Home Gaming Frontlines: Fuel of War – Reviewed

Frontlines: Fuel of War – Reviewed

4 min read
6

By Philip Dunkley

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Put your hands up if you enjoyed Battlefield. Right. Put your hands up if you like the idea of huge multiplayer action, with the option of flying a remote control Helicopters, tanks and various other cool little devices. Right. Now add a solid story based FPS to the mix, with a decent single player campaign (6 -10 Hours) and a great game play experience. Sound too good to be true. It normally is, this time it’s not!

Another sleeper hit has fallen in our laps, and I absolutely love it. Now obviously this is my opinion, but it really is great. Why was the hype for this game not bigger? It settles nicely into a genre that is classic FPS, but just with more action than usual and a decent adaption of the engine behind it (Unreal Engine).

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Here’s the deal. The story goes a little something like this. The world has realised that oil is the absolute be all and end all of everything, and in the early 21st century, we kind of run out of it, well to some extent. Now the US wants to control the last remaining oil fields on earth, but so does everyone else. The world is thrown into chaos, and WW3 is looming.China and Russia decide it’s better to join forces against the US than fight each other, so they strike a partnership. Now it’s up to you try and take control of what the Coalition forces want, and fight your way through this dastardly opposition. The way you do this is by taking piece by piece of the map over, and moving to the next objective when all has been cleared. Effectively pushing the “Frontline”. The maps are huge, so multiplayer would sound unrealistic on such big maps, Right? Think again, Frontline supports up to 32 Players Online!! Nice for the rest of the world, but a problem if you have dodgy bandwidth like me at the moment.  But that aside, this game plays great. It kept me hooked from the moment I pushed start, and even the intro gripped me into the story straight away.

Now I’ve decided to change things up on my reviews a bit, because I think we are somewhat choosy in the gaming world, especially when it comes to graphics. The graphics are good, detailed and crisp. Yes there are some moments of framerate drop, but unless this makes the game unplayable and ruins the experience, I’m not going to mention this in the future. There are also some texture pop ins, but once again, this does not affect game play, so I’m going to leave this out in the future unless it affects me. It plays smoothly, and looks good, and that’s what counts, as it’s the experience that means so much to us as gamers.

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On the sonic front, the audio is great, knowing exactly where to turn when a bullet is shot, and the surround processor kicks in, and the music keeps the overall theme. The voice acting is good in parts and a little below average in other parts, so a bit of mixed view here.

Another thing I liked about the game is that it is told through the narration of a News Journalist, and he pieces the games together from mission to mission. Nice little touch.

Controls are seamless; I got them in about 30 seconds flat. They feel right and everything is exactly in the right place. Vehicle sections are also pretty mind-blowing, and the developers have not skimped on the sheer power of these vehicles, and the ability to literally change positions in some vehicles whilst in combat, giving you another kind of angle to take out the scum.

A great and I mean great addition to this game is the Radio controlled gadgets. Flying a hover drone into a group of enemies and exploding it rocks. Flying a RC helicopter and blasting missiles at the next tank around the corner rocks even more (I used to fly RC Helicopters, so I could be biased here). And I won’t spoil the rest for you, as there are more to find. The weapons in the game felt good as well, with a decent aiming zoom for all guns, and it even has a laser targeting system for an airstrike!!

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Now once again I’m sure I’m going to be nailed for giving a game to high a ranking, but I really do like this game, and I looked at some other reviews, and they gave in the 70’s, but I agree with all the comments that users have thrown back at these reviewers, and I agree with them, what game were you playing!!!

It seems like we are actually having a good run of games early in the year, and there are loads still coming.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank MiDigital, who have come on board with us, so we can get more reviews to you guys and get a decent opinion of our greatest pastime to you guys and gals.

Go get this game, it’s surprisingly entertaining.

Scoring:
Graphics – 80%
Playability – 85%
Originality – 75%
Tilt Factor (This is the Wow Factor) – 80%
Overall – 80% (Excellent)

Last Updated: March 7, 2008

6 Comments

  1. koldFU5iON

    March 7, 2008 at 07:32

    you forgot to mention how you can create squads within a group so now when you have 32 players in the game you can split up into 4 man squads, what this does for you is allow you to communicate only to your squad. so you don’t get confused by chatter happening elsewhere, unfortunately I didn’t figure out how to communicate with the other squads I hope there is something like that in the game.

    If you love MP you have to get this game!

    Reply

  2. doobiwan

    March 7, 2008 at 09:54

    I stopped playing CoD4 because I’m totally besotted with the Multiplayer FFoW demo!

    I just hope MI Digital comes to their senses and drops the price. R700 for one game is absolutely absurd.

    Reply

  3. Fox1

    March 7, 2008 at 10:36

    First time I’m hearing of this game and Wow! It sounds hot!

    Reply

  4. kay

    March 7, 2008 at 11:06

    I tried the MP demo and was quite impressed with how well it played on my dodgy internet connection. If you like military shooters and multiplayer, this is definitely going to be your thing!

    kay’s last blog post..Happy Valentines Day to All!

    Reply

  5. doobiwan

    March 7, 2008 at 12:24

    Anyone still pondering I tell them what I’ve always said about BF type games.

    Sure CoD4/Halo/Counterstrike are great shooters. But they’re just shooters, you get bored. With BF/FFoW it’s an “anything you want game”

    Tired of shooting? Make it a tank sim. Feel like a bit of speed? Grab a jeep and play burnout or a Jet and go bombing. Want to play Splinter cell or MGS, grab a Sniper or Spec ops kit and go sneaking into the enemy base and cause havok.

    20 games in 1.

    Reply

  6. DarthPenguin

    March 7, 2008 at 14:38

    “Tired of shooting? Make it a tank sim. Feel like a bit of speed? Grab a jeep and play burnout or a Jet and go bombing. Want to play Splinter cell or MGS, grab a Sniper or Spec ops kit and go sneaking into the enemy base and cause havok.

    20 games in 1.”

    Never looked at it like that. Thanks.

    Reply

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