Ladies, let me describe to you what it's like to have your balls ache.
Unlike any other pain experienced by the human body, testicle pain is
cumulative. Sure, a swift kick will cause an instant doubling over,
but the magic of testicular trauma is that a slow, nearly
imperceptible amount of pressure will crescendo into a delayed but
unavoidable white thrum, far past the point when you're able to do
anything about it.

It usually happens when your legs are crossed ever so slightly around
one of your nodules, putting an at-first-imperceptible amount of pain
which only reveals itself when the pressure is removed, when all the
minutes—or, oh god, hours—of that light touch pools
together into a gut-churning series of pulses emanating from the groin
into your lower stomach.

Fracture did that to my brain's balls, exerting a slow pressure
of appealing technology features and gameplay scenarios, only to
culminate over the course of a half-hour demo into a sub-sonic wash of
desire. Hey, he just threw up a grenade to make a barrier to hide
behind! (Hrm.) Oh, he just used a grenade to carve his way under a
building! (Uhh.) Did he just make a column of glowing earth pop up a
metal grate and then use it to take a sniping position while a giant
dropship cruised in over the playfield? (TESTICLE SHOCK WAVE.)

There's no reason Fracture's terrain deformation should be
anything more than a gimmick, but it's clear even at this relatively
early point—it's still an '08 game—that they've built an
interesting hybrid between a traditional future-military shoot-'em-up
and a sandbox physics game. And unlike lots of games before that let
you affect the physics or terrain, Fracture pretty much lets
you deform any of the terrain on the maps. (Within reason. They won't
let you dig under all static models, like concrete bases, if it would
expose the edges of the polygon models. Otherwise, you can raise or
sink the ground in about a "thirty to fifty-foot range.")

There is a plot. It has something to do with mutants versus cyborgs.
It appears serviceable, but hardly groundbreaking. (See what I did
there?)

There's no way to know if developer Day One will be able to make
Fracture into the Triple-A title it aims to be, but god damn if
they aren't on the right path. They've taken an extremely staid genre
and added something that could only be done on modern consoles (or,
yes, PCs).

Oh, and there will be a multiplayer. Now if there's a dirty sniper
camping you, you can just make his position disappear completely, or
throw up a giant wall of terrain to block him. There's a multiplayer
demo tomorrow that I hope to make, and I'll happily share my
impressions if I'm able.