Review

Developed by:Kaos Studios Published by:THQ Genre(s):
  • FPS
  • Platform:
  • Microsoft
  • PC
  • Cost:$59.99 ESRB Rating:TEEN Players:1 (2-32 Online) Release date:February 25, 2008 Reviewed on:XBox 360
    6

    Frontlines: Fuel of War

    The future is grim. At least that’s the way it seems. If we were to believe in the portrayal of the future by resent movies and video games, then it would seem that we are all destined for disaster. Frontlines: Fuel of War follows this trend; giving us a look at what WWIII would be like if it was to happen. Whether that is a good thing or not, in the case of this video game, is still up in smoke!

    Frontlines: Fuel of War is the first game developed by Kaos Studios, a new studio made up of developers from Trauma Studios. If you don’t remember them, there the guys who helped Digital Illusions (another studio) make Battlefield 2. This would explain why Frontlines feels like another Battlefield game. Frontlines follows the story of a reporter, Wayne Anderson, and a military group called the Stray Dogs in the year 2024. It seems that in 2008, the world started to run out of oil (sound familiar?). This eventually started to hurt global economies, resulting in high rates of unemployment and bankruptcy. This was the new depression. As years went on, governments fell and fighting broke out. The last remaining governments had their eyes set on the world’s last oil reserves. Hasty alliances were made. The US and Europe made up the Western Coalition while Russia and China made up the Red Star Alliance. WWIII kicked off in the year 2024. This is where we come in. You play as a member of the Stray Dogs, an elite military group tasked with defending the oil reserves of the Western Coalition. Anderson accompanies your group in order to document the events as they unfold.

    Cool story aside, Frontlines: Fuel of War, is an interesting mix of good and bad. I’ll start with the good. Frontlines plays like most of the shooters released last year with a few twists thrown in for fun. Going into the campaign, you are given objectives that you must complete in order to advance the story. Along the way you will shoot enemies-a lot of enemies! There are vehicles that you and squad mates can jump into (like tanks and helicopters). Frontlines even uses the “fading screen” technique to show how badly damaged you are, which slowly fades back to normal when your not getting shot. One way that Frontlines changes things up is with the way you meet your goals for each stage. Sometimes you will have to plant C4, taking down a communications tower or download secret files from the enemy’s computers. Each time you complete a certain number of objectives, your “frontline” is pushed forward into enemies territory with the final goal of taking it over completely. Located on your map (at the top right of the screen) is a line that divides two colors: red and blue. Each time you push forward, your color will move the line back towards the enemy. This creates this constant tug-of-war during battle, with each side trying to control more territory. Of course, during the campaign mode, once you clear most of your objectives and gain land, the enemy won’t be able to take them back.

    Another cool feature is the ability to use drones and turrets to help you during battle. Drones are little remote controlled vehicles that you can deploy in battle. The MQ38 Hunter/TE1 Tiger Eye is a hovering drone (that looks futuristic mini-helicopter) used to scout out areas. It also has a nifty self-destruct feature that, when activated, kills any on foot enemy within its blast radius. When using one of the drones, the screen goes to a 3rd person view and follows the drone. You can only drive/fly your drone a sort distance as the signal from your controller will fade. The turrets can be deployed, used to lay waste to your enemies, and then picked up again. Don’t worry about wasting a weapon slot in your inventory when picking up a drone/turret because you can carry more than two weapons at a time. Finally, I have more choices than just a primary and secondary weapon (oh, and grenades).

    Multiplayer is similar to campaign as it is all about completing objectives to move your line forward. Each time you complete a series of objectives, your frontline advances toward the opposite team’s base. You win by capturing the other team’s base, which can be only done when the other objectives are accomplished first. In order to push the line back the other way, the other team must re-capture the objectives you cleared (causing the afore mentioned tug-of-war effect). With teams consisting of sixteen players each, the battlefield can get pretty hectic. Thankfully, there is an option to join squads. A squad consists of up to four players, including a leader, joined in a group. The team members can talk to one another in order to dives a plan of action. The leader can even give commands to the other players (like attack this tank). Also, the team members are always highlighted on the map, making it easy to find them on the battlefield. This helps keep everyone organized and focused on completing the objectives. It also helps when you are faced with the problem all gamers face when playing online-horrible teammates! At least this way you can work together with a team of friends. Another feature to note is the class system, which allows you to rank up in certain “fields” to gain better abilities. You could be a Drone Tech. This class gives you access to drones during play, granting you better drones when you rank up (usually done by killing opponents). After each match, you return to your normal rank, keeping things fair. If you don’t like the class you chose, you can switch it when you die. When you respawn, you will be the new class. If you decide to go back to the old “you”, your rank will be the same as when you left it.

    This is unfortunately were the good points about Frontlines ends. Although the campaign can be fun, it is really short. I was able to go through the entire game in well under five hours. I’m all for games that are short because they are focused on telling a narrative (in which making the game longer hurts the story) but this is a little much. I am sure if you put the game on the highest difficulty setting, it will take you a little longer to complete. But anyone who’s played a FPS (just about everyone who owns a 360) will be able to breeze through this game. Also, because you are doing the same things over and over again, the game can get boring really fast. All games are repetitive to some degree. What matters is whether or not you enjoy said repetitive action. After the first four levels (out of the eight total) I was done.

    While going through the campaign, I found out that I don’t have the smartest teammates helping me. There were times when I was pinned down by enemy fire and my teammates would run right by them to get to me. Even while being shot in the back, they refuse to stop and return fire. I know that we are BFF’s and that they have a hard time being away from me for more than a couple of seconds, but really! Their stalker tendencies also posses a problem when I am trying to get in and out of buildings. My AI helpers seem to always block the doorway and refuse to move (even when I smacked them with my gun). This resulted in me receiving bullet wounds in the back when I tried to run from the enemy. Speaking of the enemies, they seem to take a lot of bullets before dieing. Unless I get head shots, the enemies tend to stay alive longer than they should. Throw in the fact that my teammates can’t seem to hit their targets and you can start to see how the enemies can be really hard to kill. The same thing goes when I use explosives. There would be times when a rocket I fired exploded a foot away from an enemy and didn’t kill them. Oh, well. At least my rockets can take down tanks.

    I am not sure if people are growing tired of FPS’s or if they just want to keep playing the ones that came out before Frontlines, but it was hard to find a match with all thirty-two slots filled. This brought on a big problem. If the teams are uneven, and you’re on the team with the smaller number of players, you will lose. There is no fighting it. You can have the best death/kill record of all time and lose every match to uneven teams. There should be an auto balance feature in place just for this problem. Also, with small groups of players and big maps to play on, the matches can get boring. You can imagine what it’s like to run around completing objectives and only see an enemy every once in a while (even with vehicles that can crisscross the map in no time).

    I am sure Kaos studios can make a hit franchise in the over crowded FPS market. I’m pretty sure that franchise will have the name “Frontlines” somewhere in the title. I’m just not sure that Frontlines: Fuel of War cuts it as a next-gen shooter!

    Gameplay:

    5

    There are some good ideas at work, but not enough to compete with other next gen titles out now.

    Graphics:

    8

    The graphic quality of Frontlines: Fuel of War can be impressive at times.

    Sound:

    8

    The same as the graphics (the generic pistol sounds like it could remove an arm when fired).

    What's New:

    4

    There isn’t anything here we haven’t seen before, just new ways of incorporating old features. Which isn’t a bad thing. It just doesn’t help Frontlines stand out in the crowd.

    Replay Value:

    5

    The campaign won’t hold you attention very long. I am afraid that the multiplayer component won’t either.

    Final Score:

    6

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