Frontlines: Fuel of War

"Frontlines: Fuel of War Nearly Perfects the Full Scale FPS Battle Genre."

Frontlines: Fuel of War Review:

Frontlines: Fuel of War is a game created by Kaos Studios, the people who made the Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942. This game is a first and foremost a multi-player based game not dissimilar to battlefield. It involves playing on large scale maps from the size of a city block to 4 square miles. The main objective in both single and multi-player is to capture the points on the map that are located on the frontline, which is the line drawn across the map to show how far the your team has pushed (or been pushed) across the map.

Story:
Unlike FPS games of this type, the single player is actually fun and engaging and uses the same concept as multi-player game while telling an exciting and plausible story. Without giving away many spoilers, the basic plot of the game is that nearly all of the fossil fuels on earth have been used up. So, the countries of the world begin attacking each other thus starting World War III. The countries have been divided up into two international superpowers, the good guys (which you play as) are the Western Coalition and the bad guys, the Red Star Alliance. The story is told by a reporter that follows around your squad, the Stray Dogs.

There are eight levels and before each is a short 1 or 2 minute cut-scene that is narrated by the reporter and he talks throughout the cut-scene and continues into the loading screen which is nice because you don't feel bored while the game loads. Another nice thing is that the game does not force you to use a vehicle with the exception of one part. There are some downsides though, the AI don't help very much, but act as good, immortal bullet shields. You can only pick up weapons that the let you pick up and you can only get more ammo at designated ammo crates.

Multi-player:
The multi-player game consists of 8 different maps, with the smallest being Street and it is the size of a city block and has no vehicles, and the biggest being Solarfarm and it is 4 square miles with 2 bases and many capture points. On Solarfarm, there are 2 jets, 3 helicopters, and around 8 vehicles at each base. All of the weapons are very balanced to the point where there is no downside to any weapon or vehicle you choose.

It is important to mention that Kaos, the developer, is using servers to host around 100 matches at any given time, this makes for less lag on the 32+ player matches. However, you do not have to play on a Kaos server, you can still make/join a client to client server, but currently the max for that is 16 players. There are many game changing options if you prefer to host your own. The size of all of these maps makes for a large, fullscale battlefield experience. So far, there are 32 players max on all of the developer hosted servers except for one map, Village, where they have increased the max to 50 players. As this is being written, Kaos is patching up their servers so that there is less lag and more servers above a 32 player max. They are even planning on eventually making servers that are 50+, but it is anybody's guess whether or not it will happen, but the chances are good.

In multi-player, there is no open mic, but this doesn't mean that you can't talk to anyone. Instead of hearing up to 25 people in you ear, Kaos smartly created a squad system to counter this problem. Once a match begins, you can press up on the d-pad to bring up a radial menu and you can either start, or join an existing squad of 1-4 people. If you are hosting a squad, you can press up again, go to manage and invite people to your squad. Once in a squad, you can talk to everyone else and the squad leader has the power to make commands, Attack, Defend, and Regroup. The Attack and Defend commands can be placed anywhere on the map to be used as waypoints. The people in your squad have the ability of whether or not you spawn next to the squad leader and if the squad leader is in a vehicle and there is an open spot, you can spawn in the vehicle with them.

For weapons, you can choose between 6 weapons loadouts: Sniper, Close Combat, Special Ops, Assault, Heavy Assault, and Anti-Vehicle. In addition to loadout, you can choose 1 of 4 specialty roles. These consist of Ground Support, Air Support, Drone Technician, and EMP Countermeasures. Once you choose a class, you gain a special ability, such as C4 drone, Radar invisibility, precision airstrike, and the ability to place a turret anywhere. It does not stop there, though. As you get kills, you gain skills that can be used in addition to the base ability. Each class can be upgraded 2 times, giving you 3 abilities total. However, once you leave the match you are in or it ends, you loose your abilities and have to start again. These loadouts and abilities can all be change in the spawn menu.

There are some disappointing things, though. When you are sniping hit detection is off sometimes, but most of the time this problem is hardly noticeable. Also, team balance is disappointing in some cases as only about half of the Kaos servers have team balance enabled, the other half can get a bit lopsided in terms of player distribution.

Sound and Graphics:
The graphics in Frontlines are fairly good, but are far from excellent. However, this is completely acceptable considering the sheer size of the battles. This is not to say the graphics are bad, though, far from it. In multi-player, there is some texture popping if you spawn on the opposite side of the map from where you died, but this is a hardly noticeable and considerably small gripe. 95% of the time the game runs incredibly smoothly and never drops below 30 fps.

The sound, on the other hand is excellent. If you have even the most basic form of a stereo system, this game sounds amazing. The explosions are not just your standard KABOOM! You first hear the shock wave of the explosion, which is a deep base sound, and depending on the distance you are away from the explosion, you may not hear it right away. After the initial boom you hear the explosion itself. When there are a lot of explosion going on around you, you feel like you are there. This game could possibly be the one to beat sound-wise.

Creativity/Ingenuity:
Frontlines is fairly similar to all of the games. However, it is not a carbon copy and adds to the foundation that DICE made with the Battlefield games. The Frontlines system is a welcome improvement to the game and keep the people in the multi-player game focused in on the same area, so if you're close to the line you never have to walk far to find a battle. The jets and 32+ player battles are a new and welcome addition to the 360. This game tries hard to perfect the tried and true Battlefield games and it is good to know that their effort has not gone to waste. The war over fossil fuels is a new idea (to the video game industry anyway). The variety of maps is also a welcome change as every map has its own play style and are all in different environments which give each map their own distinct personalities.

The Bottom Line:
Frontlines: Fuel of War is a good addition to any FPS loving 360 owner. It achieves an engaging and realistic single player story and combines that with an fun and fresh multi-player experience that can keep you playing for hours on end. It does all of this with only a few major problems, most of which will be patched a few months after release. If you are a Battlefield fan, this is a must have. If you are looking for a good story with many high points you might find it in this, however the best of this game can only be found on Xbox Live. If you want something different than your average run of the mill FPS you should at least give this a rent. And finally, if you are looking for a game with a good singleplayer and a multi-player game that offers enough fun and variety to keep you playing for months on end this is definitely for you. Frontlines: Fuel of War gets an 8/10.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/10/08

Game Release: Frontlines: Fuel of War (US, 02/25/08)