Frontlines: Fuel of War 360 Review

After a 24 hour Steam download, its a good game that has some interesting features

I purchased this game from 'Steam' and after a long, sporadic download (off and on over 24 hours) and then some difficulty getting it to load, I FINALLY got to play this game. (I suggest, before buying, that you visit the forums to see some of the troubles people are having.)

I initially played this game on 'normal' difficulty and found that there was a fairly easy quality to it; the enemy were not that strong, my buddies although useful at times, didn't seem to do much, and my character seemed to be able to take a pounding before getting killed. However, playing on 'hardcore' difficulty, gave this game a entirely new dimension; it was a real challenge (but a doable challenge).

Some comments on what I liked and didn't like: (played on single player)

1.)Excellent smooth flowing graphics, good audio (even a good 'heroic-type' music tract [usually I turn the music off in games as I find it annoying]) that was pleasant to listen to. Also, some interesting 'cut-scenes' (which you can skip).

2.)There are the usual large variety of weapons; rifle, explosives, rocket launcher etc., but there are some interesting new remote controlled 'drone' robots (both ground and airborne) that do add a new twist to the FPS concept. These units can be used either as 1st or 3rd person and once you get the hang of manipulating these robots skillfully, they are exceptional pieces of weaponry.

3.)Although specific objectives must be obtained to complete a game segment, there is no order in which tasks have to be done and furthermore you usually have several ways of approaching a target, giving the game a certain amount of non-linear play to it.

4.)You get to operate a number of vehicles (both ground and air) and their weapons. Most of these vehicles can be played in either 1st person or 3rd person with a toggle key; obviously 1st person is the most realistic, but the 3rd person is extremely useful for looking around to get your bearings and to see where the danger is.

5.)There are no quick F5/F9 game save/loads; you must reach a game check point to autosave (which basically means completing a specific objective). If you died you can 'redeploy' (up to 5 times) somewhere near where you died. This feature seemed to work well and checkpoints were reasonably spaced apart.

On the negative side;

6.)Learning to fly and control a helicopter was an exercise in perseverance and frustration; I'm not sure the time I spent on this was worth the mediocre results.

7.)This game had a LONG load time from icon click to actual playing, however the restarts after dying (redeploys), were fairly fast.

8.)This is a fairly short game; only 8 campaigns (that have 4-5 sections each). I finished this game in two days of intermittent play. Not much playing time for $50 US.

Conclusions:
A short game, that graphically was well done, and it does have some interesting scenarios and ideas. And although it doesn't quite have that visceral intensity of Call of Duty 4, it is still an interesting and complex FPS. This game, played on 'easy' or 'normal' difficulty resulted in just a so-so rating, BUT on 'hardcore' it required some thinking and planning (and using your fellow soldiers), and thus making it intriguing FPS to play! 3 1/2 - 4 Stars

Sys Specs; Played on Vista with a Dual core processor, P5K motherboard, 2 GB RAM and nVidia 8800 GTS card
Read full Story

Source / Author / Credit: Anonymous