CES Impressions: Fracture
- January 28, 2008 14:13 PM PST
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One of the most creatively bizarre shooters this year, Fracture is literally groundbreaking.
One of a handful of interesting titles that LucasArts has slated for 2008, Fracture has its own draw: you can "fracture" the earth. That's the focus of this shooter that's set in a bizarre futuristic underworld where you can deform the ground beneath your very own feet.
Breaking Ground
It's 2090 and globing warming has led to some rather nasty stuff, particularly genetically engineered humans and California-led tectonic weapons research. The main character in Fracture, former seedy gang-banger Jet Brody, is now helping the military fight the good fight against a rogue section of a group called the Pacificans.
Armed with a fancy, high-tech armor suit, Jet looks prepared for battle. In this particular demo, he was dropped under the San Francisco Bay to get to the Pacificans. The developers on hand from Day 1 made sure to use plenty of terrain-deforming maneuvers to show off the handy feature as often as possible.
Deforming the ground is one of Fracture's main draws.
The simplest way to mess with the earth is to use the nifty "entrencher" tool that boosts up the ground beneath you. But other guns and explosives can also muddle the ground, including grenades. The entrencher is the most focused and precise way to deform; it's especially useful in solving environmental puzzles like creating vertical humps to access out-of-reach areas.
Well Suited
Jet's suit provides a handle rechargeable shield, and looks ultra cool, to boot. But other than its protective purposes, LucasArts is keeping the lid sealed on anything else to suit might be able to do, or even how it came about.
In the demo, Jet had to disable some guns, and most of the action that showed off the deformation technology. Other than making the ground move up, you can use it to move beneath the surface to create tunnels or holes to work under a physical obstruction. Even cooler is that you can fire your entrencher directly at your feet to do a nifty little hop maneuver--something that wasn't even intended by the designers. Oh, pulling the ground out beneath enemies' feet comes is especially neat for sending them flying like rag dolls.
Other highlights included a grenade-like device that sucked foes right into a vortex, and loads of more traditional gun-power that served the more conventional way to mow people down.
