Frontlines: Fuel of War review (PC)

Since when did bad guys become bullet-proof? This new trend started with Call of Duty 4, Infinity Ward deciding that from now on you'd have to empty half a clip into a bad guy to take him down. Crytek took it one stage further in Crysis making bullets positively bounce off the enemy so you'd have to run over and pistol whip him before he'd used up too much of that useless ammo you'd need to snatch of his corpse.

Frontlines: Fuel of War continues that trend with enemy soldiers that seem to require half a clip - or a very lucky headshot - to take down. Fair enough, you might think, this is to prepare you for the real focus of the game - multiplayer. Here you'll be playing against other people and one shot kills aren't going to be common. Single payer will teach you persistence and how to take down online enemies.

And then you fire up the multiplayer game and try to take off in a helicopter that's a magnet for every rocket launcher on the map and die instantly. Or trek across a hillside and die the moment you look over the ridge. Or when you respawn and get shot in the head while the flaky Unreal Engine is loading in the world around you. Life in Frontlines just aint fair. Until you practice.

Single Player

That's not to say Frontlines is rubbish, far from it. The game is a lot of fun once you know what you are doing and learn to cope with various technical and gameplay issues. The single-player portion is for the most part very solid. The story telling is rubbish - not even close to Call of Duty 4 - but the epic large battles have a lot of atmosphere.

Much of it is smoke and mirrors, but smoke and mirrors have their place. So as you run from objective point to objective point, trying out clever weaponry such as radio controlled mini-tanks and the like, with your band of brothers on your tail, you'll believe you are part of some rather epic conflict.

It's only after a while you realise that your AI teammates are dumb as a box of rocks and quite often don't follow you anyway. At times the game feels like an old school hero shooter where you have to do all the work yourself. Fair enough in some circumstances but there's often too much work here for one hero, the point being it is supposed to be a co-operative affair and your AI brothers won't always co-operate. Oh but as soon as you've managed to defeat the enemy in their base your boys will come steaming in "did we miss anything boss?" Yes, bloody everything.

Online

Thankfully Frontlines is a hell of a lot of fun when you get online. That is if you can get online. You'll suffer all the usual server issues, but that goes with the PC shooter territory. The game caters for two distinct kinds of battles, those that are largely based on infantry and other larger-scale conflicts with vehicles thrown into the mix.

The latter is where you'll have the most fun once you get to grips with things. Level up your skills and there's nothing better than joining a squad of friends in a chopper and heading off to take on the enemy. Spend some time in the more infantry based maps first though to get your bearings, just like Battlefield, Frontlines offers a bewildering number of skills and techniques to learn.

Large scale online shooters of this kind often fail or succeed on the quality of those you'll play with. Teams full of lone wolf types make for a poor show and one that doesn't highlight how good Frontlines can be. But play with the right people and it's a blast, albeit one that we've played before courtesy of DICE.

Technical

In visual terms Frontlines is no Crysis, or Call of Duty 4 for that matter, but it's damn pretty. The slightly cartoon look to proceedings is decidedly old-school compared to the vivid reality of Cod4 but an interesting and bold approach. I have to say I do like the way the game looks and it moves pretty well too. There are some issues on GeForce 8 cards reported and you're advised by the developer to turn down foliage settings to minimal until these are fixed - Nvidia needs to sort this out in a driver.

I played the game on a Quad Core Q6600 based machine with a single GeForce 8800GT (no, I still can't get the SLI stable) and it ran just great wacked up on full at 1280x1024. Getting the game running in the first place was a bitch, there are some issues with sound drivers that weren't caught before release, but you'll find details of a fix on the game's forums should you need it.

The voice acting and storytelling is pretty poor but other sound effects are solid and meaty. The game is suitably noisy to match the brash and in-your-face visuals.

Final

Frontlines isn't exactly an original game but it mostly succeeds at what it's attempting to do. As an online shooter it has plenty of legs and you're likely to have more fun here than in Quake Wars or the online portions of other shooters released recently.

If you're looking for single-player fun you'd better look elsewhere, but if you want a change from Battlefield and know some friends that you'll be glad to fight alongside I'd suggest talking a look at Frontlines: Fuel of War.