I was really disappointed to see how chaotic the game was at first, specially since there never seemed to be any time to actually use your ground deformer. It was really frustrating - it felt like enemies could pop up from everywhere, from every direction, and you had no place to get protection. During my second playthrough of the early levels (while capturing this video) this concern disappeared, as you just have so much more control of the battlefield when you learn how the deformer works. I now see and use it as a simple additional weapon, it's there to help you out of combat situations. You can use it to create a shield by raising ground between you and the enemies. You just blast it off everywhere, creating a glorius mayhem.


As soon as you get over the whole "it can't be used as revolutionary as the hype said" stage, the game is actually quite an enjoyable action shooter. With the additional ground deforming grenades and your own deformer, you and enemies can create some crazy moments where the ground just deforms everywhere.


Fracture has some nasty flaws though. The AI basically consist of enemies either rushing towards you, or standing behind a corner shooting or throwing grenades. The sprint button is strangely enough mapped on Y, forcing you to change grip every time you run. The melee combat is most of the time okey, but it feels like lottery against the tougher enemies - you basically just run towards them and hope for the best, since there is little timing involved. Even when you just hit him in the face with 20 bullets, he can still out of nowhere smash your shield to zero.


Since we're getting close to TGS and there still is a lot of work to do before that, I haven't been able to play the game as much as I want to. It will be interesting to see how different the environments look later on in the game, and how you will be able to use the deformer in other ways than just getting over a wall or shield yourself on the battlefield. Enjoy the video below, showing the first level after the tutorial.