[360/PS3] - Fracture Review

[AgtFox]

Fracture Review

Title: Fracture
Platform: 360/PS3
Developer: Day 1 Studios
Publisher: LucasArts
ESRB: Mature
MSRP: $59.99 (360/PS3)
Editor: Loren 'AgtFox' Halek

What's Hot: The raising and lowering of dirt; some cool weapons

What's Not: Feels too much like a mash up of Haze, Crysis and other action shooters; concept falls on face; game gets frustrating even on easiest level; graphics often stutter going in and out of checkpoints; voice acting is BAD!

Fracture has had an interesting development cycle. The game has been done for many months now and LucasArts is finally releasing it less than a month from the release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Developed by Day 1 Studios, best known for the MechAssault games on the original Xbox system, this game is a new IP for LucasArts. After playing it for many hours, I don’t think there will be a game in the series beyond this one.

As I was playing through the game I found myself thinking about how much it was similar to Haze and any number of Sci-Fi shooters out there with the story and action elements. The story begins saying that the American Midwest has been turned into an uninhabitable wasteland and that two separate governments have been created on each coast. On the Eastern side is the Atlantic Alliance and the Western coast is home to the Republic of Pacifica. It seems as if things have broken apart between the two groups and you, Jet Brody (great name, eh?), are sent to the west coast to capture a renegade general who is building an army of genetically advanced soldiers, something the President has just outlawed. Things of course go wrong while trying to capture the general and Jet spends the rest of the game trying to find the general and stop his plan.

This game is built around the ability to raise and lower any pile of dirt with a weapon called the Entrencher and is easily what makes it stand out against other shooters, although it doesn’t make it stand out enough. With the press of the right or left button you can raise or lower the dirt with the Entrencher to do such things as reach a higher area, make cover for your character or get through a blocked area. This is great and all, but as I was playing through the game I found myself totally forgetting about the fact I could use this to my advantage. Instead I spent most of my time with the game trying to find cover behind items instead of creating my own. Is this my fault since I’ve played so many FPS games and are used to looking for cover or is it the game’s fault for making me forget totally about the Entrencher except when it is absolutely necessary? Who knows, fact is I just forgot about the Entrencher and played the game like I would any action shooter.

Eventually I would reach a spot in the levels where I was dying over and over again. I started off at medium difficulty and actually found it a bit too hard with the enemy AI being of sharpshooter-like quality and me being unable to quickly turn around to shoot at someone shooting behind me. I then tried the easy difficulty and still found some areas even in the first act to be very hard unless you have a total grasp of where to fire a mound up to cover yourself because your enemies are still sharpshooters.

I’ll be honest with you guys, this is one of the first games in a while I have not completed simply because I was totally frustrated by sections in the game. Usually when I hit a wall in a game like this I’ll take some time off and come back to the game and usually be able to get through it. With this game I’d come back after some time and still find myself stuck in the same place, repeating the same section over and over. That pure frustration was maddening and maybe the readers out there will have an easier time of it than I did with Fracture, but to me it almost seemed like the game was working against me trying to finish it in a couple ways.

Those ways are that the perspective is a bit too close and the actual shooting element is not smooth enough. I feel as if the camera is set a little too close to Jet, especially when a gunfight against several enemies comes up. Given how fast this game moves, it is difficult to set up some mounds in order to cover yourself and give you the ability to shoot at your opponents without slowly climbing the mound and basically mark yourself an easy target. Add to this the fact that aiming is not as smooth as it could or should be. There were many times where I could take out people in front of me, only to be shot at from behind and make the slow turnaround in order to face them and not really knowing where they are shooting at me from since there is no indication on the HUD.

Add into this that the story is like a bad Sci-Fi cliché stolen from the likes of Haze and Crysis in regards to having them give you a boost with extra powers such as super strength. Add to this the fact that the army you are facing off against are different colored or slightly different variations of the same enemy via genetic manipulation and it makes the game derivative if you’ve ever played the other games. Also, the voices are just bad in this game, especially early on as Jet jumps onto a dropship and the pilot gives no emotional feeling to the fact that they’ve just been shot and are going to crash. It’s just a deadpan, “Hold on, we’re going to crash”. No adrenaline-filled exclamation that they might just be about to die or anything. Sad thing is they do die and only Jet survives somehow. The core characters do a somewhat good job at delivering their lines, but the whole ancillary characters are just bad.

Since the game doesn’t come out until tomorrow, I was unable to find anyone else to play the multiplayer side of the game with. I am interested in seeing what kind of game it presents and hope to update this review with at least some experience in the multiplayer section of the game. I highly doubt even if the multiplayer aspect is the best thing since sliced bread that it will make my feelings on the game any different.

Fracture just kind of rubbed me the wrong way and seems almost a throwaway kind of game, marred in its sameness to a variety of action shooters that are far better. It is certainly better than Haze, which is the reason it gets a higher score. If you were to pick between the two recent LucasArts games that have come out, I’d recommend picking up Force Unleashed over this one, at least that game was a lot more fun and the story was more interesting. It’s sad to say that if they had totally taken out the ability to make mounds and crevices this game probably might have been more enjoyable and the developer could have honed in on making the action shooter experience better. Yes, it’s cool to use the Entrencher when it is needed, but in a full-out firefight it becomes unwieldy because things happen so fast and you need to plan out your mounds. Even though I didn’t have high hopes for this game, I figured it would have been at least better than this.

Score: 2.5 out of 5 CoGs


Loren says, "Avoid It!"

