It’s official: the game formerly known as Overstrike is now Fuse: a class-based four-player co-op shooter from Insomniac Games.

Overstrike was first revealed at E3 2011, but had subsequently dropped off the radar. Fuse was teased at this year's PAX Prime.

There were a number of reasons for the shift from the stealth-based Overstrike, said Insomniac founder and CEO Ted Price.

“When we showed Overstrike in 2011 we weren’t where we needed to be with the weapons,” he said.

“We had some cool concepts on paper and in the video, but ultimately, when we started playing the game, the weapons lacked heft, they lacked impact, and they lacked that fun factor that we believe is at the core of every one of our games.

“I really like playing games with high-impact weapons. Where you feel like you’ve done a lot of damage, and you’ve ruined that enemy’s day, and we weren’t doing that with the weapons we had before. Even though in the video they looked cool, they weren’t turning people on here and they weren’t turning people on that we had come in and play the game.”

Overstrike's humour was also given a workover in the transition, and character designs were tweaked to look less cartoony.

“The humor is less campy than we had originally. Now we have humor that’s more sophisticated, it’s drier,” said Price.

Fuse designer Brian Allgeier says Insomniac was conscious of providing a "strong single-player experience" and to ensure this was the case, the game gives players the ability to leap between characters when playing solo.

"[Solo play is] something that we didn't want to ignore and that's one big reason why we came up with the Leap feature,” said Allgeier.

“Here we've got this great team of characters and if we just make you stick with one, you're never going to get that experience of playing as a team and using all these fun strategies."

A last-minute legal-rights issue has prevented Insomniac from running their announce trailer, but screenshots from the game are available.

Fuse will be out next year on PS3 and Xbox 360, and may possibly make its way to next-gen systems as well, according to Price.