Frontlines: Fuel of War
March 5,2008 - Frontlines: Fuel of War may be Kaos Studios’ first FPS since it was formed under THQ in 2005. The team behind the game, though, has worked on titles like FEAR, Medal of Honor, and Doom 3. When we last had a look at Frontlines: Fuel of War last December, we were not too impressed. With 2 months to polish it up have Kaos and THQ turned it into a sparkling gem or is it still a lot of wasted potential?

FFOW is set in the year 2024. The world is in turmoil and there is a schism between the world powers over the planet’s depleted energy resources. The Chinese and Russian governments have formed the Red Star Alliance while the European Union and the U.S.A. joined forces to become the opposing Western Coalition. You take on the role of a squad leader with the Stray Dogs, a skilled squadron of soldiers playing as pawns in the War over fuel. While the story is nothing especially new, and the in-game exposition is nonexistent, the between-mission cutscenes are a joy to watch, and provide much information about the ongoing affairs in the war, and why your team is deployed into its next fray.

Kaos Studios definitely studied other hit shooters like Call of Duty and Halo while they were making FFOW, and their research is evident in how the title plays. The controls are definitely taken from Halo, while most of the actual gameplay is lifted straight from Call of Duty. Throwing away a health meter, you will only know how close you are to death by the sound of your heartbeat and severity of the tunnel vision you will begin to have. Crouching and crawling will not only provide better cover and camouflage, but increase the accuracy of your shots as well, which is important because you can only take a few bullets before dying. Instead, Kaos has opted for a more realistic combat simulation where you will need to stay by your squad, pick off enemies one-by-one, and use your equipment to its fullest in order to capture enemy garrisons. Because of your soldier’s corporeal body and limited respawns, you will need to tactically use drone helicopters, remote control tanks, call in air-strikes, and strategically place turrets for maximum effect, especially if you hope to survive any difficulty above Casual.

Speaking of the difficulty, there are a few reasons why Frontlines is probably harder than it needs to be. The first, and most frustrating of these is that your enemies seem omnipotent at times; it’s almost as if they spot you from miles away, from around a corner, while you are hiding behind a rock outcropping. This leads to the next frustration, enemy spawns. It is okay to spawn enemies in the distance, but FFOW insists on spawning enemies right next to you, allowing them to gratefully fill your fleshy back with molten lead. Even if you somehow magically spot your enemies while the sniper rifle is equipped, sometimes the sniper just doesn’t want to hit its target. Half the time we would zoom all the way in, precariously place the targeting reticule on our mark’s head, squeeze the trigger, then watch a phantom gust of wind push our bullet high and to the right, barely missing our target just enough to alert him to our position. Enemy weapons, automatic as they may be, have this magical ability to hone in on our soldier and hit him from across the level, subsequently rendering the sniper useless. These design flaws are glaring, and you will have to suffer through them most of the game.

Using equipment and driving vehicles alleviates some of the stress from dealing with eagle-eyed enemies, but even these have their downfalls. We’ll be the first to admit that flying an attack ‘copter and raining hell on baddies is awesome. Flying the helicopter is one of the coolest things you’ll do in the game because it controls fairly tight and has some awesome weaponry to boot. Driving a tank or Humvee, though, is a different story. You’d think that 20 years in the future a top-of-the line military tank would handle like today’s SUVs, but you’d be wrong. It’s unfortunate that the top-half of the tank swivels so much faster than the vehicle can turn, because you’ll often find yourself attempting to move forward only to find that the ‘forward’ portion of the tank is facing behind you. Only a diminutive amount of the environments are destructible, and you’ll find your mighty tank stalled by a lowly street lamp.

Games, News, Reviews, Media and More