Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

Electronic Arts

The shooter genre has typically been defined by its ability to deliver things like innovation and addictive gameplay, which is what makes a title like “Fuse” seem so unremarkable. It’s not that the game, developed by the “Ratchet and Clank” team at Insomniac, is necessarily bad – it just feels rather mundane compared to some of the other shooters on the market. Heavily influenced by a number of likeminded titles (particularly Epic’s “Gears of War” series), “Fuse” offers a fun but somewhat shallow experience, namely due to the fact that it never fully develops its own identity amidst the hodgepodge of game mechanics borrowed from much better titles.

The story is generic and not terribly engaging, and part of that problem is a result of the almost nonchalant handling of the way information is distributed to players over the course of the game. It gets to the point where unless you’re tracking down and reading every single piece of supplemental intel hidden throughout each map, you probably won’t have a very good sense of what’s going on. So with that in mind, here’s the official synopsis provided by Insomniac:

What happens when a violent civilization unearths advanced alien technology? In the not-so-distant-future, a new kind of arms race is about to begin. When rogue paramilitary company Raven discovers an alien energy source called Fuse deep within a classified government facility, they stage a daring mission to steal it. Soon, they use Fuse to advance their arsenal beyond anything the military has ever prepared for. Desperate to keep their discovery secret, the CIA calls in a small independent contact team called Overstrike 9 to neutralize the threat. But as Overstrike closes in on one enemy, another even more sinister reveals itself behind the curtain. And what was once an alien arms race becomes something much more deadly.

Read the rest of this entry »

As we accumulate more and more gadgets, it seems like we have charging cords everywhere. With a family it’s even worse.

The PowerSlice from fuse is a universal charger that can help keep all of these gadgets organized and charged. With the PowerSlice you can charge up to four gadgets on one plug as the device uses individual slices with charging tips along with a built-in USB port on the charger base. Slices are purchased separately and slip into the unit, so you can charge a variety of devices from Samsung, LG, Apple products and Micro and Mini USB. You can have your iPhone charging while another has their Blackberry.

You can put the PowerSlice in a strategic spot in the kitchen or another spot in your home and make things easier for everyone while cutting down on the clutter.

The universal charger base unit costs $44.99 and additional slices are $9.99 each. There’s also a bundle with the PowerSlice base charger plus two iPhone/iPod compatible slices available for $49.99. It’s very practical and makes a nice stocking-stuffer for the holidays.