Fracture (Xbox 360)

Author's product rating:   

Gameplay/Playability	OK
Graphics	Good graphics
Sound	Average sound effects & music
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	nice visuals, interesting terrain forming abilty
Disadvantages:	poor enemy design, average multiplayer

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Like most shooters these days, it involves a dystopian future for mankind where the world is on the edge of destruction. To deal with the ever-changing climate of the 22nd century, the West Coast (the Pacificans) began altering their citizens' DNA while the East Coast (the Atlantic Alliance) decides to ban is genetic engineering and go with cyber-enhancements instead. All in all, the West gets mad about this ban and decides to threaten to take over the world. Because of this, the East sends you, Jet Brody, to arrest the Pacificans general responsible for the uprising. You spend the rest of the game trying to track him down, in this reasonably average third-person shooter, with the only difference being Jet's ability to raise and lower terrain.

This ability however, fun as it sounds, is not done very well. Although the game hints at some interesting applications for this ability in the tutorial, the reality is you'll have to raise the ground the get to a ledge and lower it to gt under some walls - very simple. There are some puzzles that make you have to use this ability but they're very easy and killing soldiers by using this special power isn't really exciting because the game usually points out when you should. The only time you'll use the ground-moving power is when you have you make a hill to take cover from enemy fire. It's a shame because this could have been a really good point of the game but it wasn't taken far enough.

As you play through the game, shooting wave after wave of enemies, you'll clear and area, save, then do it all again. The A.I. isn't really that smart, but they make up for that by the sheer number of them. Even on the 'normal' difficulty - Fracture is quite hard because at any one time you could have enemies blasting at you from all sides whilst you try and find a corner. There is fun to be had though, such as headshots resulting in yellow goo being sprayed everywhere and sticking explosives on enemies and waiting for the right time to detonate.

Like the rest of the game, Fracture's multiplayer doesn't really go beyond the average line. Solo and team Deathmatch, King of the Hill, Capture the Flag, we've seen it all before…except for one called 'Excavation' which is a real treat.

Fracture plays like most futuristic shooters o it's no surprise that it looks and sounds the same as well. The game is full of the same shiny enemies surrounded by familiar green and brown colours…and not much else. Some aspects of the visuals such as the ground and other textures aren't that much to look at but they're not all bad. Explosions are good and the snow that falls in later levels looks very nice and is certainly impressive. Audio is no change but as all the sounds could have came out of any other shooter games but there is a catchy theme, that makes the gameplay intense without being over-bearing.

Overall, Fracture is a satisfactory game - it has to nice features but it's a shame they weren't developed more. There's not really much wrong with the game but theres not rally much different and interesting with it either.