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Global Warming. It seems that it’s important enough nowadays to warrant the capital letters. Mothers are worried for their children’s future, companies stress over costs to stay green and governments are spending billions of dollars to slow the trend. It all amounts to nought though according to the future where Lucasarts’ Fracture story takes place, a world where we have lost control of global warming. The continental U.S. in the 22nd century has used terrain forming technology to block off the rising sea level on its coastal borders. Unfortunately the mid-west could not be saved in time and has flooded which has created a natural border between the two sides. In order to deal with the changing climate, the west coast (the Pacificans) opted to go down the line of genetic enhancements for its citizens whereas the east coast (the Atlantic Alliance) decided to ban genetic engineering and went down the route of cybernetic enhancements instead. The Pacificans naturally get annoyed about the ban and a revolt headed by General Nathan Sheridan against the Alliance. This is where you, as Jet Brody, is called up to protect the Alliance and mankind in general from the DNA hacking scum and track down the rogue General responsible for the uprising. Cue some big guns and even bigger explosions then.

The best way to describe Fracture would be to splice Gears of War and Halo with Peter Molyneux’s 1989 god-sim Populous. Although not anywhere as good as any of those games, Fracture does have one party trick in the form of terrain deformation. This game’s unique selling point to separate it from a run of the mill third-person shooter is the Entrencher, a gun which can raise or lower the land around you and is permanently mapped to the shoulder buttons. This ability can help form barriers or trenches which create new defensive options and also allow attacking options where if there is a ceiling above an enemy you can raise the land to crush him. This land deforming mechanic serves to open up a new element to your battles as you reshape the land around you to your advantage and can be quite satisfying when you launch enemies hiding behind cover into the air by raising the land and shooting them on the way down. It also opens up simple puzzle elements where you use to get to higher ground or even dig under walls. You need to search for Data Chips to open up weapons in the Weapons Testing mode and these are usually tucked away on the map on later levels so some creative landscaping is needed. The physics of this land manipulation is impressive at first although there is too much hand-holding for the puzzles that you come across. There just weren’t enough scenarios where you could get creative with this ability as most of the time you have an arrow or obvious hint on where to use it. The only time you could use it creatively where it wasn’t prompted was to create cover or scale barriers. Plus you can only use it on dirt to raise or lower the land by a couple of clicks, so don’t expect mountainous large scale deformations. They only extend to around 10 foot mounds and holes. The more interesting scenarios of its use were seldom and even then it felt contrived and obvious. It isn’t an unwelcome mechanic but it seems forced in its application and as the main physics trick it isn’t enough to carry the game unlike Portal.

That might be some unfair criticism because at its heart, Fracture is a shooter and wreaking havoc on anyone who gets in your way. In addition to the Entrencher, Jet is armed with the usual slate of futuristic versions of assault rifles, sniper rifles and rocket launchers. In addition, vehicles are available later in the game which adds some variety to simply running and gunning. A handy tutorial mode at the beginning of your campaign introduces you to most of these weapons. There are 4 different grenades whose explosions have a terrain deforming effect as well. The main assault rifles are relatively weak which can be troublesome because the enemies come thick and fast. Luckily you get some better and more interesting weapons later in the game. It’s prudent to take cover behind various objects in the environment or create your own cover by raising or lowering land. There isn’t a sticky cover mechanic like Gears of War but you will find you need to get cover fairly often if you want to regenerate your health as this game isn’t messing about. Granted the A.I. isn’t particularly smart but they are pretty accurate and there are plenty of them. The difficulty of the enemy comes mostly from them coming at you from all sides and all angles so while you are clambering around trying to find or create cover you tend to disorient yourself from the carnage at hand. My biggest criticism about the combat mechanics however is that the crosshairs are not indicative of your gun level, but instead your eye level. So while your crosshairs are aimed squarely on your enemy but your gun is blocked by something, you could be shooting at your own cover instead. This is especially annoying when you’re zoomed in so you can’t even see if there’s anything blocking your gun’s path.

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