Fuzion Frenzy

"What do you get when you cross a few little freaks with a load of trash?"

Tonight's quiz; what do you get when you cross some little freaks with a whole pile of trash? Fusion Frenzy! That is the problem, isn't it? You can get a party game like Mario party (even if it does feature Mario)and it will totally blow this away. In its heart, Fusion Frenzy is not a bad game, but suffers from quite a few design issues that lower the score and the level of fun encountered by the player. I personally like to get a few friends and go crazy with a great multiplayer game, and many are like that too. If you are, then remember not to choose this. And if you are not like me, then still avoid it.

Audio & Video
Why won't he shut up? That was the question I continuously asked myself while playing this (among others, such as, ''Why am I playing this anyway), as I just got so annoying with the announcer. Every contest involves him shouting 'Fusion Frenzy' at the top of his lungs; it may sound good for boxing, but not for this. The voice overs for the characters wee also equally bad. Trust me, that English chap sound more like a stoned retard than a true Englishman. Trust me, we do not sound like that, and I am sure there are many Japanese people who were disgusted with how their people were portrayed (the character will remain nameless so to avoid offending the Japanese). It got very annoying to listen to these weird voices spouting grammatically incorrect phrases each time they won a contest, which became very stale and irritating after a while. The graphics, on the other hand were not half bad. I hated the fact that everyone was a weedy little ant on the screen, but from that distance you could not see the choppy graphics. The backgrounds were usually quite repetitive and the characters were quite stereotypical, but there never any slowdown, even when 4 players were causing a lot of commotion or even mayhem on screen. That did help the gameplay, but was not enough.

Gameplay & Control
The storyline consists of your character wanting to win the contest or something; come on, I could do better than that! The gameplay was actually very enjoyable and nearly got a 10 when I first played the game, because everything was new. I have never seen such outlandish modes, but that just increased the joy factor. Unfortunately, the mini games got extremely tedious and repetitive very quickly. There were only about 15 real mini games, and the rest were just clones with different names. That was disappointing and brought down the replayability another notch. The controls, on the other hand, were easy to pick up and made the game even easier, as it did suffer from a sometimes cheap AI. There were only a few actions to perform, which made the game linear, but a party game won't hold up if it has a steep learning curve and frustrating controls.

Replayability
With only a few mini games, Fusion Frenzy will run out of steam in no time. There is very little to unlock, if anything, which also did not help. I know party games probably do not last over 3 days, but I would have preferred more depth and longevity so that the lonelier gamers do not get completely bored before the day is over.

Overall
Fusion Frenzy was a large let down that really should not be bought. Do as I did and buy Halo; that way you can play all the best mini games for free! As said before, the game is not too bad, but suffers from design flaws. If ever a Fusion Frenzy 2 comes out, adding quality to the audio and video, fixing a few gameplay elements and adding more games modes will make this an excellent game...for a week or so.

The final word - Rent or buy Halo, and play this for free. Purchase is totally out of the question.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/09/03