The first project from Kaos Studios (creators of Desert Combat), Frontlines: Fuel of War is very much influence by the aforementioned mod. The story revolves around the time the world’s oil begins to dry up, and involves the nations who must fight for the last remaining territories that have the precious resource. In the single player game has you taking the role of a soldier in the Western Coalition (the United States and the European Union) to face off against the Red Star Alliance (Russian/People’s Republic of China). The multiplayer on the other hand plays out like a Battlefield 2 match, though there’s a few unique twists.
Front Lines: Fuel of War wastes no time dropping you into the middle of the action. Firefights are intense and enemies are brutal. Much like the multiplayer game, you need to progress through the maps capturing crucial choke points or destroying enemy objectives. In certain missions this offers something rarely seen in a story based game, the enemy can actually recapture an area you already captured. This creates a back and forth battle, or the shifting of the front lines. (see what I did there?) On top of the standard weapons that you can pick up, you’ll also find yourself getting gadgets and vehicles. How about a drone that you can steer into battle guns blazing? Perhaps a remote controlled helicopter that can even fire missiles? Or my personal favorite, a little RC car that you drive underneath a tank to self destruct…taking the tank with it. Of course controlling these little drones has its disadvantage…namely your player sits exposed while controlling it. There’s a handful of vehicles available to drive, anything from tanks to jeeps and helicopters.
From a presentation perspective the game’s story is moved along by a reporter that is tagging along to cover the war. It’s worth commending the developers for really trying to put a decent story with emotion behind the game. Every mission is broken up into sub sections, and at times key events are played out in some pretty intense cut scenes. The game looks decent enough, being built on the Unreal Engine 3, but there are times when certain textures look low resolution. The frame rate is solid though, so I guess that makes up for it. Front Lines makes excellent use of positional audio, which really helps create the sense of being on the battle field.
Some people might find the controls a little floaty, and there is a lack of in depth customization options, but overall I never felt like I was fighting the controller. If there’s a downside to the single player, its that the game is incredibly short, taking between 5 and 6 hours to complete.
Front Lines multiplayer on the Xbox 360 allows up to 32 players to play on dedicated servers. Yes…the game has dedicated servers. The main game mode is called Front lines, and it plays out like a Battlefield match in which players must capture strategy points to help move and hold the front line. Your character is divided up into a class and subclass. The main class defines your weapons while the subclass defines your tools and gadgets. As you complete objectives and kill the enemy you’ll level up your subclass, unlocking more items to use in battle. After you die you can redeploy with the same load out, or choose a new one. Your upgraded subclass is available for you through the entire match, but resets from game to game. This helps keep the playing field level, while still encouraging good play. Front Lines strongly encourages team play, in fact, you can’t even chat with anyone unless you join a squad.
Of course an online game is only as good as its community, and unfortunately right now things are a mixed bag. At times matches can be great, with players working together and a pretty even battle. At other times it’s a disjointed mess with spawn campers ahoy. The other problem is reliability, I had random disconnection problems and some lag issues in matches - even on the dedicated servers.
All in all I really enjoyed the single player of Front Lines. I dare say it rivaled Call of Duty 4 in terms of intensity. With a solid but short single player campaign and a multiplayer mode that has a lot of potential this game is on the cusp of being great.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
