It's the 22nd
century, and America is divided between the staid old East Coast and the
perverted, liberal Left Coast, where genetic experiments run rampant and body
manipulation is the norm. A distinguished Army general has quit the East Coast,
after his daughters die of a rare disorder – one that could have been
treated by futuristic stem cell research. Now he leads an army of his own twisted
experiments, and only you, a wholesome, corn-fed grunt named Jet Brody, can
take him down—as well as all the San Francisco freaks you can get your
hands on.
On top of the usual "run
across the map and kill everyone" gameplay, this third-person shooter adds a
gimmick: with a click of the bumper button you can make raw earth rise or fall
in a heap. Fracture uses terrain
tricks to clear obstacles and to offer certain tactical advantages, like giving
yourself cover in a firefight, or popping a hill under your enemies and making them
bounce around a little. But that trick isn't as funny as it sounds, and taking
cover gets dull when you can't shoot around it. As for the content, the levels
are gorgeous and vacant, the enemies are so tedious that you'll start to wish
they would just kill themselves, and none of the obstacles count as a puzzle. Wrap
it all in a story that's too simple to enjoy its own arch-Republicanism and you've
got one long waste of bullets and dirt.
Beyond
the game: LucasArts
touted Fracture not
just as an exercise in extreme landscaping, but as an new property that would
help them break their dependence on Jedi. They just forgot to invest in story, characters,
or heart.
Worth playing for: On the XBox, both Fracture and The Force Unleashed front-load easy achievements,
boosting your gamerscore right in the first hour. It's starting to feel like a
bribe.
Frustration
sets in when: Many
times you'll need to plant a grenade precisely to solve a problem; a targeting
system like the one used by Gears Of War would have been a big help.
Final judgment: Indie games often have better success with clever game
mechanics, because they can't tack on millions of dollars of boilerplate
third-person shooter play. Instead of echoing Portal, Fracture is more like Prey.