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Gather 'round, children, and hear the tale of newly released games on the latest live episode of the Super Joystiq Podcast. This week, Richard, Dave and Jordan talk about Fuse, Grid 2 and CastleStorm. Also, just because we like you, we're giving away a snazzy Animal Crossing: New Leaf 3DS XL!

The show goes live at 3:30 ET. Be here!

It would seem Insomniac Games is "just getting started" with Fuse, CEO Ted Price claims in a missive on the company blog. Price says that the team is already working on the next experience in the Fuse world - and he's not talking about DLC.

"We've already begun expanding what we've begun with Fuse. Right now as I write this we're taking the core concepts behind Fuse and prototyping new stuff ... stuff that leverages this bizarre alien substance which is at the heart of the game. No, I'm not talking about DLC. I'm talking about new Fuse experiences altogether," Price said. "What's wonderful about creating and owning one's IP is that you can take it any direction you want. And that's what we're going to do. Stay tuned!"

Fuse launched earlier this week on Xbox 360 and PS3. It's a co-op arcade shooter published under the EA Partners program. Our time with the game may not have been the most enjoyable, but there's certainly room for improvement there.

Fuse is that bad movie your friends like to sit down and slice apart. It's best played with friends, where teamwork and some interesting weaponry help dull the blunt impact of bad game design, awkward animations and a lack of atmosphere.

Without friends, Fuse is nearly intolerable, hampered by inept AI teammates and even thicker enemies. By yourself, every animation quirk and odd design choice frustrates as you wonder who could have seen the same problems and given them the thumbs up.

"Shit gets really weird" in Fuse. Not our words, but those of Overstrike 9's Dalton Brooks. Still, would be a great tagline for Fuse, or any game for that matter. Oh well, Insomniac's Fuse will have to make do without when it launches on May 28 for PS3 and Xbox 360.

The demo of Insomniac's Fuse, formerly Insomniac's Overstrike, melds with the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network today. It's already available on XBLM (all 1.45GB of it), while PSN gets it later today.

The demo lets you play a portion of the four-player shooter's campaign either offline with AI partners, or online. If you go online you can play solo with the option to invite friends, or with friends able to join you at any time. You can also play co-op via matchmaking.

Co-op shooter Fuse will let you take it for a test drive on May 7. Available through Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, the demo supports solo play, four-player co-op (or two player split-screen), allowing a group to try out the four operatives of the Overstrike squad.

"When it comes to Fuse, the biggest thing we've noticed when sharing it with others for the first time is that playing is believing," said Insomniac CEO Ted Price. Players can use the LEAP function to jump between the four characters, making it accessible to solo players as well.

Fuse is scheduled for retail insertion and home extraction on May 28 and 31 in North America and Europe, respectively.

Fuse will change the way we go to war, the way we hunt, the way we profit. It will topple governments and show the world vulnerability. However, there's a wrinkle. Fuse does not scotchgard or starch shirts. Prepare to iron May 28.

Insomniac Games will present a demo prior to Fuse's launch on May 28, for both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 players, the developer has confirmed in an online FAQ. Fuse will support split-screen and online play, lacks micro-transactions and will not ship with an online pass.

Originally billed as Overstrike, Fuse was delayed earlier this year before a final launch date of May 28 was settled upon. All pre-orders unlock additional gear for each of the headless four protagonists.

Delayed until the second quarter of 2013 last January, Insomniac's Fuse has found itself a couple of new release dates: May 28 for North America, and May 31 for Europe, EA has announced.

As is the way with these sorts of things, pre-ordering the game will grant armor and weapons for each the game's four characters, including "Hyperion Prototype Agent Armor Skins, "Hyperion Prototype Agent Weapon Skins," and a "Quickdraw Team Perk" that increases the damage done by one-handed weapons for everyone in your party.

And here we thought all the humor left Fuse with the name change. The last Fuse trailers were pretty dark, with the occasional one-liner balanced by one of the heroes setting fire to a car with a guy in it, but now EA and Insomniac offer two infographics densely packed with joke "information."

These completely fake infographics give us an important piece of (real) information: that we should expect the studio's trademark humor to shine through in the new game. Or at least in its marketing.

Despite what you may have seen, the members of the Fuse Overstrike 9 team have faces. And they use them to see where to shoot, and to issue one-liners at one another.

Despite what you may have seen, Fuse's Overstrike 9 team has faces. And they use them to see where to shoot, and to issue one-liners at one another. See the faces of all four of Fuse's team members in these trailers.

Fuse is a difficult game to preview; it's a busy experience with plenty of interconnected systems and a HUD that brims over with symbols, numbers and meters of various sorts. Insomniac's coming shooter thumbs its nose at the current era of clean user interfaces, which attempt to disguise vital information in natural ways, in favor of the bright-as-can-be notices found in old-school arcade games. It's a retro style that, in the face of modern titles, feels decidedly fresh. Further complicating the experience is the ever-present nature of your squad, working together as a foursome set out to destroy enemy lines.

The trick with Fuse is that the four-person squad is always present: whether you're playing with friends, computer-controlled bots, or a mixture of the two. Fuse features a "Leap" system, allowing players to jump quickly between each character to command their unique skills. Insomniac says its goal is to give players the opportunity to fill every role.

