Fracture

Split into three acts, the campaign of Fracture starts in San Francisco with an initial conflict between the western US - who have developed self-enhancement technology based on genetic manipulation - and the eastern US, who have outlawed such bioengineering, and instead rely on exosuits and other electromechanical tech. The story is short, full of utterly un-memorable characters, has a lame non-ending, and serves primarily as a vehicle for delivering the different acts' environments; but at least the premise (a new civil war) is pretty interesting.

The demo left me chomping at the bit for more of Fracture's environment deformation and unique weaponry. Unfortunately, the game's first and longest act is mostly devoid of this. Traveling through tunnels and caves and dark corridors, simply shooting oncoming enemies, I spent much of the first act wondering why I was playing through these banal areas. I respect the fact that Day 1 managed to create a huge, cohesive environment, but I would just as soon have skipped a lot of it.

Acts 2 and 3 ramp things up - in that they are shorter, and new tech comes more rapidly - though they still aren't perfect. Your commander often shouts mission objective help at you through the comm-link, but is completely unhelpful for some of the game's tougher enemies, who require unique strategies to take down. The game is also fond of making an area difficult by simply pouring enemies into it, which gets old pretty fast. Since there is no snappy cover mechanic ala Gears of War (even though Fracture has borrowed several other gameplay tricks from Gears, like a motion-blur run), huge fights usually become a matter of careful and methodical sniping, lest Jet drown in a sea of enemy forces.

Oh yeah. The main character's name is Jet Brody. Wow.

The disappointing thing about Fracture is that, even though it has some awesome weapons, none of them really overshadow basic gunplay. Which is good in the sense that it creates a solid shooter game, but bad in that the game's unique charms languish in the background. Aside from a few (sometimes confusing) environment puzzles, the terrain deformation never really gets any more sophisticated than in the demo's "tutorial" level, although it should be said that even this is done better than most one-trick shooters.

Though I sound down on the game, the fact is that it is well put together. Greatly aided by Lucasarts' impeccable ability to make anything sound like Star Wars, the sweeping orchestral soundtrack makes the whole game feel like an epic adventure. The shooting gameplay is, as I've said, very competent and well-executed, if sometimes a bit tiresome. And checkpoints are (with a few exceptions) extremely frequent, so there's rarely any frustrating repetition.

I don't really intend to try the multiplayer, but there is another neat extra feature that I've already blown some time in: a Weapons Testing area, where you can just tool around with the game's weapons. It plays like a developer's debug level, and you can even spawn enemies to fight at will. Collectibles you find in the campaign (which are easy to backtrack for thanks to a Mission Select option) unlock new weapons for the testing area, but I'm not really so motivated by this as to try and find more of them.

So all in all, it is a fairly solid game, but the impressive physics toys are really in second billing behind the gunplay - which still isn't quite as good as, say, Gears. Fun, but ultimately forgettable.

Progress: Finished on Standard difficulty