Kaos studios latest release Frontlines: Fuel Of War is a First Person Shooter using the Unreal engine (Unreal Tournament, Splinter Cell, and BioShock). It's first impression is of a Call Of Duty 4 clone, while the initial look appears somewhat similar, the gameplay is slightly different. Although there is some intense, fast pace action, it is a different game than what I was expecting.
The storyline is well devised but gets stale after a while. Set in the near future, a shortage of oil supplies over has resulted in widespread job losses and food shortages resulting in mass rioting. While the Chinese and Russians have teamed together to control the Caspian Sea reserves, the United States forms a coalition. You follow the 'Frontline" troops attempting to eliminate enemy forces and infiltrate key pockets of this territory. A few nukes later and you have a storyline that doesn't travel as far as it should have.
When thrown into the first battle, you'll understand how different aiming and firing is to other games. Instead of just a simple point and click, you have to deal with recoil and focusing, meaning a few well aimed short bursts are preferable over spraying a full magazine into the general area hoping to hit a target. While an enemy head may appear in the middle of the crosshairs from a distance, he might take a few hits to the brain before he goes down. Watching the enemy fall down lifeless is sometimes amusing as they preform back flips, move in ways only a contortionist could think of, or see a helmet fly high in the air after landing a head shot from a sniper rifle. Not too much gore however. Let loose 10 rounds in the back and you'll only see a red spray emitting from the torso as they fall down.
The AI is constantly focused on you, even if there are twenty other coalition soldiers’ standing within plain sight, the enemy fire will always be in your direction. There is hardly a team effort; the squad just follows you around hardly doing much good. Some additional support can be nice at times, but you’re expected to do all the work yourself.
The additional weapons you find give some excitement to your usual aim, shoot and continue repertoire of the usual shooter. Different drones can be found around the map with different weapons and uses. You can drive a miniature tank up to an enemy vehicle and detonate it, or drive around a Gattling gun on a tank tracked rover. Some fly and launch missiles, like the helicopter, other UAV's are detonated at an enemy position. All these are controlled using a Playstation Potable looking device whilst hiding around corners, or crouching safely inside a building.
You can find enemy target designation goggles and use their own Aircraft to call in air strikes, as well as Rocket Launchers and Sniper Rifles. Some big differences to other similar titles are that you cannot pickup and use enemy rifles, only the ones given to you at the start of the mission, or in select locations. Additional ammo is found in crates marked with a blue bullet indicator, simply walking near it replenishes your magazines and rockets up to the max allocated. Alot of the levels use Tank, Humvie, and sometimes Air support, you can hop in and out of any coalition tank at will, steering and firing its weapons.
The game basically consists of shoot the enemy and run to a location identified on your screen. You either wait around until instructed to move on, or destroy something with explosives. This is rather bland at times, leaving you feel rather uninspired. The main campaign almost feels like you’re running around on a Multiplayer map. The AI repeating the same lines over and over again can get fairly annoying at times.
The Multiplayer is where you'll spend alot of your time. With up to 64 players on a map, with drones tanks planes and choppers, you’re sure to have a blast.
You may need to think about updating your cards this time around. It can easily be played on low settings for most mid range gaming machines, but high quality would drastically reduce frame rates. There is however a few bugs that should be sorted out soon with a few game and card updates.
Overall I think this is a well delivered game. While it is just another typical shooter that has many other similar titles to compete against, it should keep your trigger finger happy and your spare hours feeling well spent. If you don’t have COD4 on your shelf, that should be your first stop, but this game will make a nice addition to your collection.
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