Cracking or just plain cracked?Start up the single player campaign of Fracture and you'll hear a monologue that bears more than a striking resemblance to that which Joss Whedon uses in the opening minutes of Serenity. Unfortunately, the borrowing does not stop there in LucasArts' new shooter.
Fracture is essentially Gears of War meets the terrain modelling mode from SimCity 2000 with a not-so-subtle disdain for genetic modification thrown in for good measure. The single player mode follows one Jet Brody, a slimmer, less grizzled Marcus Fenix lookalike, and his mission to take down General Sheridan. (Sheridan being the leader of the genetically modified Pacifican rebels, a break-away faction who aim to protect the rights of genetically modified humans.) The storyline takes you on a whistle-stop tour of the San Francisco Bay area which has been seriously re-terraformed. For the most part this leads to a very standard run-and-gun experience that takes a little more than inspiration from most successful modern-day shooters from Gears of War to Quake and back via Serious Sam.
Where Fracture differs is the extensive inclusion of terrain deformation. The main sources of this are Jet's Entrencher weapon which allows him to raise and lower the ground to his advantage and his interesting array of grenades: the subsonic grenade which blows big holes in the ground, the tectonic grenade which causes the ground to raise violently, the spike grenade which causes a towering pillar of rock to erupt from the ground and the piece-de-resistance, the vortex grenade, which causes a massive whirlwind of rock and debris that sucks up anything and everything before leaving a huge trail of devastation.
The terrain deformation allows for some more puzzles to be concocted but developer Day 1 Studios seemed to like sticking with simple problems like "use the spike grenade to lift this access panel in the floor" kinda puzzles. This aside though, there are plenty of hidden goodies like collectable data fragments and the treasured vortex grenades which can be acquired with various combinations of Entrencher and spike grenades. There is also plenty of fun to be had with the Entrencher just making holes and mounds in the middle of the battlefield.
Another interesting feature of the game is its large selection of quirky alternative weapons. These range from a freeze ray to a torpedo launcher that fires explosive projectiles through the ground to the multiplayer favourite, the Rhino, which generates a large ball of rock that follows its target around like a Jack Russell with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The single player part of the game is well implemented, if a little bland, but it does make for a fairly enjoyable diversion for a while.
The multiplayer is another story however. Initially it does feel a lot like playing a game of Unreal Tournament in third person due to the selection of oddball weaponry but after a few games it begins to grow a charm all of its own. Its easy to run around shooting wildly and forgetting about the terrain deformation abilities but once you start using them they add an extra dimension to the gameplay. Lifting the ground to block an opponent's rockets or using the spike grenades to find the perfect sniper spot soon becomes second nature and each strategy adds new tactics to a deathmatch player's arsenal.
It's not all fun-and-games though as there is quite a limited number of maps initially available with the game (more to come as downloadable content?) and there were initial problems with lag when playing the games that Activision, Fracture's UK distributor, had set up which resulted in everyone getting disconnected from the games before they had even loaded in some cases. The other problem with multiplayer is that the Bulldog (the standard machine gun) which is fairly effective in single player becomes about as much use as throwing peanuts at your opponent and hoping that the salt will get in their eyes and sting a bit. This can be frustrating when you respawn right next to the shotgun toting maniac that just fragged you the last time.
Hopefully the lag issues are just teething problems because the multiplayer is possibly the best thing that Fracture has going for it and the game would be much worse for its absence.
All in all Fracture is fairly disappointing then. LucasArts has obviously pinned all hopes on the terrain deformation being the main draw for the game and just went for a fairly generic storyline. And while in single player, the terrain deformation feels a little bit gimmicky rather than a serious feature, it is a cool feature none-the-less and definitely (until others copy it) the game's main unique selling point. On Live it stands up much better but it still remains to be seen whether it is a novelty that will wear thin with time or a key feature that will keep players coming back for more. This is not the "ground-breaking" new IP that LucasArts was looking for but it is a valiant attempt to do something other than bad Star Wars games and we have to applaud them for that.
Bungie vows never to follow the Activision route and charge extra for online multiplayer
(1) (30/07) 
Welcome anonymous user.
You can have your say below and post a comment,
but why not sign up and register for an account?
#1 - Funkyd - on 11/10/2008 at 14:18 wrote: