Frontlines: Fuel of War

"A disappointing, uninspired successor to Desert Combat."

For a game to live in the shadow of it's predecessor is a big deal, but some sequels have big boots to fill. While HL2 surpassed all expectations, Invisible War managed to completely alienate the Deus Ex franchise from it's user base and it's fair to say that Starcraft 2 will never have as much impact as SC1 and Broodwars had. I honestly believe that Desert Combat should be viewed alongside the likes of Starcraft, Dues Ex and Counterstrike as a title that redefined what we expected from a genre through a balance of asymmetry, novelty, aesthetics, mood and stability. I will view it in this context with comparisons to Desert Combat for reference.

Any first person shooter has to start on the ground with a soldier. The classes in Frontlines are exactly what you'd expect them to be - the same ones passed on from DC to BF2 and (for the most part) 2142. The levelling system is pretty much ripped from Enemy Territory - you level a speciality (Drone ops, Airstrikes, ground support, EMP dude) that gives you special abilities for the duration of the map. Classes and specialities are completely separate, so you can change equipment loadouts without losing special abilities. Frankly it's a novel idea that has been poorly implemented - unlike Enemy Territory, battles in Frontlines are usually quite decisive with little loitering time and skirmishing to level, and three levels doesn't allow much scope to the whole affair anyway. This is really more of a sideshow without major implications for gameplay. Strictly a novelty; a gimick if you will.

Into the nuts and bolts of infantry combat. DC was like the Counterstrike of BF mods. It was absolutely amazing how quickly you could kill or be killed - it breathed life into the attrition based, slow corpse of Battlefield 1942. We all have fond memories of our favourite class and our favourite tactics, for me it had to be the Opposition Sniper class - I swear, I was the only person on the internet who knew how to aim with that thing. For the record, the centerpoint of the scope is about a centimeter to the top left of the crosshair, in the open. It was eccentricities like that that made the game so good - sniping on Coalition and Opposition were completely different skills, despite identical kits on paper. Then there was the hectic asymmetry that urban maps introduced into Spec Ops gameplay with the VSS, a gun with the power and magazine of a sniper rifle, but the RoF and accuracy of a submachine gun - it was this sort of thing that always kept me coming back for more infantry combat (that and the Stinger…). Where am I going with this highly personalised rant? Frontlines doesn't have any of this; it has the same half polished feel that every THQ release has, where everything is designed to be trendy and slightly juvenile while working just so… Normally… The classes are all identical over each side, with minor differences in specialities, while the degree of latitude for creativity that DC allowed you is gone. You will not find yourself searching the docks for new and sneaky sniper vantages overlooking the enemy's spawn to delay reinforcements or deny access to aerial assets, you will not find yourself luring tanks into your carefully hidden mines to blunt the Opposition‘s spearhead. You will use identical weapons to your opponent in largely symmetrical maps where you will be railroaded into the same flashpoints time and time again. The shape of combat in this game is almost the opposite to the decentralised skirmishing of DC - two centres of gravity always collide, and the result is usually not surprising at all. Infantry combat works a hell of a lot better than BF2's but is still incredibly boring compared to DC's and more recently, CoD4's.

While we're still on the ground, let's clear up the VOIP issue - there is none. Also, squad-play has very little impact on play. Honestly though, Tribes 2 and NS were the last games to really explore the possibilities of command and control in an FPS environment, BF2 had it's gimmicky version of it with all of four commands, but Frontlines takes another step back and removes the Commander and any role of squads. Honestly, that could have been cool were it better executed alongside other gameplay features to create a properly chaotic battlefield where your isolation made it feel like a war fogged melee, but it wasn't. The pace is at times contemplative, and seeing as you'll never really have to think about what you're doing, it feels like it needs squads to give it tactical depth.

