Instead of betting on a galaxy far, far away, perhaps LucasArts ought to come down to planet earth when betting on success. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed may be getting the lion's share of attention, but Fracture is where much of the innovation and originality is going to come from when autumn hits. Introducing wild new weapons capable of transforming terrain and working them into totally over-the-top combat scenarios puts Fracture at the top of our most anticipated titles list for this Fall.

As explained in our previous coverage of the game, Fracture takes you to a divided America where climate change has split the country in two. Flooding has bisected the nation and resulted in the formation of two opposing factions: the Republic of Pacifica on the west coast and Atlantic Alliance on the eastern seaboard.

Fighting between the two factions has escalated due to differences in philosophy over human evolution, in which the Pacifica government has allowed its citizens to pursue genetic enhancement. The cybernetic-focused forces of the Atlantic Alliance are sent in to give the Pacificans a figurative spanking, a move intended to show their opposition to genetic engineering. You join the battle on the side of the Atlantic Alliance, suiting up as soldier Jet Brody across a variety of locations including a dried out San Francisco Bay and mesas lining what once was Arizona and New Mexico.

What promises to distinguish Fracture from other action games isn't its cool premise, but rather the inventive ability to wield weapons that deform the terrain under foot. We were able to get our hands on several weapons that offered different effects from reshaping soil to freezing enemies and even drafting a tornado to disorient foes. The game encourages you to use the environment to support your own combat tactics, yet how you go about doing so differentiates Fracture. Instead of taking cover behind a wall, you're creating the wall. That sort of approach makes it a much more challenging, but also active experience.

First among Jet's arsenal is the entrencher, a gun capable of raising the targeted ground into a pillar. Obviously, you can use this for defensive cover or even time it carefully to fling an opponent into the air. The area of affect is wider than spike grenades, which conversely shoot up thin columns into the sky. Weaving through the back alleys of a snowy, dilapidated Washington DC, we made good use of our entrencher gun for makeshift cover. It was even possible to pull off devastating crush kills where an enemy gets squashed between deformed terrain and another object. Satisfying, indeed.