Frontlines: Fuel of War ^{(Xbox 360)}

Genre: First-Person Shooter Publisher: THQ Developer: Kaos Studios Players: 1-32

By Keith B (17th Apr 2008)

While most of the world acts like nothing’s happening as the global oil supplies dwindle, Frontlines: Fuel of War bucks the trend and shows what life might be like when it gets worse. A lot worse.

While most of the world acts like nothing’s happening as the global oil supplies dwindle, Frontlines: Fuel of War bucks the trend and shows us what life might be like when it gets worse. A lot worse. Because humans do what they do best when that happens – obliterate each other for the last precious drops.

And so the usual happens, the East and West have a dust up over it. The Western Coalition is formed by the US and EU, and they’re fighting against incredible odds to repel, wait for it, the Red Star Alliance which includes Russia and China. The respective countries have pooled their resources and budgets and have set the world on the brink of oblivion. So now that we’ve assigned the usual roles to the usual people it’s time to get stuck into a game that didn’t really set out to break down any boundaries, but what the hell, it’s got big multiplayer maps so maybe that’s got something innovative. It’s from the people behind Battlefield on the PC so there should be pedigree.

The game sets you in the boots of a marine, deployed on a variety of missions to secure outposts, attack installations and so forth in the very near future. As you complete objectives the line on the map between the two opposing forces (the front line, you see) moves to represent the success you’re having on the field. When the line moves you can access respawn points so you don’t’ have access to at the start. What this does is stop the incessant respawning at the same place and running the same section of the map over and over again.
You’re equipped with a variety of traditional weapons, from sniper rifles to shotguns, and many that have a distinctly futuristic feel, apparently designed on the weapons of tomorrow. The game opens with a chopper you’re riding in being shot down, and this is where it started going bad for me. Once the game hands control to the player, it’s up to you and your squad to protect the crash site, except when it loaded up I couldn’t move. Controller was connected fine but no response. I became concerned when, after three or four minutes, I hadn’t been killed, despite my predicament. One reboot later and I was away, spraying the enemies with my assault rifle. I moved up about 100 yards on the map and jumped to hide behind some rockets. Except I clipped into a rocket, and couldn’t get back out. This isn’t supposed to happen. Quit and restart.

By now I was getting tired of Frontlines and was dreading having to play through an entire campaign, but once I familiarised myself with the controls it became relatively enjoyable. The really unique thing about Frontlines is you can use a variety of drones which you can send deep into the battlefield while you hide behind a wall. There are three types – a mini helicopter that can fire rockets, a track-based mini-tank with a gatling cannon, and a remote control car that you can detonate from afar and is perfect for taking out vehicles. The drones are powerful and, accompanied by a distinctive whine as they approach, rightly cause people to run for cover when they approach. They deservedly provide something new to the gameplay and are fun to get control of.
You can also get into any vehicle you come across and the usual medley are all present – planes, helicopters, tanks, anti aircraft tanks, and so on. There are over 60 weapons and vehicles to get to grips with.

The enemies are less intuitive than most other first person shooters these days, and while they run around doing what I think must be find cover, they’re pretty easy to blast. I said ‘sprayed’ above when I told about fighting at the crash site and sprayed is what I meant. The accuracy of the weapons is low so there tends to be quite a bit of spraying going on. The weapons didn’t seem to feel like they had any weight, even the sniper rifle which usually provides a sense of utter ballistic dominance. It just felt hollow. It is possible to kill a foe with a headshot although you’ll probably need to squeeze off five or six rounds to manage it.

It appears that most of the enemies are using the same model so instead of feeling like you’re pitched in some otherworld battle, it feels like Attack of the Clones. The enemies are unintuitive and they’re pretty awful to look at, like the enemies in Syphon Filter back in the day. I find it even harder to accept this considering the slow improvement in AI over recent years.

But this is a huge multiplayer game, so the AI can’t bother me there. On I go.

It’s immediately apparent that this is basically Battlefield 2142 on consoles. Everything about it is the same, from the objective capturing to the squad based tactics on hand. There actually seems to be little advancement in the technology or gameplay stakes of its PC counterpart and that’s not great, considering BF2142 is a couple of years old.

But I have to be honest and say that, once I had given it a few hours of time and started understanding some of the maps a little, the game really did grow on me. The maps are genuinely huge and there are some brilliant settings, and upwards and not just outwards. There are sniping positions on some maps that take literally minutes to climb to the top of, where you'll actually be higher than the average height a helicopter flies at. The squad function allows you to give simple orders to your squad mates and enables you to see where they are on the battlefield.

There will certainly be a market online for people who want to really give this a go but I find it hard to recommend really. For online combat there are better games out there, although the vehicle combat is a welcome aspect and one that could see this becoming a serious title down the line. It just needs some tweaking around the edges and it could be genuinely brilliant.