation 3’s headlining exclusives at the time meant it had the unenviable task of trying to sell the PS3 in 2007, which meant it had to convince people of two things: 1.That the PlayStation Triple Ballin’ was worth paying $599 US Dollars for and 2.That the SixAxis wasn’t a pile of shit. Unfortunately, this was not a task Heavenly Sword nor its developer Ninja Theory were up for.
Heavenly Sword certainly looks great. If there’s something Ninja Theory has always been good at, it’s the visual design of their games. There are some very good character designs here, the main character Nariko being the obvious standout, and your journey takes you through these lush locations inspired by both Eastern and Western fantasy (Ninja Theory named Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Lord of the Rings as inspirations) that keep the game still looking good despite the fact it’s rapidly approaching 20 years old. The game isn’t free from technical issues, however. There’s constant framerate drops and some absolutely vicious screen tearing, and inconsistent audio mixing where cutscenes will be much quieter than gameplay.
When it comes to gameplay, that’s probably Heavenly Sword’s biggest stumble. In this game you block attacks automatically while you’re not attacking. If you press Triangle at the right time while blocking, you’ll counter their attack. Another wrinkle is added with your stances. You have three stances, and your stance has to match your attacker’s in order to block their attacks. In theory this discourages mindless button-mashing, in practice this and a crappy dodge roll just ends up with you constantly getting hit out of your combos, leading to a combat system that isn’t very fun, especially since you have to use the dreaded SixAxis to initiate air combos. Boss battles alleviate this a bit since you only have one enemy to worry about, but they’re extremely mediocre and one-note, which wouldn’t be such a problem if they didn’t take so goddamn long to get over with. They made 5-minute bosses that take 10+ minutes to beat.
The hack & slash gameplay isn’t all you’ll be doing here. At times you’ll be controlling Nariko’s friend Kai, whose weapon of choice is her trusty crossbow. Kai’s sections are the worst parts of the game. They move at a snail’s pace and you have to deal with aiming so bad you’ll struggle to hit enemies at point-blank range.
These days Heavenly Sword seems to have been almost entirely forgotten, and it’s no mystery as to why. Apart from its looks and cinematic presentation, there’s very little here to recommend. Doesn’t help that it released just two weeks before Halo 3. “Don’t buy an Xbox 360 and Halo 3, buy a PS3 and Heavenly Sword instead!” is an extremely hard sell. Really, I think the most interesting thing about Heavenly Sword is the context in which it was released. I have a fascination with early 7th gen releases. They have a special kind of jank that is different from that of the previous gen and also later in the generation. It’s a jank borne from developers still getting used to HD development being very excited to show off what they can do with the new hardware but whose reach still exceeded their grasp. That’s Heavenly Sword to a tee. As a game it’s not very good, but as a piece of PS3 history I’m genuinely enamored with it.
Heavenly Sword certainly looks great. If there’s something Ninja Theory has always been good at, it’s the visual design of their games. There are some very good character designs here, the main character Nariko being the obvious standout, and your journey takes you through these lush locations inspired by both Eastern and Western fantasy (Ninja Theory named Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Lord of the Rings as inspirations) that keep the game still looking good despite the fact it’s rapidly approaching 20 years old. The game isn’t free from technical issues, however. There’s constant framerate drops and some absolutely vicious screen tearing, and inconsistent audio mixing where cutscenes will be much quieter than gameplay.
When it comes to gameplay, that’s probably Heavenly Sword’s biggest stumble. In this game you block attacks automatically while you’re not attacking. If you press Triangle at the right time while blocking, you’ll counter their attack. Another wrinkle is added with your stances. You have three stances, and your stance has to match your attacker’s in order to block their attacks. In theory this discourages mindless button-mashing, in practice this and a crappy dodge roll just ends up with you constantly getting hit out of your combos, leading to a combat system that isn’t very fun, especially since you have to use the dreaded SixAxis to initiate air combos. Boss battles alleviate this a bit since you only have one enemy to worry about, but they’re extremely mediocre and one-note, which wouldn’t be such a problem if they didn’t take so goddamn long to get over with. They made 5-minute bosses that take 10+ minutes to beat.
The hack & slash gameplay isn’t all you’ll be doing here. At times you’ll be controlling Nariko’s friend Kai, whose weapon of choice is her trusty crossbow. Kai’s sections are the worst parts of the game. They move at a snail’s pace and you have to deal with aiming so bad you’ll struggle to hit enemies at point-blank range.
These days Heavenly Sword seems to have been almost entirely forgotten, and it’s no mystery as to why. Apart from its looks and cinematic presentation, there’s very little here to recommend. Doesn’t help that it released just two weeks before Halo 3. “Don’t buy an Xbox 360 and Halo 3, buy a PS3 and Heavenly Sword instead!” is an extremely hard sell. Really, I think the most interesting thing about Heavenly Sword is the context in which it was released. I have a fascination with early 7th gen releases. They have a special kind of jank that is different from that of the previous gen and also later in the generation. It’s a jank borne from developers still getting used to HD development being very excited to show off what they can do with the new hardware but whose reach still exceeded their grasp. That’s Heavenly Sword to a tee. As a game it’s not very good, but as a piece of PS3 history I’m genuinely enamored with it.
2012
I’m not glad Airtight Games shut down and they clearly had some talented people there, but between this, Dark Void, and Murdered: Soul Suspect, it’s clear that as a studio they just were not ready for primetime.
2004
-4 stars for being named Driv3r
Not the best superhero game ever, but it might be the coolest. Turning buses into skateboards, making boxing gloves out of cars, suplexing enemies off the top of skyscrapers, this game constantly has you doing the coolest shit imaginable. It’s a game made up entirely of the stuff kids would imagine doing whenever they would put on a pair of those big plastic Hulk hands toys. No superhero game has encapsulated the power fantasy of its titular character quite like this one.
