Fracture

Ever since Fracture was announced in May last year we've seen some pretty amazing stuff about the game; terrain deformation, impressive physics and a completely original story,and, it pretty much delivers.

The story is set in the 22nd century where increasing temperatures and Global Warming have caused the Great Flood, (which somehow only effected the United States), and the East and West coats of the country used terrain deformation equipment to stop the flooding on the coasts; but it caused both halves of the country to split in two because the centre was unprotected from terrain deformation.
Both halves of the United States decided to make their own coalition. The West side called themselves the Pacificans (The Republic of Pacifica), who alters their DNA to try to withstand the effects of Global Warming and then there's the Atlantic Alliance from the East, who developed cybernetics to protect themselves from Global Warming.
The Pacificans, now formally not part of the United States, decided to continue engineering themselves out of their humanity and so the Atlantic Alliance has no choice left but to go to war with the pacificans to save mankind.

Your cast off as an Atlantic Alliance soldier named Jet Brody (weird name I know), who has the ability to use terrain deformation equipment on the ground to his advantage. The main TD gun you have is called the Entrencher; which can make sinkholes or make massive lumps straight out of the ground. Making the ground come up is great for using covering fire and making the ground go under is important for making trenches.

At the start of the game you're sent to San Francisco, to detain the leader of the Pacificans; General Sheridan.
Once you get dropped off there, there is a tutorial that shows you how to use your Entrencher to your advantage by raising the ground to make ramps to get up to high places or by lowering the ground to get under blocked pathways.
The tutorial also shows off the different types of grenades which include: The Spike Grenade, which raises a big column of molten rock out of the ground, The Subsonic Grenade, which forms vibrations in the ground and causes the ground to make a sinkhole, which also damages nearby enemies in its radius and then there's The Tectonic Grenade, which does the same as the Subsonic Grenade but instead it creates a large lump instead. You'll also be able to use the Vortex Grenade later in the game, which creates a sort of mini electrical cyclone and pulls anything near itself (including crates and people-you even) and then causes massive damage.

The weapons in Fracture are another treat, as there are many to be found throughout the game. Some of them include the standard assault rifle (the Bulldog), the Lodestone (which sucks up anything near it, destroying everything), the Freeze Gun (permanently freezes them for eight seconds), the Black Widow (a sticky bomb grenade launcher) and quite a few more interesting ones.

While playing through fracture, I have noticed that there are elements in the game copied form other games like Halo 3; you have a small blue health bar basically the same except yours is curved a bit at the end and the dropships look almost identical besides them being blue. Fracture also kind of felt like a Star Wars version of Gears of War to me, with the same sort of gameplay and all.

Some other annoying things about Fracture is that the music can repeat and repeat after again so many times in one level that it's just not funny, and even worse the music can glitch now and then if your doing some sort of action while the game is going through a checkpoint. I had to quit my session and come back in again to just make the music normal again.
At the end of the game (which I won't tell you about) it seemed rather boring and inconclusive, and I felt it was like an amateurish ending personally.

Aside from this, Fracture also has a reasonable multiplayer with eight game modes which include; Free For All (shouldn't have to explain), Team Free For All (either be the Alliance or the Pacificans), CTF (two flags on both sides), One Flag CTF (one flag placed somewhere on the map and both sides try to take it to their base), Kingmaker (the same as King of the Hill), Team Kingmaker (the same as Team King of the Hill), Break In (teams storm the opposing teams' bunker to try and hold the designated capture point for as long as possible) and Excavation (kind of like Halo 3's Territories, but teams have to dig up holes with their Entrencher to find a glowing beacon, which will then cause a large spike to erupt and the longer it stays there the more points the team who made it will get, but the enemy can destroy the spikes).

Playing in some of these game modes can be quite fun and interesting, especially being able to show off you're terrain deformation abilities to your mates.
The maps can sometimes get confusing and you might get lost trying to find the flag in One Flag CTF as I experienced a few times.

I think Fracture is a pretty good game with the TD abilities and the amazing weapons, but I don't see how the game will handle with other great games around the corner like Far Cry2, GOW2 and COD5.