"We've built this game from the ground up with that in mind," Insomniac president and CEO Ted Price tells Joystiq. "We wanted to make sure that there are always four characters in the game but you can have just as much fun by yourself, or with one friend, two friends, or three friends. So that's been our design mantra from the very beginning."

#preview Insomniac's upcoming third-person shooter Fuse is a game built around switching: in its history, its design, and its execution. During a preview event that EA held in New York yesterday to show off the game, I got a closer look at all three elements.  More »

During EA's fiscal third quarter earnings call, CFO Blake Jorgensen revealed that Insomniac's PS3 and Xbox shooter, Fuse, has been delayed.

"We've decided to move the launch of Fuse to Q1 of fiscal 2014," said Jorgensen. That puts the release of the futuristic co-op shooter somewhere between the beginning of April and the end of June in calendar 2013. Fuse was originally slated to launch in March.

The leader of Fuse starring squad Overstrike 9, Dalton Brooks, has a blanket set of rules he likes to follow - too bad his set of rules don't apply to alien weaponry and waves of murderous occupant soldiers.

Echelon mode in Fuse is what Insomniac CEO Ted Price calls "co-opetitive," a variant on the Gears of War 'Horde' mode. Players must survive twelve waves of increasingly more difficult enemies - the exact configuration of each wave is randomized, though you're always guaranteed two boss battle waves.

Price calls Echelon "co-opetitive" because while you're ultimately working together to ensure group survival, the constant money drops - essentially experience points - are something teammates will scramble to grab. With collected cash, players can purchase and upgrade abilities, and progress in Fuse carries across all game modes.

"Part of our goal here is to make this a friendly game - if you've had experiences in multiplayer games before where you jumped in and had your head blown off in the first couple seconds, we don't want that to happen in Fuse," Insomniac CEO Ted Price told Joystiq. "We want Fuse to be a game where you're actually working with players and competing for cash and status. But it's always a friendly competition."

As soon as it was revealed, commenters on popular gaming websites and communities around the internet called the Fuse box art out, citing its odd aesthetic of cutting off the four main characters' faces and intense use of the color orange.

"I'm very clear on what the reaction has been from some of our critics to the cover, but we wanted to pull attention to the Fuse weapons: the Xenotech. That's why they're featured prominently," Insomniac CEO Ted Price told Joystiq during a Fuse preview event showcasing the multiplayer mode Echelon.

"Fuse is - the game revolves around 'Fuse,' storywise and gameplaywise. I think that we wanted to do something that was different. Cutting off characters' heads is not something you see in other game covers. The standard approach is to have the full character, front and center, right in the middle of the box - and we took some creative risks with that. I think some people have spoken out about the fact that we took a creative risk. Some people liked it, some people didn't."

The cover itself was created in collaboration with Petrol Advertising, an LA-based outfit whose clients include Activision, Capcom, Konami, Nintendo and numerous other gaming entities. "We worked with them and came up with a whole bunch of different approaches," Price admits. Eventually both parties decided on the image above.

"Our goal was to very clearly indicate that this is a four-player game, a four-character game. We also didn't want to do something that looked like Charlie's Angels," Price joked. "I think the temptation with four characters sometimes is to have a very high-action shot where they're posing. And we would've been raked over the coals for that."

#fuse This is the new box art for Fuse, an upcoming shooter developed by Insomniac, the folks behind Ratchet & Clank and Resistance. More »

Fuse has a few pre-order bonuses for those extra keen to join Overstrike 9. Developer Insomiac Games revealed pre-orders include four Hyperion Prototype Agent armor skins, four Hyperion Prototype weapon skins, and a Quickdraw team perk which buffs up your squad's one-handed weapons.

Last month we spoke to Insomniac's Ted Price about the continuing changes coming to Fuse even following its post-Overstrike makeover. We'll see how all those changes work out when the game amalgamates with PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 disc drives in March 2013.

Insomniac has sent along a group of new screens for Fuse, which you may remember as Overstrike. In the shots below you can see the Overstrike 9 team up close in the tech lab where they initially find the Fuse weapons, and in a new snow-swathed landscape. The game's coming to Xbox 360 and PS3 sometime next March.

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."

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'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.

#fuse The shooter we now know as Fuse, and which was formerly known as Overstrike, looks like a reasonably realistic third-person shooter. The first time we saw it, though, it was a little more cartoony. Which apparently is nowhere near as cartoony as it was originally. More »

#fuse Despite my aversion to shooters—god, there's too many of them—Overstrike, with its playful, comical tone and its cartoon aesthetic caught my eye. The approach felt like something fresh. But we don't have Overstrike anymore, no, instead we have Fuse. Compare the two trailers for the games and you see see a world of a difference in approach. Where did all the color go? The humor? Why so ‘realistic'? It's almost like the skeptical authority figure in the first trailer got his way and replaced the team of scoundrels because they weren't right for the job. Now Fuse looks like Another Shooter. Hooray? More »

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.

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.

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.

#fuse Last year, Insomniac Games surprised the gaming world by showing up at EA's E3 2011 press conference with an all-new game called Overstrike. Once the shock of seeing the PS3 stalwart studio outside of a Sony event wore off, the buzz on Overstrike was high, thanks to the developer's trademark sharp humor and trademark weapon design. More »