Fuzion Frenzy 2, F.E.A.R demos

By Tom Bramwell Published 25 September, 2006

On Xbox Live Marketplace.

The deluge of new content onto Xbox Live Marketplace continues ahead of X06 later this week, with F.E.A.R. and Fuzion Frenzy 2 playable demos now available.

The Fuzion Frenzy 2 demo consists of three of the game's 40-plus mini-games, and weighs in at 293MB, while details on the F.E.A.R. demo are fewer but the file-size is 542MB.

Xbox Live Marketplace also now hosts trailers for Forza 2 (customisation), Portal, Import Tuner Challenge, Virtua Tennis 3, Eragon, Need For Speed Carbon, Battlestations Midway and The Darkness.

Meanwhile, there's a Mass Effect picture pack, and a Forza 2 theme, which runs to 150 Microsoft points, along with a host of show-floor videos to check out.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (30) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Yossarian #1 5 years ago

    so I could be playing the FEAR demo instead of sitting in work? bleh

  • repairmanjack #2 5 years ago

    FEAR demo!? Great - saved £6 on that lousy magazine.

  • coojam #3 5 years ago

    Have to admit, I'm normally just as comfortable with 360 shooters as I am with their PC counterparts, but F.E.A.R. on 360 seems mightily hard to control, what with the crouching and the slow-moing.

  • EmiliasHorse #4 5 years ago

    WooHoo F.E.A.R..my mate is a daft ass who subscribes to OXM so tried the demo at his. Very good indeed, will download it later.
    But I am really interested in the Fusion Frenzy stuff, if played over Live this could be a cracking load of fun.

  • Xerx3s #5 5 years ago

    Hmmm, somehow the fear demo didn't scare me anymore. Perhaps because I already played fear...

  • EmiliasHorse #6 5 years ago

    That would certainly be a factor I'd imagine

  • EmiliasHorse #7 5 years ago

    Although I replayed System Shock 2 the other day and with head phones on it still made my flesh crawl when the monkeys started screaming..And the nurses discussed the need for fresh meat for the babies. Stuff of legend.

    Come on Bioshock deliver the same feel.

  • peterfll #8 5 years ago

    Fusion Frenzy 2 is shockingly just like the first in terms of looks and play mechanics despite being developed by Hudson Soft this time around.

    I didn't like it.

    I'm also puzzled why MS is giving IP like this a second shot when other original Xbox IP has been binned..... (and the original IP in question here was pretty rubbsih first time around)

  • EmiliasHorse #9 5 years ago

    But is it Live enabled?

  • Wash #10 5 years ago

    Fuzion Frenzy was ace with a bunch of friends, something that couldnt always be achieved due to geography of said friends.

    Fuzion Frenzy + Live is a good thing indeed.

    :)

    As for developing this IP, i suppose there are a number of reasons. A: There aint much competition in the party game genre on the 360, and secondly it was prolly vry cheap to do.

    cant wait mind.
    Edited by 1 at 25/09/06 @ 14:14

  • coojam #11 5 years ago

    Microsoft need to set up a couple of studios like Sony's Singstar/Buzz/EyeToy developers.

  • DrDamn #12 5 years ago

    I thought the Fusion Frenzy demo was pretty good fun personally. I was playing it with 2 other people though, and I think that makes a difference. The presentation is very brash American, but gameplay was solid enough. The massive number of mini games is also promising.

  • belziah #13 5 years ago

    Xerx3s

    Its becos you is bang-up hard!!!!

  • The-Bodybuilder #14 5 years ago

    I'm a yellow-belly when it comes to scary games (excluding RE1-3, I find them boring).

    So I'll probably avoid FEAR> :-(

  • Xerx3s #15 5 years ago

    Although I replayed System Shock 2 the other day and with head phones on it still made my flesh crawl when the monkeys started screaming..And the nurses discussed the need for fresh meat for the babies. Stuff of legend.

    Yeh, but SS2 is in a league of it's own. I've replayed that game coutnless times and it is still good. I think that you can count the number of games over the past decades that are on the same lvl on one hand.

    Its becos you is bang-up hard!!!!

    I eat babies and their candy for breaky.

  • EmiliasHorse #16 5 years ago

    Clive Barker's Undying was quite scary until it got bored of being creepy and flung tons and tons of skeletons and mad monks at you...the illusion was shattered and the game fell on it's arse from there on in. Shame

  • Edward_Gamer #17 5 years ago

    Fusion Frenzy 2 looks like an awesome party game!

    Fusion Frenzy on the Xbox was awesome with 4 players! Having 4 friends over at the same time was cool.

    I can't wait for Fusion Frenzy 2 on the Xbox 360.

  • jlaakso #18 5 years ago

    FEAR's controls are so off that I feel let down. It looks good, but thus far I've had real trouble just moving around, let alone maneuvering in a shootout.

  • andrewwd #19 5 years ago

    I thought the F.E.A.R controls were pretty spot on. Although I'd forgotten how excessive the default 'head bobbing' is; there was an option on the PC version to turn it down. I think this may be what is putting people off.

  • kangarootoo #20 5 years ago

    Played the demo last night. Really liked it. I thought the controls (and some of you know how irate I can get about this :) ) were really good.

