While Fracture does have some impressive elements, most of the time it plays as a rather dull FPS.
GAMEPLAY (7.0) - The unique feature of Fracture is a gun that allows you to raise and lower the ground, which you'll need to do in order to reach high ledges and dig up underground passages. This also comes in handy for creating temporary cover in case you find yourself surrounded by enemies. You'll be using futuristic versions of the usual weapons (shotgun, assault rifle, machine gun, sniper rifle etc.) but there are some interesting additions. There is a rocket launcher that fires missiles underground, seeking out targets and detonating upon contact. Another gun will make any loose debris or rocks fly into the spot you shoot at, crushing any enemies in the vicinity. There's also an interesting assortment of grenades. Spike grenades will cause enormous spikes to erupt from the ground, raising ramps and knocking enemies around.
Vortex grenades will cause a small tornado that devastates the area it's thrown in and is always fun to watch. So with these cool weapons there should be plenty of enjoyable action, right? Unfortunately there's some problems that take away from the fun. The AI leaves a lot to be desired as they don't understand the concept of taking cover. To make up for this the game throws a ton of enemies with incredible accuracy at you, creating many frustrating battles. Even when you're fighting idiots, if there gets to be enough of them shooting at you all at once you're going to die. You can create cover with your gun but it still becomes a very tedious process to clear out areas. Instead of using gaming skill players will just have to rely on their regenerating health meter and a lot of ammo to get through the firefights. Add to this long stretches where you are in uninspired environments that look the same and the fun factor starts to plummet as it becomes a series of grinding through repetitive standoffs.
GRAPHICS (7.5) - The game looks good overall except for close ups of Brody where there's a noticible lack of textures that give him a last-gen look. Most of the environments do have a nice amount of textures and details but just aren't all that interesting to look at. You'll either be in featureless tunnels and hallways or outside in areas where the surrounding area has been destroyed, leaving mostly just brown and green colors representing the churned up earth. In addition most of the enemies are in futuristic suits that make them all look the same, adding to that feeling of repetition. The terrain deformation effects do look sharp but the wow factor wears off pretty quickly.
AUDIO (7.5) - Being a LucasArts title the musical score in Fracture is of a typically high standard that would fit into a Star Wars or Indiana Jones movie. The speech is adequate though there isn't that much as far as conversations go. Most of the speech will be info coming in through Brody's earpiece during combat. The speech also doesn't show much emotion and tends to keep a monotone even during what should be truly monumentous events. There are plenty of explosions and gunfire which sound great blasting out of speakers.
VALUE (7.0) - The game should take most people about 8 hours to complete, more or less typical for a FPS. For people interested in achievements there are some fun ones to try to get, many based on accumulating enough kills with a particular weapon. There is also the collection achievement, in this case data cells that are scattered throughout the land and will probably take an additional playthrough in order to locate all 100. I found about 40 on my playthrough. Naturally the game offers different MP modes, eight that I noticed. Though most are typical modes there is the added element of the terrain deformation to make things more interesting. The biggest problem might be finding friends to play this with as this game wasn't exactly a big seller.
SUMMARY - While I stated earlier that the game has an interesting premise, unfortunately the story never really delivers and you always feel like you're on the outside instead of being a part of the events. Brody is a one-dimensional character that you never care about and the few other individual characters in the game are there too briefly to have any feelings for. I've played worse games than Fracture, but it has enough gameplay issues to make it tough to recommend. As it turns out, the core concept of terrain deformation is more of a gimmick than a fully fleshed out feature, and the rest of the shooter mechanics are mediocre. If you're still intrigued by Fracture after reading this review then I'd say give it a rental to see if it keeps your interest.