Fracture

Dig your own hole. Worth: $8
based on 360 demo

The world needs ditch-diggers too.

This game is every shooter you've ever played, except that you can move the terrain about ten feet up or down. This allows you to create on-the-fly cover by digging a trench for yourself to hide in, or allows you to access high points by creating a hill to climb.

Neat, right? Well, it actually is kind of neat. But it's not enough to make this game worth very much if you've been playing video games for awhile. The graphics, sound, controls, and camera are all solid, so no complaints there. But there aren't really any thrills either.

Except for the novelty of moving the ground up or down, this game was pretty boring. There's some Bad Guy from Badovia who wants to dominate everyone in Goodville. You must stop Bad Guy by shooting and terraforming your way to Goodiness. If you're new to gaming, or haven't played enough shooters, you might dig this (what a great pun! Oh man, that's really deep. Oh! Again!). Otherwise, you've been there and shot that.

The demo is fun. But it's about as much fun as you'd have with the full game. So just play the demo for 15 minutes and then move along.