Fracture (PS3)

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Blowing things up never gets old

Although great on paper the shooter mechanics in Fracture just don't feel as good as we'd like. It's down to a combination of loose controls, an occasionally awkward camera and hard as nails enemies. If you're not careful it's far too easy to find yourself being pelted from all angles, with death only seconds away. Yes, you can use your Entrencher to raise the ground and create temporary cover, but that's easier said than done when you've got snipers on numerous high platforms, a guy flying around with a rocket launcher and some generic grunts throwing grenades and firing their guns at ground level. It often becomes too much to take, and you'll get into loops of death that seemingly have no escape.

You can get through these moments, but creeping about and taking out a group of enemies by poking your head out from behind a crate over the period of five minutes isn't much fun. Tactics do come into play in Fracture, but stealth isn't one of its strong points. The onslaught of enemies is one of Fracture's most hard to forgive problems. At times there seems to be no end to them, with battles going on far too long and with no clear end in sight. These aren't particularly special moments either, but simply areas that have quite clearly been designed to extend your time with the game.

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After a while smaller things start to grate too, like the often terribly placed checkpoints (a couple that spring to mind triggered a split second from instant death). It's rare that you have to replay large chunks of the game, and you can restart quite quickly, but you'll grow very tired of the restart menu before you finish the game. Unless your gaming skills were granted to you by a being greater than the Games Master you're going to die a lot, often in the most infuriating manner possible.

Yet despite these problems we were eager to carry on. Perhaps we were attracted to the technically impressive visuals, ever hoping that the art direction would find some inspiration before we saw the end credits roll. Perhaps we just wanted to set off another Vortex Grenade or collect more tokens so we could unlock more items in the Weapons testing facility. It's hard to pinpoint an exact reason, but somehow Fracture managed to get hold of us.

If you can overlook its flaws you'll enjoy Fracture's action packed campaign

Twelve-player multiplayer is also available in both versions of the game, but it's hard to see it gaining a large following. The terrain deforming makes for something of a unique experience, but the core shooter mechanics don't really suit competitive gameplay. Although people are already using the terrain tools to do some cool stuff, we think the novelty will wear off quite quickly, especially with numerous higher profile shooters out very soon.

Although the text next to the score below says 'disappointing' Fracture is more than that. If there was more room it would add the words 'but worth a look', because it most certainly is. It will be an incredibly dividing game though, with many people unable to forgive its considerable flaws, others completely taken in by the technology and others unsure what to think either way. We certainly felt the earth move but not in the way we'd hoped.

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