Let's be honest with ourselves though, no one played DC for the infantry combat, fresh and exciting though it may have been. You came for the helicopters and the jets. By 0.8 and Final, DC was sporting, from memory, an interceptor, a fighter, a bomber, a scout helicopter, an assault helicopter and a transport helicopter for the Opposition and about twice that for Coalition. The shear variety of completely new and original air vehicles (and land vehicles I suppose) was what defined DC. Frontlines brings a mixed bag. There are no bombers or ground attack aircraft per se (so no, the pride of every DC player, the SU25 and the A10 are not emulated, there will be no tank rape with cannons), there are no scout or light attack helicopters, there is no combined transport/attack helicopter. I'll cut to the chase, there's an identical loadout on either side - 1 cookie cutter transport plane with door gunners + 1 main force attack helicopter + 1 multirole jet = a total of 3 air vehicles per side. Didn't we learn about putting our eggs in one basket in BF2? It's not fun to be a jack of all trades, it's fun to be a master of one or two, and better for balance and gameplay to boot, allowing more bold and interesting tactical and strategic gambits…. On the upside, the noob friendly flight controls of BF2 have been rolled back to something more like DC's. Helicopters are once again inertial entities and slaves to force vectors like those in real life (I'm training for my helicopter license - anyone who says BF2 is closer to flying a real helo than DC and thus Frontlines is a liar or misinformed). Slave was the wrong choice of term, because for the first time since DC, you're free in the air. The flight isn't as tricky, or as fulfilling as it was in DC, but it's a damned big step up from the Battlefield franchise.

There's nothing to say on the land vehicle front. Barring a few gimicks, it's just BF2 all over again. I have to admit that I miss the irregularity of vehicles in DC, the slight differences in the main battle tanks, APCs and cars, and the emphasis on fire and manoeuvre, but these are subtleties of the past, that I honestly don't expect to see emulated by another game, at least not any time soon. In short, vehicles are a huge disappointment which left me wondering where the release claims of 60+ vehicles ended up. There is nothing original or exciting about anything presented here.

Graphically, it's basically what you'd expect, though the requirements are DAMNED high for what you get. I'm not sure what went on here, but this game is quite inefficient with resources. As per normal, you need to make recommended, and probably a fair bit better than that for this game to be a worthwhile experience (sans heinous lag). I am no graphics whore, but the aesthetic in the manuals and the teasers made me want to do naughty things to myself. I'm a big fan of dystopia, and Kaos really made it look as though they'd be crafting a delightfully gritty, dark world for us to play in, with solidly different sides, and perhaps some meaty intellectual questions for us to ponder about Clausewitzian exchanges over resources. Sadly, these aspects were toned down in the release - there is no real storyline or single player to speak of, and the Russians/Chinese are predictably the bad guys again. This game has none of the political ambiguity that DC held, and has none of the bite that the promotional literature would suggest. Even for an Xbox release it feels light in the storyline department. All the pixels and anti-aliasing in the world won't save you if they don't mean something, and they are pretty much meaningless in this. Aesthetically, this game is nothing to get excited about, or even get out of bed for.

Were I to compare this game to anything, it would have to be BF2: Modern Combat. This game has a decidedly console feel to it, despite some welcome returns to DC's lineage. When I first played it, my expectations were so unrealistically high that I was almost disappointed enough to return it to EB.

Looking at it now, it's just another second rate, cookie cutter, console ported FPS, but it has a distinct advantage over others - it's written by the guys who pulled DC through 8 or 9 versions. I'm glad I didn't return it, even though I can't bring myself to play it now. I'm glad because these guys know how to build on something that isn't perfect, and I pray every day they will build on this with some PC only patches that give us a game we can be proud of. From where I'm standing, I bought a gem that hasn't been polished or cut yet. Hell, it still has console dirt all over it. But THQ isn't quite EA, and hopefully the gaming industry is starting to wake up to the fact that people want updates, even if they don‘t always make economic sense straight up. By not returning it, despite THQ rushing a poorly finished game through, I'm betting on the fact that Blizzard Activision will follow Blizzard's update model, and that a big player doing that it going to whip the other heavies into ethical shape for fear of losing their market share. If the legacy of Trauma is allowed to live on, then there's a sleeper hit on my hard drive, just waiting for the patch to get it there.


In short:

What's good:
DC-like flight models for helicopters and, to a lesser extent, jets.
Competitor to BF2/2142 (Finally).
Developer with a history of excellent support and updates.
Potential for improvement.

What's wrong:
High specs for unimpressive graphics.
No single player to speak of.
Unengaging, linear multiplayer.
Symmetrical sides.
Very few vehicles.
No VOIP, functional squads, or commander.

Given 5.5/10 rounded to 6/10. Potential for 9-10/10 if patches are handled correctly.

At the time of writing the game has been patched once, and has one hot fix.

1817 words, Tuesday the 18th of March, 2008.
This work is subject to copyleft, on the condition that all edits are acknowledged along with the original author, Josh Birch.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/18/08

Game Release: Frontlines: Fuel of War (Collector's Edition) (AU, 03/06/08)