Fracture (PS3)

Underrated 3rd pertson shooter

Fracture has been one of those titles that has been in development a while, yet during this time managed to avoid the massive amounts of hype that is common practice of late, and instead held its cards firmly against its chest. Following that, when I downloaded the demo prior to release, the lack of huge expectation left me pleasantly surprised and I pre-ordered the game soon afterward.Unfortunately, the single player campaign featured in the finished title does not build up to the great heights that the demo alluded to. I would say that, overall, the quality of game-play is mostly "alright" with a few patches that are sub-standard.E.g. Whilst some of the heavier weapons are quite fun to use, drivable vehicles are not. I also found that whilst there are parts of the campaign that are bordering on "cool", the excitement level never really peaks.- Issues -Whilst the idea of the terrain deformation is quite original, the challenges that require it never get more mentally taxing than the initial tutorials, and since the key areas to address are always clearly labeled in the player's HUD, there is absolutely no feeling of mystery or suspense whilst working through them. It's like solving a sudoku puzzle with the answer sheet in front of you. Where's the fun in that?Another issue is the enemies' intelligence (or lack there of). The developer has not been able to create even moderately adaptive enemies to play against, and so has compensated by putting more of them into each level. The result is that whilst some areas are an effort to complete, it's because the player has had to work their way through them with a certain degree of diligence, and not because they had to figure out any kind of strategy in order to complete them.The third issue I have is the placement of the camera. It's a third-person shooter, but it may as well be a first-person shooter as the camera is locked behind the player's head and uses the azimuth and zenith of the aiming reticule to change its orientation. The player also strafes from left to right as it would in any FPS. Whilst all this is important for tracking objects whilst aiming at them, ONLY enabling players to move in this way actually limits the player's ability to navigate obstacles or utilize cover. There are no (now-standard) cover tactics in this game either, which begs the question of why is it presented in a third-person view to begin with?The graphics and sound are of acceptable quality, in that they are good enough to be considered next-gen whilst looking and sounding a lot like a number of other titles that have come out lately. Don't be surprised of you get this game's protagonist confused with the hero from "More Than Human".Aside from all this, there are numerous influences in game design from "Halo" and "Unreal Tournament". While this won't be a surprise to those people who are familiar with Unreal Engine based technology, I still find this passing resemblance unacceptable given the existence of other titles that use this technology and yet have their own unique look and feel. To that end, it's not really the fault of the engine that makes this game play the way it does, it's the fault of the developers.The multi-player mode in this game should be a lot more interesting given its terrain deformation capabilities, yet there are few players out there currently making use of them (short of knocking up emergency barricades), presumably because there isn't much incentive from the map design to do so. With that in mind, the experience is very similar to playing UT3 with the action-cam mod enabled. Well guess what? I already have UT3 with the action-cam mod installed.Overall, I feel that this is an another average shooter that's USP it not quite enough to carry it above the levels of mediocrity.This game is certainly worth checking it out as a rental, but some prudence should be employed before purchasing it.

Fracture is a very intriguing game as it allows terrain deformation, which is one of the game's main selling points. You change the shape of the land by using a special type of gun which you always carry around with you. This runs on battery power. You also have some grenades which have the same effect as the gun. This terrian deformation is very useful during the game as you often have points in it where you are under alot of gun fire from the enemy and need to make some cover by raising the ground infront of you.However, there are some bad points to the game, such as all the decent weapons do not have a sufficient ammount of ammunition you can carry around with you. For exaample the maximum amount of ammunition you can carry for a single shot long range weapon is about 40 shots. Where 3 shots to one enemy would kill them. Compare this to Call of duty 4 where there are around 200-300 shots for a single shot weapon where around 5 shots would kill 1 enemy. there is a machine gun in the game whihch carries about 250 shots but does not have the range that the other does. This means you have to go through about 2 magazines to kill an enemy if they're far away.The online aspect of the game is very disappionting as there is no one online to play with most of the time. Which is very sad as this would be a very enjoyable game to play on the internet.Overall though the campaign is a very good story and is very enjoyable. I recommend the game, and for 16 pounds a real bargin!thank you for reading :)

Over all it was an ok science fiction game but I would not reccomend it for any one who is into serious shoot them up games. The alter terain added some interest with a few futeristic weopons but to sum it up, Third person, Ok weapons, Ok enviroments, ok graphics,I'am sorry but ok about sums it up, I could not give it more than that. Play it trade but don't hold your breath or get excited.

Ive played every shooting game you can name, I bought this expecting it to be 'ok' but I was so wrong. It has a good storyline and great powerful guns. The land transforming is so fun and useful on a battlefield, Building trenches and walls with being shot at makes sense. When ur near dying just make a hole with a high wall while you recover. A good shooter worth buying at this cheap price.

Not what I expected. Fun story but average graphics. Not to mention the game play is frustrating - most of the times it was non responsive, and well, that's pretty much it.

Nothing bad, just when you play.it now you find servers are dead! Fun single player or co op but other than that it ain't worth it.

great game