- Review this title yourself over at Play It Review It

*Note - Review based upon 360 version of game

[pseudopseudo]

Sounds... disappointing. Reading through your review, I'm surprised you gave it 3 CoGs.

[AgtFox]

Originally Posted by pseudopseudo

Sounds... disappointing. Reading through your review, I'm surprised you gave it 3 CoGs.

I could easily put it at 2.5, but then it would be even with Haze and this game is better than that.

What that points to me is that I probably scored Haze too high...heh.

[Spigot]

I'm kind of surprised it scored a 3/5 too.

This game was only on my radar because of the gimmick but it always seemed like the kind of game that was based around a gimmick and not much else. I'm not surprised to see that it comes off rather average at best.

At least The Force Unleashed had a glimmer of fun and potential and a great story. This one just sounds like something to monkey around with for a few minutes until the terrain deformation novelty wears off and then never look back.

[AgtFox]

*Jedi Mind Trick* You never saw a 3, it was always 2.5. I'll just consider here being a new slate and forget about how I reviewed games at the other site. Haze should drop to a 2 though, I think I was too kind to it at the other site.

[Spigot]

Those CoGs look like cookies. Yummy, yummy cookies.

[AgtFox]

Originally Posted by Spigot

Those CoGs look like cookies. Yummy, yummy cookies.

Yeah, first time you see half a cog.

[bone_matrix]

Once I saw a behind the scene video on this game, I instantly knew it would be that great. Was not impressed by it at all.

I like the "Whats hot and whats not" at the beginning of the review, but I miss the "good, bad, and ugly"

Thanks again Fox!

[Telefrog]

This game screamed mediocre to me. That's too bad, but I've found that most shooters that try to build their experience around one gimmicky feature usually become very bland games.

[Mdot]

This game looked like it had potential but was poorly executed. Seeing a video of it from a previous trade show, I was mildly interested but it has since fell off my radar, and it appears rightfully so.

[Goronmon]

Nice review, not so nice looking game. Doubt I'll even bother renting it due to the crazy amounts of titles coming up in the near future.

Also, I would avoid trying to score games similar to past reviews. It just ends up leading to scores creeping up because as a general rule, games improve over time.

[SPBTooL]

R.I.P. LucasArts.

You were so grate once.

[Cyndair]

Hey AgtFox. Always enjoyed your reviews over at EvAv. I was wondering if CoG had a philosophy behind the review scores? A method to the madness? It might be helpful for situations like this where it's hard to give a lower score to a game even though it deserves it because you gave a higher score to an earlier game.

I understand that the fact that it's on a 1-5 scale speaks for itself but to me (and this is just my opinion so take it or leave it) 2.5 out of 5 doesn't seem as severe as a 5 out of 10 or a 50 out of 100 for some reason. If I look at just the score without reading the review and see a 2.5, I sort of feel like, "Oh, that might be worth a rental." Then, after reading your review where you state that the game was just too darn frustrating to even finish, I really don't even feel like renting it. Granted, I should be reading the full review and I'm glad that I did but sometimes people just glance at the score and then continue on their way.

Also, those cogs are making me hungry.

[AgtFox]

The scale is set up much like EvAv except I think we're working toward getting on MetaCritic this time around, which means this 2.5 would indeed be a 50% on their scale.

If you read the last thing where it says, X says to "(blank) it!", that is usually the recommendation.

The new, revised recommendation list would be:

5 = Must Own
4 = Buy It
3 = Rent It
2 = Avoid It
1 = Forget It

[Cyndair]

Originally Posted by AgtFox

The scale is set up much like EvAv except I think we're working toward getting on MetaCritic this time around, which means this 2.5 would indeed be a 50% on their scale.

If you read the last thing where it says, X says to "(blank) it!", that is usually the recommendation.

The new, revised recommendation list would be:

5 = Must Own
4 = Buy It
3 = Rent It
2 = Avoid It
1 = Forget It

Cool, thanks for the clarification. Totally missed the "Avoid it." That'd be awesome if you guys could get on MetaCritic. Keep up the good work.

[PathMaster]

Originally Posted by Telefrog

This game screamed mediocre to me. That's too bad, but I've found that most shooters that try to build their experience around one gimmicky feature usually become very bland games.

Exactly. The demo was fun, but it screamed mediocre to me. I could not imagine playing hours of Fracture.

[Dark Prince]

Good review. Would be pretty spectacular to get on MetaCritic, would be awesome indeed.

Anyway, I had fun with the demo for what it was, but I was thinking that it wasn't going very far after that.

It'll be on my Gamefly Q list though.

[Iron Past]

I wonder if you should redo the grading system. I mean, if a 2.5/5 = "avoid it," doesn't that render fully half the scale useless? Or maybe you should just stay away from half points. Personally, I'm fond of a three point "Play It/Rent It/Skip It" scale (Want more info? Read the review), as whether to buy a game or not is largely subjective to time and money constraints.

Anyway, nice review, I'll still pick it up used sometime; had fun with the demo, what can I say?

[AgtFox]

We had thought about a 3 grade system, but that would eliminate us from being on MetaCritic because it would score as 33%, 66% and 100%. This game may not be very good, but it doesn't deserve a 33% honestly.

As for half points vs. whole points, we had a vote on it between the founders and the half point won. This gives a little more latitude when scoring.

[Iron Past]

Originally Posted by AgtFox

We had thought about a 3 grade system, but that would eliminate us from being on MetaCritic because it would score as 33%, 66% and 100%. This game may not be very good, but it doesn't deserve a 33% honestly.

Oh, I see. Okay then.