Released Today... Gamespy.com gave it 4/5 stars. Review is positive, and seems like the bugs have been fixed since the beta. READ THE REVIEW DAMIT! Sounds like it will be worth it...
gamespy.com wrote:
Pros
Fun vehicles; large-scale battles; excellent sound design.
Cons
Frame-rate dips; awkward vehicular control; grainy visuals.
gamespy.com wrote:
Frontlines: Fuel of War is a first-person shooter from KAOS Studios, a development house whose core team is comprised of the creators of Desert Combat and the R&D team for Battlefield 2. The developer's pedigree is immediately evident upon playing Frontlines. The game is designed primarily as a multiplayer shooter with a strong emphasis on team play, with a healthy variety of vehicles and character roles to keep the action fresh.
Frontlines: Fuel of War features a modestly-sized single-player campaign, as well as the option to create custom map playlists with variant rules for multiplayer. You can choose, for instance, to have a game with more rounds, or for accelerated learning of the class roles. You can also set up matches with reserved slots, to facilitate playing with friends. Private matches can be fun, but many players will want to hit the online ranked matches, where they can make a name for themselves on the leaderboards.
Shoot to Kill. Drive to Survive
The single-player campaign can be seen as an extensive tutorial for the much longer-lasting multiplayer meat of the game, but that shouldn't be seen as dismissing its effectiveness. The campaign is quite entertaining, giving you a chance to utilize all the nifty tricks and high-tech weaponry that you'll need to master in order to excel in multiplayer, while also offering up some of the better vehicle-based missions we've played in a shooter. Driving can be difficult at first, since the controls take some getting used to, and flight in particular can be challenging. Still, there's a diverse array of gameplay options that you'll feel satisfied to take on.
The single-player game drops you into the middle of a conflict between the major super powers in the world. When China and the former Soviet Union combine to form Red Star, the Western Alliance is quickly formed to impede their progress towards global domination. When the global oil supply runs dry, both factions meet in the Middle East, neither side willing to give up control over the last remaining oil wells. It's a story culled from one of the biggest issues facing the world today. Don't expect the narrative to browbeat you with politics, but instead take the theme as a reason to give the issues at hand some thought.
If the campaign serves as the appetizer, your main course will be the robust multiplayer that can be found here. There are a half-dozen superb multiplayer shooters available on the Xbox 360. Each provides enough compelling, long-lasting gameplay to merit being "the one game" that people choose to play. Frontlines is built around becoming your "one game." It separates from the rest of the FPS pack by offering up 32-player, large-scale matches, with eight different maps ranging from smaller skirmish-sized areas best suited to eight or more players, to enormous battlegrounds that would feel empty without at least 24. It's a scale and scope unlike anything else on the platform, and feels much more like what you'd get from a PC shooter.
Bigger can very often be better, and it's in the largest theaters of war that Frontlines truly shines. You have fast-moving personnel carriers to zip squads to the front alongside heavily armored tanks that provide punishing ground support. There's even a battered, heavily fortified bus, complete with top-mounted machine gun turret. The larger maps even provide air vehicles like helicopters (with dual gatling guns) and even F-22 knockoff jets so you can do your best "Top Gun" impression. Every vehicle feels like it serves a purpose, and finding a new role with every deployment on the battlefield is part of the fun.
The vehicle variety is greater than you'll find in the PlayStation 3's Warhawk, for example, coming closer to the kind of experience you'd find in Battlefield 1942. With the ability to set up squads, and simple-to-use voice chat options for tactical considerations, Frontlines could easily end up becoming a popular shooter for those who enjoy large team-based games.
War on a Grander Scale
Part of why the game will attract die-hard team-based game players is that the map design and combat are centered on a system that borrows from Battlefield. Squads will fight over points of contention spread around the map, alternating between capture and defend mode as the battle progresses. This leads to firefights that flow back and forth like a tide as each team fights for control of more of the map.
Vehicular combat is one of the more entertaining aspects, but even playing as a foot soldier is made entertaining by the game's role system. You can choose to enter the fray as a ground support unit, for instance, eventually earning the ability to lay down a sentry turret, or to set up a shielded machine gun. You can go the drone route, and remotely control miniature helicopters to fly behind enemy lines, or a mini-tank armed with a fast-firing machine gun. Air support units work as scouts on the ground, calling in precision air strikes once they've achieved visual on their target, or dropping a larger-scale cluster bomb when the enemies are packed together so tight that a healthy dose of carpet bombing is the best option.
Visually, Frontlines: Fuel of War does a capable job of painting a gritty landscape for the conflict. The texture work and character models aren't cutting-edge, but the grand scale of the game, as well as the damage that persists in the environment as you blast away with your weaponry keep the game fun to watch. We noticed frame-rate issues with explosions and artillery fire, so we expect that some degree of the game's visual integrity may be sacrificed when under the stress of thirty-two player conditions.
Frontline's sound effects are quite well-implemented, with the concussive boom of long-range artillery fire resounding based on distance to impact. The individual weapon sounds are satisfying as well. When massed enemy troops start raining bullets on your position and enemy tank shells land feet from your squad, the cumulative aural effect can be thrilling.
While the single-player game is worth playing through, you should play Frontlines: Fuel of War because it brings to bear the best of what made the Battlefield series so popular. Big maps, plenty of weaponry, and many different ways to approach combat make this a solid choice for multiplayer enthusiasts.
MOVIE LINK
