Fracture demo thread - impressions

<whew> I was just reading all kinds of "OMG GREAT DEMO" post's on gamestop.com 's forum but I see there are some sane people here on neogaf :D

Im just glad i'm not the only one disappointed with the Fracture demo. It's not a terrible game but I wouldn't buy it... the Funfactor just isnt there for me.
 
its not a bad game, just so meh after playing through other 3rd person games (MGS4, Uncharted, etc). Although played this right after Mercenaries 2 Demo and this one seemed so much more polished. Wouldn't buy it, but would play it at a friend's or something.
 
A lot of people bashing the game off the demo. A complete & utter hand holding demo if I ever played one. Only thing that really sucked was the shitty shooting mechanics.


Maybe the final game will have more open larger levels & whatnot.
I also hope the terrain gun gimmick upgrades over the game, anyone read anything like that in the previews.
Like if you can upgrade it to use on enemies or other surfaces other than dirt?

The game would have been 100 times more fun if you could charge you gun & instead of making small steps in raising the ground, the ground would rise the highest it could really fast & send anyone standing on it flying. Also vice versa & send someone in a huge pit.
 
I guess if the full game had some really amazing level design. They sure didn't show it off in the demo tho.

I hear alot lately that there is no job title "game designer" at alot of devs. Fracture could have used a designiner. Someone who could sit back and hit the company bong and just think about what is really fun about MOVING DIRT UP AND DOWN. Maybe someone who's played populous or sim city or buried people alive and knows how to have fun moving dirt.

Designer, really people.
 
This game seems a lot like Timeshift to me. A really generic shooter with its own little gimmick that makes it kinda interesting, but overall nothing more than a polished middle of the road game.
 
Good graphics

Fracture%201.jpg


Fracture%202.jpg


Fracture%203.jpg


Fracture%204.jpg


:)
 
Acid08 said:
This game seems a lot like Timeshift to me. A really generic shooter with its own little gimmick that makes it kinda interesting, but overall nothing more than a polished middle of the road game.

With mediocre art direction.

Lucas Arts what happened to you? :(
 
I dunno I actually enjoyed this demo.

I do have a slight bias toward shooters as I do enjoy them and this game was quite solid in all respects for me. It doesn't particularly stand out like games like Call of Duty 4 or Gears but the controls felt sharp and nicely weighted, the weapons caused plenty of mindless destruction and the audio / video package was good, actually the visuals were very sharp I thought, minimal aliasing, sharp textures and some decent character models. Even liked the sci-fi art direction of the environments with the neon lit 'pulsing' of the environment, characters were very generic though.

With so many good games coming out at the end of this year it's a hard task to really release a game that is anything but amazing at this point as I already have 7 games on pre-order for the end of the year that are pushing my budget to the limits but I'll definitely pick this up at some point.

I particularly liked how some dude was hiding behind an object and I couldn't get him, so I just sunk the land beneath his feet fully exposing him. Was a nice little touch, then creating mounds of earth to dart behind and cover my movements. Not the best game ever but if you enjoy some fairly mindless shooting action I reckon it'd be worth a go.
 
JB1981 said:
Well, I can tell you that the 360 version looks tons better than the PS3 one (which looks ok but it's terribly soft and lacking in fine detail ... think it's running in sub HD res).

Game isn't terrible but it's a surefire rental, at best imo
Totally false; the engine probably is the same of star wars and it hasn't no great differences so stop this stupid flame post without sense.
 
Low expectations FTW.

I really don't get the hate. I had fun with the demo. Will I buy It?? No. It wasn't that good :p
 
In the begining I was stupified that I couldn't move.:lol

I wasn't really paying attention because I was voice chatting while playing the demo:P




I actually quite liked it. It was just fun playing around with the different geomorphing tools. Using them on the enemy is especially gratifying. The weapons also had a good feel about them.
 
zeloe326 said:
Just played the PSN demo also. Total meh. Graphics are horrible (just look at the horrid looking textures and overly use of bloom,) and cutscenes are garbage. Art design is horrible. Like a poster said above, wtf is this guy doing wearing a bright red suit in battle? Also why does he have to be bald. Poor design decision. Controls are ok atleast, but the bright neon colored markers that shows where to use your terrain deformation weapons are dumb. Enemies and your NPC buddies are all generically designed and have no life to them. Sound effects are ok, and voice acting seems allright. Weapons are ugly looking and feels weak. One part of the tutorial has your character blowing up a side of a building. But you cannot blow up no other buildings and environments for the rest of the demo. Yuck.
Agree. It isn't bad, but total meh. And the Spanish dubs are totally awful, they look like from an old kung-fu movie. The character design isreally bad, the characters are the typical futuristic marines. I think in game runs ok, but the cutscenes have a really crappy framerate.
 
okrim said:
Totally false; the engine probably is the same of star wars and it hasn't no great differences so stop this stupid flame post without sense.
Not the same engine. Completely different developer.
 
