There are games that are up there and on everyone’s radar – or indeed, in everyone’s face thanks to the large amount of marketing or advertising it gets (Halo 3 I’m looking at you) – games that everyone’s heard about and are looking forward to. But then there are games that slip under the radar completely – sleeper hits that somehow manage to miss the marketing train and instead come to your doorstep via bus.

Fracture is one of these games. Somehow I managed to miss all the marketing and road signs stating “TERRAIN DEFORMATION HERE” and being oblivious until the folks over at Penny Arcade mentioned it by putting up this video in their news. After seeing the rather viral excitement of the presenter, I realized that the Fracture demo had hit the XBL marketplace – the only logical action from this was to actually give it a run through. And let me tell you this: I’m really, really glad I did.

Hit the jump to find out why.

In many ways, Fracture doesn’t bring much new to the table. It’s looks and feels like your bog-standard Third Person Shooter that you can find a dime a dozen on the consoles these days. The graphics are nothing special either – but then after Crysis you have to ask, do the graphics really matter anymore? There are plus points where it shines though – the interface is neat and simple, the controls – while nothing special – are still intuitive and easy to get the hang of. Add to this a well-done tutorial on getting started and you’ve got something that starts out as above standard for most games in its genre. And this is all before you get to the really neat bit – the Terrain deformation.

Although terrain deformation and destructible environments are nothing new as seen in Battlefield 2142 and numerous other games you have to consider that in those games its an addition – a process that is there to spice up the scenery and add a bit of believability of the background to the player. But it was always distant; a mechanic that enhanced the environment but always remained at the periphery of one’s vision.

Day One Studios (the same folks that made Mech Assault 1 and 2) have taken that mechanic and turned it into nothing short of a tool – a fantastic, fun and utterly devious tool at that. How this is done is also deviously simple: the player is given the entrencher, a tool that lets you deform terrain by lowering or raising it at will. It has a limited amount of energy but that recharges quickly to compensate. While the entrencher’s functions are simple, its possibilities are huge.

Cover can be created on the fly by raising the terrain around you, blocking incoming shots and giving a bit of breather. You can also do the same and lower other people’s cover, exposing them to incoming fire. You can also raise terrain underneath players when their in tunnels, squishing them against the ceiling in finishing them off that way as well. There is supposedly even a method of “terrain jumping” with the entrencher much akin to the Team Fortress 2 Soldier’s Rocket jump that I haven’t figured out yet - which seems kind of neat. This modification of the terrain is extremely dynamic.

At the end of the demo there was the standard “Epic Stand” scenario where you have to guard a position vs waves of incoming enemy troops. Although the section started out looking fairly recognizable at the end the landscape was utterly changed in many unimaginable ways. Wall sections were destroyed, debris littered a landscape that was pocked by hills and trenches that had been dug in either by my entrencher or the grenades.

Speaking of grenades, Fracture has an interesting set of them. There are four grenades in Fracture: Subsonic, Tectonic, Spike and Vortex. The first two are used to raise or lower the terrain depending on the type as well as kill enemies (when on surfaces other than dirt, they act as regular grenades). However, what is interesting is the Spike grenade, which raises a massive column high up into the air. If thrown into the ground under you, the column can carry you upwards to a higher altitude from which to engage enemies, giving a tactical advantage. There are also terrain features and buildings that are on hinges that can be raised via a Spike grenade to create a ramp to higher locations.

This dynamic experience is what makes the game play quite fast-paced and intense. Cover is temporary at best – but it goes on from there. It’s no longer just cover. It’s a tool to gain altitude – it’s a tool to dig a trench for your enemy and then bury him in it. It’s a tool to fortify yourself in a trench to block the enemy from easily assaulting your position – its so many different things at once depending on the situation. In many ways it can be overwhelming but the concept has really been executed well enough to generally avoid that allowing for possibilities like the Vortex Grenade and the underground rocket launcher.

Oh, did I mention the Vortex Grenades? It’s only been seen in the videos so far – haven’t found it in the Demo yet, but from what can be discerned the Vortex Grenade is another neat weapon in your arsenal - one that is only rarely seen outside of RTS games if you think about it. Once you throw it, it acts like a massive gravitational anomaly – essentially sucking in everything and everyone around it into a massive vortex, squishing them and then exploding!

The underground rocket launcher is also another interesting choice of weapons – something that I’d probably more expect in a Ratchet & Clank game but strangely seems to fit in here. It’s essentially a rocket launcher that fires a burrowing rocket that goes below ground and then explodes either when it hits a solid wall/obstruction or when you detonate it using the X button. A neat and handy weapon that ignores all semblance of cover thanks to the entrencher – but at the same time requiring split second timing to pull off right.

However, despite a no doubt praise-worthy rendition and implementation of Terrain Deformation as a game mechanic, I’m really unable to find anything really notable or unique about the game play itself. As mentioned earlier, the entire style of play is still run and gun – just one that requires the use of a fair bit more brains if you want to do cool things but otherwise is optional if you just want to gun through it.

The story isn’t anything special either. The year is far future and global warming has divided the US and the Earth into two factions – the cybernetically enhanced and augmented Atlantic Alliance to the East and the Republic of Pacifica and Pacific Rim to the West who are biologically enhanced. You play as Jet Brody, Atlantic Alliance soldier that has to go and chase down the evil moustache-twirling General Sheridan of the Pacific Rim who’s actually the main rival of your guide, and old hardass Colonel called Lawrence.

The story I just described is probably vaguely similar to 90% of every third-rate shooter in the book. Nothing in the story really appeals or catches to me as good or above average, really. Maybe there’s more to it –maybe there isn’t, I can’t really tell. I honestly do appreciate that they’ve taken the effort to tell a story – that someone is still left in the gaming industry that takes the story seriously is something that gives me hope, like a life preserver keeping me from sinking into a sea of shit. It also makes me feel guilty a bit when I complain that at least they could’ve done a story with tropes that aren’t so clichéd in all of Science Fiction.

But these are cosmetic concerns, really. I went into the demo expecting little and I got a lot in return. The demo was more than entertaining for the hour it took me to run through it and gave me a lot of unexpected surprises with the way they’ve implemented the gameplay. The only question is whether I would spend $50+ USD on a game with only that as it’s main selling point though. It’s a huge question mark that I’m hoping to have an answer to when Fracture ships in October.

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By N2H

• Richie W Says:
  October 2nd, 2008 at 4:51 am

  The demo was fun, albeit short. It still lets you try out many of the weapons and game features. Yes the controls are quite easy and intuitive. The environments aren’t as destructible as the game might let you believe though. It’s quite scripted and only some of the stuff can be destroyed… the weapons however are very cool. The underground torpedo is great and besides, how many games feature a rocket launcher called “Bangalore”?