A messy, janky game for a messy, janky franchise. There are so many interesting ideas here that are held back by 6th gen hardware, and that hardware is getting pushed to its absolute limit. Not a perfect game, but the perfect Matrix game.
2005
”Let the rage of the gods drive your blades, Kratos”
Despite owning both a PS2 and PS3 and loving the PSP games, I’ve never touched the original God of War series, beyond playing III Remastered when it was free on PS+ a few years ago. Finally playing the original God of War nearly 20 years after its release, I find myself far more impressed with it than I am with GoW 2018 and Ragnarok. Don’t get me wrong, this game is worse in several respects that I will get into and I don’t mean to turn this into and an ‘old vs new’ thing, but I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I just respect this game’s ambitions more.
The new God of War games are one of the few things I’ll readily call pretentious, cloaking themselves in an air of maturity and prestige that comes across like a child wearing his father’s clothes. The original God of War series, on the other hand, is famously very juvenile, but also feels much more honest. It knows what kind of game and story it is and doesn’t pretend to be anything more than that. The narrative here isn’t exactly one of the greatest gaming has to offer, but it’s effective and I do like the way Kratos is portrayed here. He’s a compelling protagonist with sympathetic qualities, but he’s also not a good person and the game doesn’t even try to convince you otherwise. Kratos puts the ‘anti’ in ‘anti-hero’; he’s at best ambivalent towards the suffering of others and at his worst will readily sacrifice others to achieve his goals without a second thought or any hint of remorse. You can see a clear line from the anti-hero he is here to the straight up villain he becomes in III.
Where the game falls flat is unfortunately in the combat, it’s meat and potatoes. The actual combat system is great, the blades of chaos are tons of fun. The real problem is how the enemy encounters are designed. Fights drag on for way too long, each one feeling like it should’ve ended 3-5 enemies ago. There were so many instances where I was begging the game to just wrap it up already. This wouldn’t be such a problem if the enemies weren’t such damage sponges. Even the weakest most basic enemies feel like they take 10 too many hits to kill. Sure, using your magic abilities alleviate this a bit, but your magic bad drains quick and again, there are way too many enemies in each fight.
Unfortunately the combat isn’t where the frustrations end, as the team at Santa Monica had some really funny ideas of what constituted an enjoyable challenge when it came to puzzles and platforming. Many of the puzzle/platforming sections are much longer than they need to be and offer such little room for error that it makes them not just difficult, but frustrating. There’s one section where you have to slowly push a box uphill while enemies infinitely spawn around you and I refuse to believe anyone played that and thought it was fun. My own personal hell is just being forced to play the Challenge of Hades for all of eternity.
God of War is clearly a very rough game and while I can’t say my enjoyment outweighed my frustration, I’m glad I played it, if only so I could have the full context of the series’ roots. This was clearly the work of a team, with the next generation of gaming on the horizon, trying to squeeze absolutely everything they can out of the PS2 while they still can, and that’s very admirable.
Despite owning both a PS2 and PS3 and loving the PSP games, I’ve never touched the original God of War series, beyond playing III Remastered when it was free on PS+ a few years ago. Finally playing the original God of War nearly 20 years after its release, I find myself far more impressed with it than I am with GoW 2018 and Ragnarok. Don’t get me wrong, this game is worse in several respects that I will get into and I don’t mean to turn this into and an ‘old vs new’ thing, but I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I just respect this game’s ambitions more.
The new God of War games are one of the few things I’ll readily call pretentious, cloaking themselves in an air of maturity and prestige that comes across like a child wearing his father’s clothes. The original God of War series, on the other hand, is famously very juvenile, but also feels much more honest. It knows what kind of game and story it is and doesn’t pretend to be anything more than that. The narrative here isn’t exactly one of the greatest gaming has to offer, but it’s effective and I do like the way Kratos is portrayed here. He’s a compelling protagonist with sympathetic qualities, but he’s also not a good person and the game doesn’t even try to convince you otherwise. Kratos puts the ‘anti’ in ‘anti-hero’; he’s at best ambivalent towards the suffering of others and at his worst will readily sacrifice others to achieve his goals without a second thought or any hint of remorse. You can see a clear line from the anti-hero he is here to the straight up villain he becomes in III.
Where the game falls flat is unfortunately in the combat, it’s meat and potatoes. The actual combat system is great, the blades of chaos are tons of fun. The real problem is how the enemy encounters are designed. Fights drag on for way too long, each one feeling like it should’ve ended 3-5 enemies ago. There were so many instances where I was begging the game to just wrap it up already. This wouldn’t be such a problem if the enemies weren’t such damage sponges. Even the weakest most basic enemies feel like they take 10 too many hits to kill. Sure, using your magic abilities alleviate this a bit, but your magic bad drains quick and again, there are way too many enemies in each fight.
Unfortunately the combat isn’t where the frustrations end, as the team at Santa Monica had some really funny ideas of what constituted an enjoyable challenge when it came to puzzles and platforming. Many of the puzzle/platforming sections are much longer than they need to be and offer such little room for error that it makes them not just difficult, but frustrating. There’s one section where you have to slowly push a box uphill while enemies infinitely spawn around you and I refuse to believe anyone played that and thought it was fun. My own personal hell is just being forced to play the Challenge of Hades for all of eternity.
God of War is clearly a very rough game and while I can’t say my enjoyment outweighed my frustration, I’m glad I played it, if only so I could have the full context of the series’ roots. This was clearly the work of a team, with the next generation of gaming on the horizon, trying to squeeze absolutely everything they can out of the PS2 while they still can, and that’s very admirable.
1998
Games this bad shouldn’t be allowed to have music this good.