By Adam Smith on January 18th, 2013 at 12:00 pm.
I could post a trailer for a big smashy, shooty game right now, but it’s a thirty second trailer, at least fifteen seconds of which is probably logos. So, instead of letting that sort of thing addle your mind, why not muddle your brain-stew around with Fractured, a free browser game that will exercise your neck muscles. There’s a lot of head tilting and neck craning involved in this puzzle platformer, as each single-screen level is separated into shards, some of which are skewed at uncomfortable angles and many of which don’t actually connect to their neighbours. By the sixth or seventh level, I guarantee that you’ll have made a noise a bit like this – ‘G’whaaaaa?’ – at least once. Play it and try to prove me wrong. Via Indiegames.com.
18/01/2013 at 12:28 Jackablade says:
A tricksy puzzle game with bonus bad teenage poetry. What a deal!
18/01/2013 at 13:13 DrScuttles says:
It’s a rough template that worked wonders for Jonathan Blow.
18/01/2013 at 13:04 Fontan says:
No, couldn’t prove you wrong.
18/01/2013 at 13:44 particlese says:
My mouth hasn’t woken up yet, so my eyebrows made the “Gwa?” sound, mostly because of the monologue. Fun little diversion, though! My eyebrows also smiled a bunch.
…I hope someone just contorted their face to figure out how eyebrows smile.
18/01/2013 at 13:08 roryok says:
I detest logos. The first thing I usually do when I install a game is try and disable the logos by finding the video files and replacing them with a blank file with the same name.
18/01/2013 at 13:35 particlese says:
As do I, except for Deus Ex HR. With that one, it was like *sweet minor-key music* *copyrights* *logo* *logo* *logo* *logo* *logo* *major chord for logo of PC porter Nixxes* *back to minor and “oh right, you wanted to play a game”*. I enjoyed that, for some reason, and then they messed up the timing when they made the videos skippable. Not quite sure how I feel about that one. :\
For reference, here’s the PC version with the new timing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpTcZJJ-lm0
The chord change used to be right on the Nixxes logo, at least for me.
But yes, delete the logos! I find I don’t even need to bother replacing them…
18/01/2013 at 13:51 roryok says:
oooooooh that’s really nice actually. kind of like a classy trailer. I really should play that it’s been sitting on my shelf for like, a year.
For some games, removing them throws an error. I especially remember on my modded xbox I used to have to create 1 frame bink files in order to remove logos and intros. On Halo and most games you instead got a percentage loading bar but the game loaded at least a couple of seconds faster.
19/01/2013 at 02:25 particlese says:
Ahh, I’ve just been lucky, then. Although there was Mass Effect 2, I think, which threw a fit when I deleted its loading screen videos. >:D
And you made me realize: The normally obnoxious logo sounds in DX:HR were replaced by game music. Classy indeed! Other than the visually-loud AMD logo, I guess. Definitely try to find some time to play the game, though. I didn’t like it quite as much as the original (ah, nostalgia), but it was still pretty darn fun. I even enjoyed the cover-based sneaking/combat, which I was really worried about.
18/01/2013 at 13:44 mr.black says:
The forced reflection is a bit jarring..
18/01/2013 at 14:42 somnolentsurfer says:
That’s lovely. And a nice little diversion. I think if it was stretched out to Braid length, it might go from “quirky idea, nicely executed” to “(literally) painfully frustrating”. I stopped after the main levels. Potential box pushing in that world terrified me.
18/01/2013 at 14:46 squareking says:
Whenever I see “fracture” I can’t help but hear this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XggLoO-aloE
Such is the power of King Crimson.
18/01/2013 at 16:15 Nixitur says:
It really wasn’t that hard, but the bonus levels opened up some rather scary possibilites that weren’t all explored to their fullest potential.
Which is a good thing because it might go from challenging to painful.
19/01/2013 at 02:04 particlese says:
Yeah, one thing I stumbled upon that I don’t think was supposed to be a feature is that you can fall and then jump in mid-air. I tried using that several times to beat one of the bonus levels, but then I figured out that I just had to jump normally (it looked like a long jump, but the height was important, in that case). I think that could have caused some pain had they used it.
Something that made the game significantly easier for me was identifying and mentally orienting the corner pieces, much like with a jigsaw puzzle.
18/01/2013 at 17:55 Bo Steed says:
Just looking at the screenshot makes my brain hurt. =(