Frontlines: Fuel of War Review

BY Kalidh Mohamed | POSTED: 04 April 2008

The fight for fuel begins...



Man is a hypocritical beast. Diplomacies are present only for false assurances and a camouflaged fake sense of security. When it comes to power and dominance, you can sure bet that humanity will be pushed to the brink of extinction. Frontlines: Fuel of War (FFoW) is set in a war torn era of 2024 for the last remaining reserves of coveted oil. You take control as either the Western Coalition Army (US & EU) or the Red Star Alliance (Chine & Russia) and fight it out for fuel and fame.

FFoW does not implement any storytelling elements. In fact, there’s no story to be told, only massive online battles to be fought (if your connection permits). Gamers new to this type of genre might feel a breeze of fresh air, but veterans of the past Battlefield titles might not be so impressed. We here at MEGamers are embezzled gun nuts and no FPS title passes its accord without enough scrutiny under our microscope. And suffice it to say, FFoW stands in a league between mediocrity and global acclaim. Not to say the game doesn’t have the panache or isn’t fun but we’ve played these types of shooters over and over again with the Battlefield franchise and FFoW doesn’t do much to improve on that colossal style of gameplay. The game features a similar armament of tanks, planes, helicopters and humvees that has become custom with massive class-based multiplayers but it’s the myriad of remote controlled drones that would give you the real jitters when you get your grubby hands on it.

Frontlines: Fuel of War squeezes in a measly 7 single-player missions which look like its more suited to being a tutorial than a dedicated story (reminds us of UT3’s single player campaign). The first mission on single-player finds you in a remote “Turkmenistan”, securing the last remaining oil reserves. The real beef of the game comes when you enter its amazing 64-player online warfare where nothing will impede your progress in its diabolically lengthy maps. FFoW will not dictate how or where you should go funneling you through chokepoints, but instead follows on the new trend of open-ended gameplay.

There are 6 classes to choose from: assault, heavy assault, sniper, anti-vehicle, special operations, and close combat and each class offers three weapons being a primary weapon, pistol and explosives. Apart from that, players can play a specific role from the 4 predefined roles namely ground support, EMP tech, drone tech, and air support facilitating your team by calling in air strikes, repairing team vehicles, or unleashing a flurry of your mechanical minions called drones. The game’s single-player might be disappointing at first with its short and frugal campaign but more than makes up with its intense multi-player, which often becomes quite fast paced (atleast on the PC that is). Frontlines: Fuel of War follows on the same footsteps as other objective based multiplayers and offers character customization and a plethora of other features like weapons load-out that has become the paragon for a successful online experience.

One of the drawbacks in the game is that you can play only one game mode called “Frontlines” which involves pushing forward the “frontlines” closer to the enemy by capturing checkpoints and objectives. This might not be particularly bad, but over time it gets boring playing a different avatar of the “Capture Point” sprinkled into many of today’s games. FFoW is one of those games where its control scheme can make a saint lose his temper. Even on the friendly mouse-keyboard combo, maneuvering jets might require you to study Newton’s Laws of Thermodynamics all over again! Humvees are fairly easy to snake tail around in large maps, but it’s always a suicide mission to climb into a vehicle with a half-baked newbie. The game has no shortage of futuristic gadgetry and that has always been a positive for us from playing this game. Sometimes, matches can become pretty serious and teamwork makes no sense anymore. The game lacks the casual and enlightening touch which titles like TF2 offer and you might end up getting shot in the face by your constipated team-mate for trying to be funny!

Ahhhh…for all those graphics whores out there, it might come as a mild disappointment that FFoW does not offer any visuals to wow over. The game delivers inconsistent frame rates and it can dip regardless of what machine you play on. Gamers who downloaded it off online from Steam are already having problems playing multiplayer which is where the game’s moolah is at. Kaos Studios have already addressed this issue and have revealed to be developing a fix for it as we speak. Regardless of many quirks and bumps, the game has managed to create well-defined guns and vehicle models that don’t fail to touch your imaginative side.

Dropping out fresh from the Call of Duty: 4 experience and its lovable voice works, FFoW was a real downer in this department. Gun sounds and animation could in the right sense be defined as “exaggerated” and there isn’t much voice comm. with your team mates either, providing plentiful chances of deviating from the pack and running around as a lone wolf.

At the end of the day, Frontlines: Fuel of War doesn’t fail to impress and though it provides a subtle single-player workout, its multiplayer component packs quite a blast featuring fast paced action, huge battlefields and an array of nifty tools. Playing FFoW is a measure well used as a reprieve from life’s boring moments and a good lesson to exercise fuel consumption (damn you GMC drivers!).