(PS3) Fracture Impressions (PSN Demo)

Expectations are very important coming into something for the first time. And i must say, my expectations for Fracture were not very high. Sure, the whole terrain deformation aspect sounded cool; make hills and holes wherever you want! It sounded pretty gimmicky, and probably at the expense of the rest of the game. But after playing the Demo available yesterday on the PSN, i'm glad to say that i was wrong...so far at least.
The ability to alter the terrain around you is actually a lot more fun and a lot more relevant to the gameplay than i thought. I spent a significant amount of time in the demo just sitting in an empty area messing around with the terrain deformation and all the physics-enabled objects it affected. Make a hole under some boxes and they'll hover for a split second before dropping down, make a hill under those same objects and they'll be launched into the air. Even better, if you stand on top of a box and make a hill underneath it you'll ride that box up into the air! This feature even plays into the combat well; getting hammered while surrounded by enemies? Just make a hill next to you and give yourself some cover on one side. Or make a hill under some enemies and toss them into the air and shoot them while they're off balance and recovering from their fall. Once i even made a hole right underneath a guy and watched as the boxes he was hiding behind rolled over on top of him. There's the standard stuff you'd expect too; raise the ground here to reach a higher ledge, lower it hear to get under that fence, etc. but at least you an do all this rather intuitively with your gun, or "Entrencher," (L1's down and R1's up) instead of it being limited to your grenades, which was how the feature worked the last time i heard anything on this game.
The combat itself is pretty standard fare, save for the terrain deformation effect, of course. Run around with a targeting reticule, shoot the bad guys, rinse, repeat. There are def some cool weapons though, like a the gun that launches a missile underground and can be detonated whenever you wish, or the sticky bomb launcher; looks like these guys were playing some Ratchet and Clank.
The graphics, while not jaw-dropping are definitely serviceable. There are even some subtle detailed touches: pay close attention to the front of your character model and you'll notice there's a holographic HUD coming out of his suits color in front of his face. Kinda explains the HUD in the game, don't it? Although your commanding officer's face is noticeably more detailed than any other character, but maybe it just looks that way because he's all wrinkly...
Overall i actually enjoyed this demo a lot more than the Mercenaries 2 one i picked up while i was cruisin the PSN's Thursday update. I just hope it's able to keep the combat interesting enough that i won't get bored with making hills and holes throughout the course of the entire game. And the promising chaos of applying the Terrain Deformation (apparently that's the developer's official name for it...makes sense) to mulitplayer just sounds like fun. Here's to hoping and surpassed expectations!