The Story:
The very basic backstory to Fracture is that the world suffered some severe side effects to climate change, and America has ended up looking very different. The Mississippi river has flooded into a sea, and the coastlines have been reshaped via technology to protect Americans from rising ocean levels. (also, as a result, the San Francisco bay is now a waterless valley). With the country literally separated by the Mississippi, East and West America have started down very interesting paths. The East coast has embraced technology, such as terrain shaping, to survive. The West has begun extensive research into genetics and mutation, redefining what it means to be human.

Enter our hero. A soldier for the East, he is ordered to take down a General who defected to the West so his children could get treatment for a rare disease. The General refuses, and basically starts a war between the two. It's very much a paper thin 'Patriot's vs Hippies' kind of thing.

Terrain Deformation:
The games big claim to fame is it's innovative terrain deformation feature. Using your 'Trencher' is the first thing the game teaches you. It allows you basic deformations that either raise or lower the ground, depending on which bumper you press on the controller. It works as advertised, with a few limitations. You can only deform dirt, not metal flooring, or hard stone, and there is a fairly set limit to how high or low you can get a specific piece of ground. There are also several grenades that have similar effects, raising or lowering terrain as they explode, or making large spikes shoot from the earth.

Generally the Trencher is most useful when dealing with puzzles designed specifically to make you use it. Lowering the ground to uncover a buried doorway, raising it to jump over a wall, etc... I'll discuss its use in firefights in a bit.

The ground, when it deforms, does look pretty cool, if not entirely realistic. It's more like watching clay or silly putty get molded. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be jarring at times because generally, humans aren't used to seeing the ground move that way outside of an earthquake.

Graphics:
The graphics for Fracture are both a plus and a minus, in some respects. Most of the technology is quite cool looking, if a bit generic, but looks like something humans would actually develop. It's almost too detailed at times. Areas where heavy fighting go on can seem cluttered, especially after the ground has gotten deformed a lot and the various crates and objects have been scattered around. Ground textures are much less complicated, but I have a feeling this is simply because the ground is going to get changed a lot during fighting anyway.

The main character looks good, and has a nice 'default soldier in powersuit' vibe going on. Weapon effects are excellent. The underground torpedo and vortex grenade weapons especially. Enemies are genetically modified super soldiers that look like... more guys in power armor.

Combat:
Combat really gave me some trouble in this game. I enjoy shooters, but there were some issues here that really should have been worked out before release. Most of the rifle/machine gun weapons have a disappointingly short range to them. To get anything at a longer range than 10-feet in front of you, you'll need a sniper rifle or missile launcher. The explosive weapons and grenades are more effective, but the enemy AI seems really good at avoiding them and they are hard to aim. As an example, my favorite weapon was the torpedo, which shoots a rocket that moves underground until exploding. Unfortunately, since it warps the terrain a lot as it travels, it can be hard to gauge the distance between it and your target, assuming they haven't run off.

Which brings up the topic of terrain deformation in combat. You would assume that being able to mold the earth like Play-Doh (TM) would make it easy to get cover when fights get hairy. This is not so. The trencher simply lifts a mound of dirt to waist height when you use it, which isn't nearly high enough to stop enemy fire without another application. It can, with some practice, be effective at stopping enemy fire or slowing their approach, but only if they are on the same plane as the player. If they are higher up, you're SOL. This is painfully obvious when you need to take out enemy dropships, as there is often nowhere to hide from their hails of gunfire while you fire slow rockets at them. Another problem is rocket launcher enemies who tend to leap around a lot. When they can jump 50 feet in the air to rain fire upon you, a mound of dirt isn't going to help.

I often found myself wishing for a trencher command that would bring up a small, tough wall of stone that I could take cover behind, ala Gears of War. I found time and time again, any time the enemy was more than 10-20 feet away, I was a sitting duck for their gunfire unless I had a rocket launcher or sniper rifle. Even then enemies, (lots of them), seem to spawn out of nowhere, so often you can clear an area and more will show up before you can safely leave. Afterward, you simply move forward to the next area and repeat the cycle several more times until you reach the next transition area.

Multiplayer:
Full Disclosure: Due to personal time constraints, I've had limited experience playing this game in multiplayer. Less than I really should for a review of a game where multiplayer is such a heavily billed feature, so take this section with a grain of salt. There are several pretty standard game modes, capture the flag, free-for-all, etc... But my take from all of them is the following: The person who finds a grenade launcher first is usually the one who wins.

Conclusion:
While the game looks gorgeous, the combat mechanics and terrain deformation tend to work against each other a lot of the time, making for a rather difficult gaming experience. So difficult, in fact, that were I not reviewing this game, I probably would have stopped playing much earlier. (as it is, I got stuck at one point several areas in and was unable to proceed, on normal difficulty). I think the series has potential, but it's just not there yet. I'll be watching in the future for possible sequels that could expand on the use of terrain deformation in interesting ways. However, Lucasarts and Day 1 Studios should be commended for attempting to bring innovative mechanics to the FPS genre.

6 out of 10