As a word of warning: I only played around in the demo for a little so this won’t be a complete review of the demo.
I thought that the story didn’t seem very interesting from the beginning cinema. Nothing jumped out and grabbed me. They setup a good tutorial/newbie-type area that you could try out the basics of the different weapons and the control scheme. Now the meat and po-ta-toes, you have this pretty cool weapon that can either raise the ground up or down where you shoot it. The gun has the ability to re-charge (could have been a faster re-charge rate for my tastes, but alas) so you pretty much have unlimited ammo.
The game really didn’t stand out from any other 3rd-person shooter. The visuals are awesome of course, the Unreal Engine 3 is quite a piece of work. The only real difference in this game from the plethora of shooters that are out there is the terrain deformation. You have to think vertical more than just horizontal, you get shot from above and behind then you need figure out how to get up there and take care of business. Use your terrain altering gun and make a hill to get up to a broken stairway to get to the next level and take those punks out that shot you in the back.
OVERALL IMPRESSION: From what I’ve seen it’s mostly just another 3rd-person shooter, and the story hasn’t made me care for the world of Fracture at all. Now, if the multiplayer can utilize the terrain deformation aspect of the game in a fun and creative way, it might actually turn out to be something. But with all of the FPS/3rd-person shooter games that are coming out soon (Left 4 Dead, Gears of War 2, Call of Duty: World at War, etc.) I don’t see Fracture becoming a best seller this holiday season.
I just had this shipped to me from my online rental place, so I’ll let you know how the actual product stacks up. It always looked like a glorified tech demo to me. I’ll take it for a spin and probably toss it back in the mail before it has a chance to get warm from the laser…
I downloaded the demo when it was first released but I have yet to play it. I just have this overwhelming feeling of “Meh” towards it.
Played the PS3 demo and came to pretty much the exact same opinion.
The epic fail of The Force Unleashed making a wad of money will help off-set this I guess.
I broke a cardinal rule I have and looked at some “professional” review scores. It does not bode well.
However, I won’t pass judgment until it comes from Gamefly.