Frontlines: Fuel of War Review

From the guys that brought you the Desert Combat mod for Battlefiled 1942 comes a game called Frontlines: Fuel of War. Do not let the Kaos tag fool you, these guys know what they are doing. Not only did they make Battlefield 1942 an instant sensation, they were bought out by EA because they were just that good! Forget the fact that they were let go shortly after though. They have came back from that with a vengeance and this is what they came up with.





As always, graphics and sound are going to be put together. Why? Both of these things are not a big selling point to me unless the game relies on them. In this case, they don't! So, we are going to make short work of this section. Graphics are not anything spectacular. Trust and believe though, you will need a decent machine and card to run it! I ran it on three systems. The first being an Athlon 3500, 1GB RAM, and a 7800GTX 256MB. This ran it on medium settings without barely a hitch. The second was an AMD 4200, 2GBs of RAM, and a 6600 128MB. (Yes, I know the 6 series is killing it but, not my puter!) In places, this was worse than mine! There was some stuttering when a lot of enemies were around. Again, the vid card kinda kills it. The third was an Athlon XP 2000, 768 MB RAM, and a 6600 128MB. Although not completely horrid, it did run well! A little on the jumpy side but, you will have that with an old puter. All in all, the game ran very well from a high system to a low one. Discounting the video card of course! Sound is just as you would expect. Just like Battlefield. There is nothing there that makes it any better or worse than any other FPS out there. It sounds just like it should and that is all I have to say!

Now we are getting to the nitty gritty part of the review! The part that makes aforementioned things, bad or good, go away. We all know that the gameplay is what makes a game good or crap! Let me start off by saying that this game borrows heavily from the Battlefield series. Which is not a bad thing at all!

The first thing I am going to go over is the single player part. As you start the single player campaign, you will notice that there are eight different campaigns and each one contains different missions. You also get to choose the difficulty when you start. This can be changed when you quit though. One of the things you will notice about Frontlines is that, unlike Battlefield where you are free to go after any flag there is, there are usually two or three flags you take and then that moves the frontline up. Then you must take those to back the frontline to the enemies main base. This really makes the game different as when the frontline is pushed back or forward, you get new places to fight. For example, there is one mission that requires you to take one of two bridges and they are guarded very well. Once you capture the bridge, the frontline moves up to the next set of missions and you can see this clearly on the mini-map. It is up to you which flag you want to take first and how you get there. I will tell you this, sometimes it pays off looking around as you can find some good stuff.

I would tell you the story if I followed it at all. I have a bad habit of skipping the cut scenes to get to the action. The single player is not all that long, however, it is quite fun. You get to jump to different locals doing everything from sniper missions to holding a base for five minutes. Let me tell you, these maps are huge! Sure you have to load after you finish a mission but, seriously, big maps! There are some things I don't like about the single player part though. One of which being that you do not get to carry over your weaponry when it does load from mission to mission even though you are in the same spot. Whoever thought this was a good idea needs fired! When I finish a sniper mission and have the sniper rifle at the end and whatever other weapon I picked up along the way, I should have it when I goto the next. This is just a little annoyance though.

On some missions you will have buddies with you that you can order around. Not that they are that bright though. The AI is not exactly smart and this doesn't really matter a whole lot if you are like me and like to go it alone. The enemy's are not exactly Mensa members either. Sure, they will make you learn how to use the duck button but, for the most part, not that bright. Also, the enemies will always shoot at you unless you are hidden and I have hardly seen the buddies that are with you kill anyone. It is like they are there as a ghost. There is one thing about them I do like, when they are in a tank and you go to get in it, they will instantly move to the gunners seat allowing you to drive!

Another thing is that in single player, the enemy will not take back a flag. For us lazy bastards, this is fine and dandy but for the ones that like a challenge, this will not go over well.

All that crap aside, the single player experience is very sweet. I should mention this though. Unlike Battlefield, you have to earn spawns or redeployments as they are called. The better you do, the more you will receive. If you use them all during a mission, you will start the entire campaign over! So, be careful!

Now we will hit the Multiplayer part. This is a little different than the single player part. In MP you get to choose what player and the role he plays. I will explain the roles to an extent now.

Something you will notice is that aside from picking a player is that you have to also pick a role for them. So, no matter if you pick a anti-tank guy or an assault guy, the roles are available for them all. I really like this part of the game as it brings something new to the table. I won't give all of it away but I will tell ya two of my favorite ones. Drones are one that I really love. As with all the roles, the more you kill people or take flags, the more you will unlock in the roles. So, on the one side you will start with the recon drone. This is a flier. You use it just as you would if you were in a helicopter. The difference is, when you click the left mouse button, it blows up. You must be pretty close to a person to kill them though. The next one is an assault drone. This is basically a remote controlled tank that fires bullets! After that comes the mortar tank. Almost the same thing but, it fires mortars. All kindsa fun! If you are on the other side, this changes. Like I said though, I won't spoil it. Another one I like is the airstrike role. You will start with a basic precision strike. This will hit one point and that is it. As you progress though, you get to have a carpet bomb and then an airship. Like I said, I will not spoil it for you and the things mentioned above are only for one of the sides. Forgot to mention that with the drones, you have a signal. The further the drone goes from you the weaker the signal. Once the signal is lost, your drone stops. However, you can just right click to get back to your guy and then move closer and then regain control. Not to mention if you have more than one drone at your disposal, you can send them all out. Great stuff!

There is no deathmatch or capture the flag in Frontlines! It is just one standard game and that is it. For what it is, it is not bad. The problem I have with the MP is that there is only seven maps or so and none of them are from the SP part of the game. Only one of the maps has planes! The rest, barley have something that flies! This does not make me happy! It would be a little different if you got to fly a plane in the SP but, you don't! The only time you get to fly a plane is in the MP and it is only on one map! I really wish you could play the single player maps in the muti-player part of the game. This is one of my biggest complaints about the MP portion. There is just not enough MP maps. I am really hoping to see some user made content for Frontlines as it would extend the games replay ability greatly!

I did not play online cause let's face it, some people are retarded! Playing on a LAN though worked great! No lag, aside from the computer I ran it on that could barely handle it! You also get more options when you make a game. From the length of the game to what weapons you have and what vehicles are in the game and you can adjust how fast or slow you will upgrade your roles. I had the roles set at 250% when there were three of us playing and it was a blast. Some of the most fun was when all us were hiding sending out drones to kill the other players.


What is my conclusion? Frontlines: Fuel of War is one fun game! There is enough there to make you want to come back for more and the MP is almost as good. I will mention one other thing, there are times when you can blow part of a building out. What sucks is, you can't do this just anywhere. I would recommend this to anyone who just likes the Battlefield series! Even though it is not a fantastic game, it is something that you should pick up at least when it goes on sale.


Pros:
Huge Single Player Maps
MP is great fun if you can deal with the limited maps
The roles are a great addition
Blowing crap up is always fun

Cons:
Limited MP maps
There should be more role rewards than three
AI is not that bright
Seriously, if I can blow up some of a building, I should be able to blow out a window!

I do like Frontlines! After I finish writing this, I will be playing! There are just some things that should have been done different and for that reason, it receives 4 out of 5 stars.

We need some in-game screenshots. These are easy to get, no camera is needed. Just download FRAPS (the free version), it has a built-in Screenshot Function.
http://www.fraps.com/download.php