Aaron said:
Not the same engine. Completely different developer.
I don't know if it's the same engine, but two separate studios can utilize the same engine.

Both Star Wars: Force Unleashed and Fracture were developed for LucasArts. In the same vein, CoD4 and CoD:World at War are developed by Infinity Ward and Treyarch, respectively, for Activision.

Despite being separate studios, CoD4 and CoD:World at War share the same engine.

I don't know if this only applies only because Infinity Ward and Treyarch are subsidiaries of Activision, but it doesn't seem out of the question for the same to apply to SW:TFU and Fracture.
 
okrim said:
Totally false; the engine probably is the same of star wars and it hasn't no great differences so stop this stupid flame post without sense.

Yea, you probably haven't played the demo on both systems. I have. And if you want to come to my house and see the glaring difference for yourself, you are more than welcome.
 
It's ok.

Honestly, if they had kept the game exclusively about the terrain deformation and cut out all of the heavy gunplay, it would have been much better.

It's just a shame that EVERYONE is trying to be Gears with a gimmick now. I mean, the fake 'roadie run' in the game is pathetic, and in general the game is just blah, but the terrain deformation engine is really cool, and there are some cool puzzles behind it.

Why not make the game about you and terrain deformation, and you don't have guns. That would have been much more interesting.
 
At first I was positively surprised. The graphics are surprisingly pretty, they've done a great job transferring the concept art to 3D there, the lighting is impressive and they have this detailed textures from a far thing going on. Transforming the landscape with various weapons was interesting, and if you wanted to you could just ignore what the tutorial told you to do and find an alternate route through the level instead. Then I built a volcano and jumped on top of a building because I wanted to find out if I could.

But when the shooting starts it's just not that interesting any longer. I think they would've been better off making this some sort of puzzle/platformer focused on crazy environmental interaction. What he said. ^^
 
Jax said:
just played and finished the PS3 demo. HATE HATE HATE the crappily compressed cutscenes - The final product had better look better than that - same issue I had with Gears of War - game looked great and then the ending cinema was a compressed mess. YUCK

on to the actual demo/game... maybe its the demo but its seems so front loaded - all the weapons you can get, they more or less let you play with in the demo (WHICH IS GREAT) but if the real game is like this... that's pretty bad. Who leaves alll those weapons lying around like that? DEMO WAS EXTREMELY HANDHOLDING. Do this. Do that. DO this. With icons pointing everywhere. Do they think the gamer is stupid?

TERRAIN SKILLs - was cool for about a minute then, I went "meh". Okay concept.

VISUALS - it looked alright but something felt off? It was very cartoony colour wise? Lots of lollicolours all over which is really detracting. Artstyle seems super scifi generic. When the villian showed up in his crotchy tights I was .... :lol :lol If you're going to make the male lead wear tights, at least give him a package. I remember being horrified at bowies crotch when I watched Labrynith when I was younger. Anyhow, looked... ... not so great. Overall style seems very haphazard.

GUNPLAY - very weak. WEAPONS aside, the guns you used felt like pellet shooters.


verdict. not buying.
bowie.jpg
 
KTallguy said:
It's ok.

Honestly, if they had kept the game exclusively about the terrain deformation and cut out all of the heavy gunplay, it would have been much better.

It's just a shame that EVERYONE is trying to be Gears with a gimmick now. I mean, the fake 'roadie run' in the game is pathetic, and in general the game is just blah, but the terrain deformation engine is really cool, and there are some cool puzzles behind it.

Why not make the game about you and terrain deformation, and you don't have guns. That would have been much more interesting.
I hate that 'roadie run' run bullshit. It's the worst new game mechanic this generation and everyone is copying it because Gears sold well and got good reviews.

I even hate the name they coined for it 'roadie run' ugghhhhh
 
InterMoniker said:

Best jpg ever.

When I saw the download Fracture sign pop up on xbl thought to myself "meh... don't really feel like downloading."

Then i thought..

" wait what the hell is happening to me as a gamer? "

I dunno maybe my tastes are changing. I Really love me some gears, but that and orange box are really the only 2 shooters this gen i got into.

I guess the whole move terrain gimmic just never really appealed to me in all the early previews i saw. Plus, it feels like i started rading about htis game like 2 or more years ago. What the hell took so long?
 
S1kkZ said:
its not the u3 engine.
They did a damn good job at copying the worst and most abused aspects of it then. For the record, I thought Sweeney was off his rocker when he though that Dead Space was running on UE3. That didn't look anything like it to me. But this does.

JB1981 said:
Yea, you probably haven't played the demo on both systems. I have.
My point is, the game looks ugly as sin and I don't think it would look any better even if it was running in 1080p with 16xAA.
 
JB1981 said:
Yea, you probably haven't played the demo on both systems. I have. And if you want to come to my house and see the glaring difference for yourself, you are more than welcome.
Ok mister experct, I have seen the video and I don't see any big differences ; post the pics to prove these great graphics differences on 360 and I'm shut up, although don't post your impressions how absolut impression, because I repeat again there aren't any visible differences.
 
slider said:
It's just a matter of waiting a week or so - isn't it? I don't have Gold membership either.

