Frontlines: Fuel of War

Well it has been out for a little while so it's time to look at the next Battlefield wannabe. For the tl;dr crowd Frontlines: Fuel of War (FFOW) is a game set in 15 or so years time where the 2 main military blocks, Red Star Alliance (Russia and China) and the Western Coalition (US and the rest of Europe) battle it out for the world's remaining oil supplies. The gameplay mode "frontline", is similar to Unreal Tournaments 2k4's Onslaught mode. The game does have some interesting features despite the lack of polish. If you are reading this in your office cubical and making someone else rich, read on....

You want to know the primary reason why I bought FFOW? Repayment. The same modders who made the BF 1942 mod Desert Combat made this game and I spent many hours playing DC. I picked up the collector's edition with all the extra crap associated with it and took it home and installed it. Single player was first to be played and it was completely forgettable. You play some character (whose name I forget, actually it could be one of those nameless silent protagonists) in a squad called Stray Dogs for the Western Coalition, although the story is told from the perspective of an embedded reporter. You are sent into the middle of some shanty town near some oil wells in central Asia for guard duty. The Red Star invades your area and it's the start of World War 3. The single player portion of the game is almost the same as the multiplayer part so the words "bot match" instantly come to mind. However your team is attacking most of the time while the enemy AI just hangs back waiting to be slaughtered which is alright I guess because bot matches are lame. The story is based on an interesting subject but the way it's handled is anything but that. For example: the final mission is set in Moscow, but it looks the same as every other rundown city you have fought in. Of course the single player portion of the game is not the reason for your purchase.



If the people who made DC made a game, I would expect the multiplayer to be a blast, or at least competent. Well they didn't release the game or have patched the game with proper dedicated server support files. Thanks KAOS. Although it should be pointed out this is the case with most games which are built with the Unreal Engine 3 (UE3), more on that later. Before you spawn into the battle you can choose your class and your role. Classes include assault, anti-tank and all the other derivative stuff you have seen in the BF franchise except for medic, support and engineer. Roles are what sort of support functions you can bring into the battle. Air support is self explanatory. The drone role is probably the most interesting role (although not the most effective), drones are little remote controlled weapons which you drive and fly around. Ground support role fills the engineer gap, with you being able to repair vehicles with a torch and place static weapons for camping/defensive purposes. Finally there is EMP which prevents you from showing up on drone radar and gives you a rocket launcher with electronically disables enemy vehicles and a special lighting rod which prevents air strikes and stops enemy vehicles in the immediate area. All the classes are effective; I think EMP is the best, especially for a ground pounder. Drones have the novelty factor associated with it and is usually used by most new players. I had to laugh when I was capturing an objective only to hear the buzz of an enemy recon drone and firing wildly in its direction before it explodes in my face.

When you spawn into the battle you have a frontline and multiple objectives based around the frontline which you must defend or capture to move the frontline closer to your enemy's base. It is a happy medium between Battlefield's conquest mode and Enemy Territory's strictly linear objectives. Most of the time you are standing in a small area capturing a control point. But some control points need to be hacked or demolished which means only 1 player can complete the objective and is very susceptible to enemy attack, so teamwork is essential. While on the subject of teamwork, the players in Frontlines range from very good to useless. You would think big icons on screen, voice over prompts, the opening cutscene showing the mechanics of the game and the name of the game displaying the game mode ("Frontlines" for the slower among you) would give an idea that capturing objectives and keeping the fight near the frontline is what you should be doing. Well it hasn't sunk into many thick skulls, f**k THOSE PEOPLE. There is nothing worse than this:



I have many rounds where I have scored much higher than this, so it is not an e-peen pic. But this round was frustrating in that most of my team didn't care or were too infected with Down Syndrome to take the fight to the enemy. It is the second most frustrating aspect of the game on public servers. Reminds me of my old column where players should be forced to play a tutorial and complete objectives and multiple choice tests, something along the lines of America's Army.

The most frustrating aspect is grenade launchers. Remember when Dice nurfed the nade launchers in BF2? I didn't really care about that development since noob tube spam mainly happened around hotel at Karkand. But I can't wait when KAOS addresses this major issue. UE3 has very good network code so a hit is a hit. Frontlines doesn't have medics since it has regenerating health. Also there are ammo creates within spitting distance of each other. Grenade launchers have instant arming time (you can aim them at your feet and they will explode) AND travel really fast (so there is not too much guess work with distance drop). With all these features you can guess what the most popular weapon in the game is. I estimate that more than 60% of my deaths have been from the nade launcher. It makes sense that is the most popular since it requires very little aim and ammo is plentiful. However, server settings can be adjusted to remove certain classes from the game. This isn't really a solution since there would be people out there who like the default rifle that comes with assault class.

However when you are fighting gun versus gun, the way God intended. The game becomes really good. A lot can be said for all your shots registering on your target. Generally speaking I do not like the Unreal Engine 3.0 since it has released games like R6: Vegas and Medal of Honor: Airborne with its clunky feel and its shithouse out of the box multiplayer support and browser. FFOW doesn't feel perfect but it is much slicker compared to the previously mentioned games. The weapons are accurate although they have a fair amount of recoil, which rewards short bursts of fire. Maps are littered with debris which make for good hiding spots and cover as you advance towards your next objective.

Of course there are vehicles which you can drive, shoot and crash with. The handling is OK for ground vehicles. The vehicles handle more naturally than their BF counterparts. FFOW land vehicles seem to act naturally with the ground unlike sliding all over the place at low speeds like BF2142. Despite this, it feels as if this heavy tank I'm driving has the same weight as a dodgem car. Also the physics engine flips out on occasion as the jeep you are driving hits a ramp and starts twisting and turning in a bizarre way. When you get in the air the game's physics are ok but the handling is worse. Choppers only seem to have 2 settings: fly forward and drop like a stone. There is no hovering which makes aiming somewhat difficult and sort of destroys the purpose of why there are helicopters in the first place. Fortunately they don't take too much damage from a direct drop otherwise it would be impossible to get rearmed or repaired at a helipad. I haven't had much of a go with the jets yet but it seems to handle fine, although there is no joystick support.



Another major problem with FFOW is the interface. The server browser sucks, it is slow and practically broken. Good thing there aren't many servers or it would take forever and a day to retrieve the server list. Also many of the options feel as if they were made for a console controller selection. Interface also shows its problem in-game. There is no efficient way to communicate with your team mates. The onscreen markers for objectives are MASSIVE and obscure your view of opponents who are hiding around the area. It all lacks polish. Yes they can address this in a patch. But it would be much better if they delayed the release by a month or so.

Bottom Line: Well Frontlines: Fuel of War is a game made for team play. But it still needs some patches to get its shit sorted out. If CoD4, ETQW and TF2 aren't your cup of tea or you are taking a break from BF2 (like myself) I will cautiously recommend Frontlines. Otherwise don't bother.



Rating: 6 out of 10.

Single player was played with version 1.0 and multiplayer was tested with 1.02