Fracture
has some compelling new features
such as the Terrain Deformation Technology
As
the footage shows, Fracture has awesome graphics
Use
the pillars of deformed earth for improved
vantage points (and instant death if you're slow)
You can take control of
destructive turrets
Vortex grenades look
super cool!
Today I woke up with a headache. Not because this
game is bone-breakingly painful, but more due to the fact that
I ate several packets of malteasers.
I found a box full of candy in the street the
other day as I was fetching the latest 3rd-person shooter from
LucasArts, Fracture, from the letter box.
Fracture is a third-person shooter with some
really cool gravity and
terrain deformation weapons, which are very innovative features in the
'shooter' genre.
LucasArts did some pretty good things with The Force Unleashed
recently, and truth be told this game can be a lot of fun at times, but
it does
have its problems.
Where shall I begin?
Well, a little about the story: the game is set in
the year 2161 and mankind has truly rooted the goose. They are at a
point of no return; global warming is finally irreversible and in turn
is changing the lives of millions of 'Joe 6-pack' citizens.
Now this is where the game's main emphasis comes
in with the development of "Terrain Deformation Technology".
This advanced geo-technology allowed the
East and West coasts of America to protect themselves from the rising
water levels of the ocean as the ice-caps and glaciers melted.
However the middle of the States weren't so lucky.
They were irrevocably flooded and the world's most powerful nation was
divided in two, in turn dividing the citizens.
Okay. That creates the two sides of this story.
The "Pacificans" who dabbled in altering the state of human DNA to help
withstand the pressures of the changing conditions of the world, and
let's just say this got a little out of hand (a.k.a "playing God").
The other side in this 3rd person battle
is the "The Atlantic Alliance". They took a different approach,
and chose to develop cybernetics.
Long story short, laws where broken by the
Pacificans, alienating them from the nation and making them the 'bad
guys'.
Cue the war.
So having taken all this in, you start the
single-player game as Jet Brody from the Atlantic Alliance, and you
have a cybernetic suit (similar in effect to the Master Chief's combat
suit in
Halo) which has a thing called an overbody shield.
This is basically a shield which is depicted on
screen as a blue bar, which is
your life source and again (like Halo) whenever the bar starts flashing
red you better duck behind some cover.
Or MAKE SOME COVER by using your Terrain
Deformation Technology!!
So your health bar
regenerates so long as you don't get shot, making it pretty
hard to die in Fracture unless you are playing
the gung ho, maverick style.
The first mission is more of a training run
explaining the different things you can do -- all pretty much standard
of
your every day shooter. But the main selling point of
Fracture is that Terrain Deformation Technology I mentioned earlier.
Summed up, it's a
pulse or ray gun that deforms the earth, moving it skyward
creating a hill
or sucking it downwards creating a creator (depending on which button
you press).
The
game tries to incorporate this features by having you knock
switches or get
under walls you wouldn't any other time be able to, and it sounds good
in
theory but soon gets a bit repetitive.
What
about using this
feature during battle?
Well, it's cool to squish your enemies into the
ceiling if their holed up in a building, and with practice you can do
some really cool things with it, but I also found that most of the time
in the single player game you're too busy shooting to
worry about pressing
another button to raise the ground.
Distorting the landscape is a real special
feature, but even when you do choose to use
this method the enemy sometimes shoots the mound and makes it go
straight
back down again...
Implementation of the terrain alteration could
have been better, but it is in its embryonic stage, and a sequel could
potentially iron out the kinks.
Where
this Terrain Deformation Technology is most fun is during multiplayer
battles and sometimes during co-op games, as you will witness (and
develop your own) creative
methods of geo-homocide.
Another cool toy is the vortex grenade, which is
another innovative weapon that has some cool special effects and
creates all sorts of havoc on the battlefield, and you have to see the
avalanche gun, which shoots boulders (you can see it in action on the
YouTube clip).
As far as enemy AI goes: not very good. One
example: you'll shoot one of the Pacificans (who are decked out in
their Dark
Sector-like green suits) in the shoulder from a distance, and the guy
will barely react and continue to sit there, so you can hit him a few
more times, and they don't make much more of a challenge up close
either.
The levels, the story and the boss fights all have
a
repetitive nature about them, which means the multiplayer side of the
equation props this game up.
The single player story's broken up into three
acts --
San Francisco, the Southwest, and Washington D.C. -- but there are no
chapter tags or subtitles for the act parts.
That means you're just
killing your way to your radar-marked objective, and when you get
there, you repeat the process after a quick save that often causes the
screen to stutter. It's like you're just running through one
excruciatingly long level.
On screen displays are standard shooter
fare, with ammo and gun type in the top right corner, plus the health
bar and not to
forget the targetting crosshair, and with decent controls it's easy to
pick up with straight forward gameplay.
However Fracture doesn't really offer a huge
challenge with the constant
assistance via comlink to his adoptive father and military mentor
telling you your next step.
So gameplay is okay, the controls are good,
and the game mechanics are pretty sweet with all the
earth-smashing going on, especially in multiplayer games - no major
issues there.
The rendering of the game is great with vibrant
colours and lots of polygons flying around to make the package look
good.
But I feel that they could have made the
game a
lot better game. It looks and feels great but needs more depth
in the single player game, and Day 1 Studios could have explored the
terrain technology a bit more thoroughly.
One
thing that does come to mind when playing this game is how much it
feels and looks like Halo but saying that, Halo did
do
a much better job on the finer details.
In closing, Fracture could have been a really good
game but
falls short of the mark with the likes of Too Human, Gears of War, Dark
Sector and Halo on offer there are just too many games that
deliver on all fronts, where this one falls short in a couple
of areas.
The dynamic weapons are easily the game's best
feature and are most fun to use in multiplayer games, so it's not all
doom and gloom. Just make sure you don't play it after chowing down on
several kilograms of suspicious confectionary...
