LucasArts' 3rd person shooter Fracture has gone through a lot of changes since we first saw it back at E3 2007, but one thing has always remained the same - changes. The ability to raise and lower the earth plays heavily into Fracture's gameplay, giving your character the upper hand against the DNA-altering Pacifican rebels who seek to take over a United States quite literally divided. Having watched the game go through many changes, including a complete revamp of the main character, I was afraid that such rapid changes in direction might lend themselves to an average shooter that relied on an interesting mechanic to prop up mediocre gameplay. Was I wrong? Love and hate divided, the game's fate decided, after the jump.

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Look at that. Yes, LOOK AT IT. Our make-something-with-dirt Fracture contest is in full swing. Kotaku reader Brine made this portrait of Heavy from TF2. So amazing. Here's what's going on: Make something with dirt to win a copy of Fracture. Anything is okay! Dirt painting, dirty sculpture, dirty dirt dirt. Take a picture, put a Kotaku sign on it and send it to kotakucontestATgmailDOTcom. Contest ends next Friday, October 10th. Dirt lasts forever.

Fracture [Official Site]

While we haven't had the PAX penny voting yet (it's still coming! soon!!), we're gearing up for another contest. We're giving away a copy of Fracture, a multi-platform title that features deformable terrain. Here's the contest: Make something with dirt. Anything! Dirt painting, dirty sculpture, dirty dirt dirt. Take a picture, put a Kotaku sign on it and send it to kotakucontestATgmailDOTcom. Contest ends next Friday, October 3rd. Dirt lasts forever.

Fracture [Official Site]

A demo for upcoming LucasArts sci-fi shooter will hit the Playstation Network and Xbox Live Marketplace on Sept. 18, LucasArts announced today.

The demo will allow players to mess around with the game's terrain deformation, the key gameplay mechanic that separates Fracture from all of those other shooters flooding the market.

Fracture is set in the year 2161 in a U.S. that has been split in two by years of environmental neglect. The country's warring factions, the Atlantic Alliance and Pacifican States, fight it out using terrain shifting tech and lots of guns.

The demo will let you use terrain deformation to create cover in shoot-outs and solve puzzles.

I'm relatively sure that my experience with Fracture's multiplayer mode at the Games Convention in Leipzig is a whole lot like what AJ experienced on her experience in San Francisco, only we had much better beer. She's already gone over the modes, the guns, and the grenades, all the while fulfiling Kotaku's quote of fisting references for the next three months, so I won't bore you with those details. The event here in Leipzig was set up as a team affair, with six stations set up on one side, six on the other. Journalists took turns taking on the other team until the matches were over or the tremendous heat inside the room shorted out the power strips. At one point, as you can see in the picture below, they had to turn off an entire side, resulting in a spontaneous free for all death match taking place on the working half.

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In this latest video from Fracture, Seth Benton Senior Multiplayer lead tells us how the multilayer will work in the game. The game will be coming to Xbox 360 and PS3.

Fracture Multiplayer - Fisting and Other Indoor Sports

Fracture's multiplayer is everything you'd expect from a shooter with online capabilities. A 16-man blitz of violence with exploding death, capture the flag and many a shotgun to the face.

So what's the twist? Besides that spiffy terrain altering gun you heard all about earlier? It's all about the Vortex Grenades, baby. This little incendiary can (and should) be tossed far away from the player to land in 1) an enclosed space, 2) right in the middle of a bunch of guys or 3) right next to your flag - which results in a mini-energy tornado. Said tornado sucks in everything around it; people, boulders, debris; and whirls it around furiously before exploding in a bright flash. The Vortex is indiscriminate - it's got "team-killer" written all over it, if you're not careful to announce to your guys you're throwing one down. Even if you survive being pummelled by all the stuff inside the vortex when it goes off, nobody survives the explode-y part.

What was I talking about? Oh, right - Fracture multiplayer. I got my hands on four different modes: death match (both team and free-for-all, but I lump them together in one mode), conquering-points-on-the-map, capture the flag and something called king of the hill.

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Last week, I went to the stronghold of George Lucas LucasArts in the posh Presidio of San Francisco for some hands-on with the multiplayer mode of Fracture. Too bad I can't tell you about it, because the embargo expires tomorrow.

But! I can tell you about the single player mode that I snuck back in to see today...

After being plied with sushi and diet coke, I sat down with Fracture big wigs Chris Norris and Paul Armatta to play through a few levels of the campaign. I won't lie - I suck at shooters, so I was anxious about embarrassing myself, even on the lowest difficulty setting.

When I told this to Chris, he replied: "[Former LucasArts president] Jim Ward always said easy needs to be easy."

And so it was. It was so easy, I was able to run up and punch three guys in a row, unlocking the "pugilist" Achievement.

Still, melee is melee for any shooter - much like a shotgun to the face never gets old. The big question, then, is: How is this different than Halo? Pretty much everyone asks this question whenever a shooter comes out; and you can bet your arse developers ask themselves the same question whenever they make a shooter in this post-Halo world.

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The community Fracture site updated today with details on a new weapon and a new vehicle.

The Pacifican Rhino gun is a rifle that shoots living boulder's at people. These boulders can track lifeforms and chase them around, until the boulder either flattens them or explodes. Sounds like a barrel of fun.

Next up, the terrain deforming TDV-1 Assault Vehicle.

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You can generally tell how much a company is pushing a game at a trade show by the amount of assets they make available for it. Having said that, here are three screenshots of Fracture, a game that was briefly presented by LucasArts between The Clone Wars and Force Unleashed, as if to say here...you're going to have to watch this if you want to get to the good stuff. There wasn't much new information on Fracture. It's still a global conflict that pits two forces against each other using terrain restructuring weaponry, a feature that set last year's E3 on fire but this year was just sort of there. I guess I'm just not all that excited about the title as it stands, especially when they sandwich it between two hefty doses of Star Wars, as if it were an intermission or something. Anyway, here is Fracture.

Update: Missed in my rather lacklustre view of the game, LucasArts did reveal the all-new DC environment in the preview, frosted with snow. It's lovely, sure, but doesn't take away from my overall meh feeling. Perhaps the letdown from TimeShift - another shooter with an innovative mechanic - just has me wary.