You could always create a dummy account and leech it under the free trial. I did this for the Force Unleashed demo before ponying up for another year's gold membership.
 
Very technically sound and the controls are smooth and responsive, but the action is ho-hum. Also, I'm really fuckin' tired of sticky aim in shooters. As an option its fine, but I want to be able to turn it off.

If only Mercs 2 ran and controled as smoothly as the Fracture demo. =(
 
madmook said:
Very technically sound and the controls are smooth and responsive, but the action is ho-hum. Also, I'm really fuckin' tired of sticky aim in shooters. As an option its fine, but I want to be able to turn it off.

If only Mercs 2 ran and controled as smoothly as the Fracture demo. =(

yeah that's one thing that did turn me off
 
I liked the demo pretty well on PS3. Graphics seemed very sharp, the controls felt smooth, the terrain deformation was fun, and the bad guy interested me some what.

Not sure why there's so much meh going on for this one.
 
The first time I played the demo I thought you could only deform areas with those little icons above them. :lol I tried the demo again and it was pretty fun just screwing around in the tutorial area. I would herd all the debris into a small hole, then raise the ground and watch it all pop into the air. No way would I buy the game, but it served as a fun little tech demo.
 
I don't know what bothered me more about this demo, the old school arcade light gun game shooting mechanics or the fact that there were no giant ants.

Deleted.
 
poweld said:
I don't know if it's the same engine, but two separate studios can utilize the same engine.

Both Star Wars: Force Unleashed and Fracture were developed for LucasArts. In the same vein, CoD4 and CoD:World at War are developed by Infinity Ward and Treyarch, respectively, for Activision.

Despite being separate studios, CoD4 and CoD:World at War share the same engine.

I don't know if this only applies only because Infinity Ward and Treyarch are subsidiaries of Activision, but it doesn't seem out of the question for the same to apply to SW:TFU and Fracture.

The Force Unleashed (for Xbox 360 and PS3) was developed by one of LucasArts' internal development teams and uses a proprietary engine. Fracture is developed by Day 1 Studios (an external, independant company, not owned by LucasArts) and uses their own engine.

They are completely different.
 
Someone made comparisons between this game and Timeshift. It seems like this may be a totally valid comparison. Both games are shooters with some fairly decent visuals and a gimmick to hook you in. However, like Timeshift I suspect Fracture will end up getting boring and repetitive after the first few levels. A gimmick can only take a derivative game so far and cannot hide the fact that the basic "shooter" aspect of the game is not done very well.

This is the perfect game to throw on your Gamefly Queue when there is a dry spell of good AAA games coming out.
 
I got the demo on both PS3 and 360.

360 version sure looks better than the PS3 version, having a cleaner sharper look.

Gameplay on both systems is identical.

Doubt I will buy it, it's ok but, the demo hasn't got me excited and wanting more.

Just seems to be yet another 3rd person shooter in a market that is already overwhelmed with them. Wish some one would do some thing different.
 
It is my opinion that this game is simply not fun.

It's sad when a high concept game turns into a total train wreck. It makes it more difficult for other high concept games to get a green light.
 
PuppetMaster said:
It is my opinion that this game is simply not fun.

It's sad when a high concept game turns into a total train wreck. It makes it more difficult for other high concept games to get a green light.

I think that probably the original concept was a bit more pure, and then marketing and sales came in and said HAY GUYS MAKE IT LIKE GEARS AND WE'LL LET YOU PUT IN YOUR SILLY DEFORMATION MECHANIC.

I'm 80%+ sure.
 
The demo wasn't bad, but the shooting mechanics aren't anything special. In the last part of the demo i couldn't make out where my enemies were, i needed the radar to track my targets. I felt like playing a poor clone of Gears of War.

The terrain deformation is a really cool addition to an otherwise uninteresting game, but i think the game puts too much emphasis on that.
 
I liked it more than the Mercs 2 Demo which felt aimless.

Fracture had frequent checkpoints, intuitive controls (After you understood the grenades) and a good framerate. It was fun for me at least.
 
First impression : Main character has no charisma at all, and the animation during cinematics kind of sucks.

Playing with the terrain was however very fun and I liked it but like someone said here, there was no freedom on what you have to do (but hey, it's just a demo)

I wouldn't buy it for full price, I guess it will drop fast anyway.
 
Finally played the demo today, didn't get all the way through because I had to go to work. I really enjoyed what I played. I like the terrain deformation and was surprised how smooth everything felt. I would agree that the art direction isn't the best but its not as bad as people make it sound. With so many games coming this holiday it will definitely get lost in the crowd. I will try to pick it up for less than $40 which will most likely happen quickly. Also, I think that multiplayer has a lot of potential to be awesome.
 
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