    There was no aim-assist that I could detect, which is a real pity, but the actual acceleration of the crosshair when moved around was easily one of the better examples I've seen.

    I personally found that tweaking the sensitivity down a bit really helped, as I kept overshooting at first. The lack of aim-assist is to be lamented as it is really what seperates Halo from its peers. FEAR is good, but its still not up to Halo standards when it comes to controls.

    @jlaakso

    What aspect of the controls did you find annoying. The stick sensitivity, the way they were laid out, the way the character responded? I did personally find jumping around and climbing over stuff to be a bit sluggish, so I seperate that from my comments on the aiming system above.


    I noticed that the demo has no left hand support. Normally I would hope that this would be covered in the full game, but then this is Ubisoft and they have consistently shown that they don't really give a f*ck about that aspect of the game interface. I never stop finding this shocking, maybe its just me, but it seems nothing less than incompetent. Strong words, but its a subject that I feel strongly about (I'm actually right handed myself, for the record).

    I don't want this to turn into a southpaw thread though. The demo had a lot going for it and I think people should check it out and form their own opinions. Some simply won't like it (smelly, this one isn't for you, as well we both know ;) ) but I think it could be one of the shooters to watch on the 360.
    Edited by 1 at 26/09/06 @ 10:59

  • kangarootoo #21 5 years ago

    I would mention, when comparing controls, the 360 version of Far Cry set the bar for me when it comes to bloody awful controls. Love the rest of the game to bits, I really do, but back to the shop it went. Worst controls of any XB or XB360 game I've ever played (worse than the XB version of essentially the same title, which is surely absurd)

  • smelly #22 5 years ago

    FEAR:

    If it's anything like the pc demo.. The demo will be bloody ace, and make you REALLY REALLY want to buy the game.

    I'd suggest you dont, as you'll be VERY disapointed.. But that's just me.

  • peterfll #23 5 years ago

    I tried out the F.E.A.R. demo last night and thought it was solid, it a little dull (looking).

  • jlaakso #24 5 years ago

    @ kangarootoo: Granted, I've only played the demo a bit, but I found it impossible to line up a shot. The crosshairs wouldn't move at all, or they overshot immediately. I haven't tried adjusting the sentivity down yet. I'm willing to give it quite a bit of an effort, as the game does interest me a lot.

    The head bop is quite excessive and and moving felt jerky. I don't know if that's down to the sensitivity, too, we'll see. I had trouble hitting the ladders and so on.

    Also, my pet peeve is present: why no option to toggle the crouch and lean?

    Many games get controls right without any tinkering, I don't know why it's so hard for some devs. FPSs I've been really put off by control issues are the aforementioned 360 Far Cry and Xbox Rainbow Six 3.

  • kangarootoo #25 5 years ago

    "Also, my pet peeve is present: why no option to toggle the crouch and lean?"

    I'm with you on that. Lean I can live with, but no toggle crouch option is poor. Quite common though :(

    Consoles really get a bad deal in that regard. Anyone familiar with PC games will agree that most of them give you shit loads of options. I've even seen seperate controls for mouse speed AND acceleration, with both axis being seperately controlled (so 4 sliders in all). With consoles you are lucky if you get seperate X and Y sensitivity (I'm not slating consoles BTW, they are all I play these days).

    Regards quality of controls, I think it comes down to a matter of priorities. Most devs could get it right if it was given sufficient time, but it seems to me like often as not things are just built to be functional (press left, camera moves left, tick) without enough time being spent on making the controls do the job they are supposed to do, which is surely to allow you to control the game with as little thought as possible (thought about the controls I mean, so you can instead spend time thinking about what you actually want to do in the game).
    Edited by 1 at 26/09/06 @ 11:46

  • Rich72 #26 5 years ago

    have to say i got the demo off the mag and was less than impressed. rag doll effects way too OTT and bland enviroments made for a pretty dull experience

  • Mr_Whacker #27 5 years ago

    I need to play this demo more. It did nothing for me in the 10 mins blast I had last night so I'll be back for a full go tonight. The holdcrouch was very annoying. I'm not a fan of the click sticks at the best of times.
    Edited by 1 at 26/09/06 @ 14:20

  • kangarootoo #28 5 years ago

    For the record, I'm not particularly a fan of the environments in FEAR. I'm much more an open battlefield kind of person and I found the corridor based environments to not really be my bag. I enjoyed the demo, but whether I would still feel the same after playing the whole game is hard to say.

  • jlaakso #29 5 years ago

    Just to tone down my initial reactions, with a couple of playthroughs and part sensitivity, part player adjustment, I believe I can live with FEAR's controls, now. The movement still feels off, but at least my aiming's all right.

    By the by, I always felt that Monolith's FPS games had clunky controls, way back from Shogo and No One Lives Forever.

  • freakybun #30 5 years ago

    OMG, a major PC FPS port with a decent framerate! *gasp* Haven't got an HDTV so can't truely compare the two but it looks fairly close. Perhaps, maybe just perhaps they're finally getting to grips with the 360.

    I was still a little creeped out even after playing the PC version but more disturbingly I couldn't twitch fast enough to aim the damn crosshair. I'm rather good at hitting the walls just above and to the left of the shoulder. damn sticky controls.