Frontlines: Fuel of War

Out of 5 Nukes

This First Person Shooter had a lot of punch. Developed by Kaos Studios and Published by THQ, this game uses the Unreal Engine 3.0. FFOW was released for the Xbox 360 and PC on February 25, 2008. The setting is in the near future of 2024 during an energy crisis between Western Coalition and Red Star Alliance in a struggle for the remainder of the world’s oil sources.

This game follows your standard WASD controls with a few new things. A nice addition was using the Q button to view and select all weapons in you inventory. Moving around seems fairly fluid as you advance your way through the field. A nice addition for us snipers is a dual zooming level on the sniper rifles. I will say that aiming weapons seems to be a bit more of a challenge than usual. Maybe all of the weapons have a high kick, but it seemed to me that as soon as you pulled the trigger, your aim was everywhere; this is definitely a game for short burst tactics. A very nice addition to customization is the ability to select both your Role and Weapon Loadout at spawn. Something brand new, to my knowledge, was the presence of RC vehicles. When operating an RC vehicle, your view changes to a hand held screen that the RC Operator uses to control the vehicle. Starting vehicles tend to be little vehicles with a stick of C4 strapped to them, and advance all the way up to attack choppers and rolling gatling guns. A few maps allow for air combat by providing choppers and/or jets. The choppers are very awkward to get used to as the controls are way too sensitive. You seem to either fly them at full speed, or turning of the engine to lower yourself. Most of the time, I find myself tapping the acceleration button quickly or slowly, depending on what speed I want. The jets fly beautifully! I was able to hop in using my keyboard and mouse and almost immediately pull off more advance flying skills, such as using canyons as a slalom course.
Game Play 4/5

FFOW is set in the year 2024, where there is little to no oil fields left in the world. A cold war has been brewing between the Western Coalition and the Red Star Alliance. The Western Coalition is made up of the United States and the European Union. The Red Star Alliance is made up of Russia and the People’s Republic of China. As these oil fields dry up and fewer remain, each faction starts to move in to secure the remaining resources. In single player mode, you will follow the a new, next generation ‘Strike Division,’ designated as the WC 125th Combined Arms Strike Force, also known as the Stray Dogs, and their imbedded reporter into the conflict. At the start of the game, you will find yourself to still be in cold war mode. Most of the story is told through the eyes of the embedded reporter, Wayne Andrews. Obviously, war breaks out very quickly VIA a Red Star invasion and takeover of the remaining oil fields. The story progresses by following the Stray Dogs and Anderson through this new conflict and the invasion of Russia. The writers took some time to develop missions that would make tactical sense as well as interesting and fun to play. I like to avoid putting spoilers in here, but expect to go further than Napoleon or Hitler and be prepared for a possible sequel. As far as the Frontline battlefield system in multiplayer is concerned; I love it. The control points that are around the map are set up in lines on the battlefield itself. You must concentrate your combat efforts on the frontline to advance on the map. Once one team has the frontline, the frontline itself moves back to provide more territory to fight over. This can allow for some great back and forth fighting that will last a while.
Concept/Story 5/5

A lot of the graphics were simply amazing, but it takes a LOT to impress me in this category. First off, I like the hand illustrations used to tell the story between chapters and as map icons. I’m more a fan of hand drawn than digital any day of the week! The character mapping was nice and adequate, but nothing breakthrough or groundbreaking here. You can identify for allies and enemies adequately without the aid of Friend or Foe markers in their names, which are provided anyways. The maps are very nicely detailed with the ability to destruct many parts of the map and maintain beautiful graphics of the remainder. Weapons and vehicles are on the realistic side, but I think an attempt to make them look more futuristic prevented the designers from fully developing them into something truly believable. All put together the graphics are presented in a very pleasing matter, but I do hope that the sequel provides a more realistic image on the battlefield itself.
Graphics 4/5

Although I am not big on replaying stories, I have found myself finishing a chapter and then going back and trying it again on a higher difficulty rating to challenge myself. The single player story itself was relatively short, but I hope that this will be cushioned by a sequel. On-Line play can be quite extensive as you are constantly struggling for control of the map VIA the Frontline system that forces conflict rather than doing just global map control, tickets, set objectives…etc. By making the combat focus into this Frontline, it adds more direct conflict in the game itself. Usually when you see maps this large, you end up with flag capture people that just sprint around the map from flag to flag and fight as little as possible. You can only capture a command point if it is on the Frontline. You are free to roam the map as you wish, but it won’t accomplish much for you.
Play Time/Replay 4/5

I believe that Frontlines: Fuel of War will hold as one of the great FPS games of the 2008 season. I have not seen any other games that are scheduled for release that I am looking forward to as much as I was looking forward to FFOW. There’s always a surprise game or two that jumps out at you, but this is an early candidate for FPS of the year in my book. Pick it up, check it out, and you will be a believer too!

Score Tally
17.2/20 (4/5)

	Min Syst Req	Rec Syst Req	My Syst Specs
Processor	Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz or AMD Athlon 2800+	Intel Core E6400 (2.13GHZ) or AMD X2 5000+	AMD 64 X2 6400+ 3.2GHz
Video	nVidia 6800GT (SM3) or ATI 800XT (SM2)	nVidia 8600GTX or ATI X2600	nVidia 8800GTS
RAM	768MB (1GB Vista)	1.5 GB	4*1GB DDR2 800
Disk Space	11.5GB	11.5GB	570 GB
OS	Windows XP (32/64) or Windows Vista (32/64)	Windows XP (32/64) or Windows Vista (32/64)	Windows Vista Ultimate 64

31MAR08
KevinKMJr.eXe