Frontlines: Fuel of War is a first person shooter with a single player campaign and multiplayer mode that supports up to 50 players. Campaign play begins in 2024 after the world has long lived the effects of oil shortages, global depression, nuclear war, and pandemic outbreaks. Just as the game title and the game quote that appears on the loading screen suggests, "It's what we grew up in, post Middle East, post peak oil, post everything." It's no shocker to find out the game's main storyline is about oil interests for your faction, the Western Coalition. As a soldier in the Western Coalition and a member of the ‘Stray Dogs' you will fight Red Star Alliance troops to secure key oil and military objectives during the course of eight missions in one of three offered difficulty levels: casual, normal, and hardcore. Eight missions may not seem like much, but the missions are not to be considered short as objectives are continuously updated as you play through each level.

A wide variety of weapons are available for use in the arsenal including: pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, sub machine guns, light and heavy machine guns, demolition charges, fragmentation grenades, anti-vehicle landmines, and a rocket launcher. Each faction has a unique model of each weapon type. Aside from conventional weapons, there are several remotely controlled drones and additional hardware such as scout and attack helicopters, attack drones, sentry guns, and deployable turrets that can be utilized by players during missions or multiplayer. Multiplayer utilizes a different method for the availability of these weapons as well as some additional abilities which are determined by a player's role; more on this later.

Recent years have led gamers to expect full scale war games such as Frontlines: Fuel of War to come stocked with a fleet of vehicles to aid in their transportation and carnage on the battlefield and Frontlines definitely delivered on that front. The availability of hummers, medium and heavy tanks, attack and transport helicopters, mobile air defense, and fighter jets bring the front lines to your living room. As usual, campaigns have missions or objectives that require the use of a vehicle such as battling Red Star armor divisions in dangerous radioactive zones or leading an attack division into an urban city heavily fortified by Red Star troops. Staying consistent with other games in the multiplayer realm, there are preset vehicles available depending on the map selected for each game.

The multiplayer action in Frontlines: Fuel of War is never dull with online matches supporting up to 50 players per game and up to 60 minutes each. The back of the box says 2-32 online, but I personally have seen up to 50 players in one match. However, the multiplayer custom settings have an option that reads ‘Minimum Players' with a value of up to 50 which leads me to believe more than 50 players can play simultaneously in each game, but I have not seen it thus far. The game comes loaded with 8 maps available for online play; Gnaw, Oilfield, Street, Solarfarm, Invasion, Mountain Top, Village, and Roundabout. Additional maps are available through Xbox LIVE downloadable content. When entering a new game you will be prompted to select a loadout, a role, and a spawn location. Loadouts are equipment setups which determine your primary and secondary weapons as well as your explosive equipment (frags or land mines). The available loadouts include: Assault, Sniper, Special Operations, Heavy Weapons, Anti-Vehicle, and Close Combat. Roles determine the three available abilities that a player can receive during each game. Ground Support, EMP Tech, Drone Tech, and Air Support are the available roles. As kills and objectives are captured or destroyed during game play, a ‘loading' style bar progressively fills up and grants a new ability to the user; the first ability is automatically available when a role is selected. Some of the available abilities include vehicle repairs, grenade launcher, EMP rods and rockets, remote controlled helicopters and drones, as well as precision air strikes and cluster bombs. Players can select a new role each time they spawn. Spawning locations are made available by the territories that a faction is currently in possession of. As the title once again suggests, the object of the multiplayer game is to advance your front lines. By capturing all of the territories that make up the current frontline you will advance your factions front line and make available new spawn points which are closer to said front line. Each faction has a point counter which decreases incrementally depending on the number of territories currently in their possession. The game is over when one faction reaches zero points, the losing team, or there are no more spawn locations available. As seen in previous games in the genre, there are squad capabilities. Players in multiplayer games can opt to form or join existing squads that add waypoints for squad members and restricts voice communication within the squad. Players not belonging to any squad can communicate freely with other members without a squad on their faction.

The visual detail in Frontlines: Fuel of War is nothing to rant about. The cinematics have a much smoother and crisp image than during game play. After seeing games such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare explode onto the market with rich detail, not much can be said about the sometimes choppy and lacking detail of imagery in Frontlines. In their defense, Frontlines does make available a much larger scale battlefield which can explain why the attention to detail had to be toned down a notch.

When all is said and done, despite the lowered expectations of graphical detail, Frontlines: Fuel of War delivers a thrilling, action packed, always on the move experience for gamers who enjoy a new game in the genre.

Jul 30, 2008 | 4 comments
Robert Rasco