Terraforming and shooting just don't add up to a fun time.
User Rating: 6 | Fracture X360
Fracture tries to introduce something unique to the 3rd person over the shoulder shooter. Your character has access to guns and grenades that can alter the terrain around you in various ways. You can make pillars of dirt, mounds, spikes, caverns, etc. The problem is the creators didn't use this feature to great effect. It is a handy mechanic during battle, but not crucial. They also could have used it to create some clever puzzles. Instead you get a few generic puzzles. And occasionally you will have to use your abilities to reach new areas of the game. It all feels tacked on and uninspired. A person could get through this entire game only using the standard guns provided to kill your enemies. Having said that, the guns are bland and lack any real sense of power. The aiming and combat feel work fine, but the action is slow and certainly not up to par with games like Gears of war. The story is pretty lame and poorly told. There are two waring factions; the group that uses cybernetics and the group that uses biological enhancements. I can't remember the group names because the story is so forgetable. Your character is on the side of the cybernetic users. You will fight a lot of unintimidating green enemies and encounter the occasional boss fight. The boss fights are usually challenging enough. The overall difficulty is a little uneven. I found myself getting fragged by grenades a number of times because I couldn't tell where they were coming from. The visuals are pretty bland. The enviroments leave much to be desired and don't do anything to set a good tone. The music is very good, surprisingly so actually. The controls were pretty easy to learn. I did not experience any major bugs or glitches during my play through. I bought this game because it was cheap and I hoped that it would be unique.
Summation: The idea of terraforming isn't really that exciting to begin with and unfortunately the developers did even less with it than I expected. The shooting mechanics are average as is almost everything else about this game.
