Windows Phone Xbox Live Review: Fusion: Sentient

When Microsoft announced that downloadable Xbox 360 title Fusion: Genesis would receive a Windows Telephone companion game, Fusion: Sentient, my eyes lit upwardly. Sentient comes from Wahoo Studios, makers of some charming and creative XBLA titles. And what gamer doesn't enjoy the promise of cross-platform connectivity? Imagine my surprise and so when I finally played Sentient and discovered it to be a dull, arduous greenbacks-in of a game.

While Fusion: Genesis on XBLA is a twin-stick shooter/RPG hybrid that takes place entirely in space, Fusion: Sentient attempts to flesh out the shared universe at ground level. The story involves a human, named Histrion - yes, that'due south what they call him instead of using the histrion's GamerTag or fifty-fifty just an interesting proper name. He'due south an up-and-coming Machinist, a beau who specializes in raising Sentients. In the Fusion universe, Sentients are living robots who can walk around and interact with people or fly aslope their spaceships. Equally the story progresses, an evil robot-faced lady continually tries to electrocute the hero and his personal Sentient, Cogita. It seems there is a secret weapon capable of destroying the universe, and she wants to unleash its crawly ability.

Sentient's story makes less and less sense as the game goes on. Starting time, it's told entirely through some of the most poorly-drawn digital comic panels ever – recollect Dead Space: Ignition bad. Not only is the art hideous and amateurish, merely information technology poorly conveys the action betwixt panels, resulting in frequent confusion. Worst of all, the story has adjacent to goose egg to do with the game itself. Player and Cogita work solitary almost the entire time, and yet in the game, players always control a squad of five nameless Sentients. Player and Cogita are nowhere to be establish. The disconnect between story and gameplay makes it hard to care almost anything that happens in the game.

Perhaps if Fusion: Sentient'due south gameplay was above par I could ignore the irrelevant narrative. Information technology does initially prove hope. Beards & Beaks previously adjusted the real-time strategy genre to mobile phone, to mixed but enjoyable results. Sentient takes an entirely different approach to the same genre. Players control a squad of v mechs, battling other mechs over a series of missions. Along the way, your mechs level up, plus you gain new loot and mechs. Unfortunately, none of it works very well.

Sentient's main problem is mission variety. Specifically, the consummate and total lack of information technology. Every mission consists of three phases. In the first, players must capture the enemy'due south 'centre' – basically a flag. In the next phase, y'all capture a generic artifact while defending the heart. The third phase is only similar the second, but with ii artifacts instead of one. Multiply that times 44 missions and you accept the unabridged game. While there are eight different environments, maps never have any distinguishing characters to differentiate ane from another, and then every mission on a map looks and feels just similar every other.

The developers throw in a few modifiers now and then in an attempt to alleviate the monotony: countless enemies, a time limit, reduced healing, or reduced field of vision. Every single modifier is a nuisance, decreasing the fun instead of enhancing it. Countless enemy missions in particular tin can be extremely unfair as the enemies overwhelm your pocket-sized squad of robots.

Winning the more challenging missions commonly comes down to grinding until your Sentients become strong enough to survive. Sentient includes some RPG elements, every bit your mechs gain experience and levels by defeating enemies. I'm all for RPG mechanics, and grinding can be fun when it'south done right. Only the units in this game are completely disposable. There are merely three classes (DPS, Tank, and Healer), each of which comes in five levels of quality: common, uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary. Once you gain the adjacent level of a class you're using (as a mail-mission reward), you just sell or auction the old ane and start leveling up the new guy. Information technology'south hard to get attached to characters when the majority of the time you'll only be getting rid of them anyway.

The main benefit of leveling upwardly is gaining access to better weapons, as every weapon is locked to a minimum level. Equipping Sentients with new guns is a consummate pain though. To equip a gun, y'all select one of the 2-7 equippable slots on a mech. Some slots can use certain weapon types while other spots can't; it's never explained to the player. In one case you've called a slot, all of the possible weapons it can apply announced in a huge list. Scrolling left to right through the list takes longer and longer equally you acquire new weapons. There are absolutely no sorting options, then every time it'southward a slog through hordes of weapons equally you search for a level-appropriate one. If yous could machine-equip the best weapon for the mech's level or at to the lowest degree bound to level-appropriate weapons, things would get much more smoothly. It seems like the developers put absolutely no idea into inventory direction.

Fusion: Sentient is too a fairly unattractive game. The problem stems not from the mech models, which look good enough for a mobile title. Instead, the fog of state of war keeps things ugly. Unexplored areas are simply black. The majority of the fourth dimension y'all'll be pushing back the blackness as you lot explore each map in search of artifacts. There'due south never a map that's just filled in, nor do y'all spend much time on a map afterwards filling it in. The pervasive blackness creates a sense that the maps are floating in the center of nowhere. Games like Final Fantasy Tactics handle floating maps far more attractively.

A few more complaints: Fusion: Sentient'southward loading times are excessive, ranging from 30 seconds to a minute at the start of each phase of a mission. That would exist too annoying in a console championship and information technology'due south just ridiculous for a portable one. Out of my 12 or so hours of gameplay, at least 66 minutes of it was spent staring at loading screens!

Terminal, the unit pathfinding is extremely bad. The player's own mechs cannot walk through each other. Whenever the lead mech walks into a corner, the iv robots following him volition box him in and keep him from moving. You accept to manually select one of the obstructing robots and move him out of the way, and and so quickly move the lead mech earlier one of the other guys fills in the place yous've just cleared. Lots of times an private or grouping of mechs will take extremely roundabout paths instead of the shortest route, besides.

Connectivity

Fusion: Genesis

As mentioned before, Fusion: Sentient connects with Fusion: Genesis on Xbox 360. Mechs from the phone game tin be auctioned or gifted to console players. It's necessary to do so (or but sell them in-game for a much lower amount), as yous tin only hold a limited number of mechs at one fourth dimension. I go into greater particular nigh the connectivity and its benefits hither. I'll just add that during my playtime, the auction server was frequently unavailable. This ofttimes forced me to stop playing and come up back to the game after since I didn't want to merely sell my Sentients for chip. Players of the now-delisted Crackdown: Project Sunburst volition remember its similarly inexcusable server woes.

Achievements

Fusion: Sentient has that most dreaded affair: glitched Achievements. 'Repo Man' and 'Reaper'due south Understudy' require players to complete 10 missions by collecting all artifacts and x missions by defeating all enemies, respectively. Unfortunately the game's tracking of progress towards these Achievements is broken. Some players have managed to get 'Repo Human' (not me), but 'Reaper's Understudy' remains completely unattainable at nowadays.

Overall Impression

Given Wahoo/NinjaBee's previous rails record of quality XBLA games, I tin can only assume they weren't given plenty time with Fusion: Sentient to brand a decent game. Hopefully they will at to the lowest degree ready the cleaved Achievements and add together Fast App Switching, which would convalesce loading times upon resuming. But fifty-fifty without those issues, Sentient would still be a long, boring grind with horrendous inventory management. Fusion: Genesis, on the other hand, comes from a different developer – Starfire Studios – and is far more worthwhile. To learn more than about the XBLA game, check out my full review at Co-Optimus.

Fusion: Sentient costs $ii.99 and has a free trial. If you value your time or money, try to avoiding picking it up here at the Market. Fusion: Genesis for Xbox 360 costs 800 Microsoft Points ($x) correct here.

Update

Ater more than than a year, the game finally received a patch in early on 2022 to fix the broken Achievement and add Fast App Switching support. Thank goodness!

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-phone-xbox-live-review-fusion-sentient

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