[GoCrzy]

Ok, so I saw this game in GI Magazine a while ago, and I almost played the beta online. I am excited to try this game out, and I should be getting it soon.

Anybody have it? What do you think? I heard that the multiplayer is awesome, but the single player isn't great.

A WAR WITHOUT A HERO

or Battlefield fans, Kaos Studios needs no introduction. The upstart development team formerly known as Trauma Studios honed its game crafting skills on one of the most well polished and popular Battlefield mods of all time, Desert Combat. Frontlines: Fuel of War is the team’s ambitious first attempt at making its own full-fledged game.

The single-player campaign follows a near-future tale of dwindling resources and escalating military tensions. Russia and China have joined as the Red Star Alliance, and the newfound group is in a global struggle with Western Coalition forces over the last remaining black gold on the planet. The story follows an embedded journalist as he tags along with the Stray Dogs infantry group, which is leading the push against the Reds.

The short single-player campaign may have a story, but with questionable AI on both sides of the battle and no epic gameplay experiences, the game plays more like a multiplayer mode filled with bots. Just like multiplayer games, missions often center on attacking and securing bases, radio towers, nuclear weapons, etc. The enemies feign smartness by attempting to flank, but will just as often turn tail and run. Your squad mates are equally useless; they will often sit idly in vehicles strapped to the core with deadly weaponry rather than taking aim at enemies. They also rarely come to your assistance in battle. During the last mission in the game several Red Alliance tanks, helicopters, and soldiers moved toward Moscow’s town center for one more retaliatory push, yet my fellow Stray Dogs were nowhere to be found.

On the battlefield, there is no shortage of ways to grease your enemies — machine guns, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, C4, air strikes, tanks, helicopters, armored jeeps, and remote-controlled battlebots all aid you in your quest to smoke Big Red. While the gun combat is sharp, the land vehicles can be a chore to navigate, turning clumsily and often getting hung up on environmental objects they aren’t visually touching. The large, open battlegrounds allow gamers to choose their points of attack, like climbing a tower, finding back entrances, or busting through the front door guns blazing. But these battles are broken up by loading screens between each segment of attack, which hurts the continuity of the action.

The multiplayer, on the other hand, is all about fun and fast-paced action. Battlefield 2 veterans will feel at home with the dedicated servers, squad-based action, and varied weapon kits, which feel well balanced and offer players the opportunity to play to their strengths without having to endure a long weapon unlock process. The well-designed maps offer plenty of room for close-quarters skirmishes and vehicular combat. On the con side, Frontlines lacks a persistent ranking system, player customization, and medals for achievements like those found in the benchmark multiplayer-centric games like Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 4, and Rainbow Six Vegas. In a game so primed for playing online, this is an egregious omission. The game only ships with eight maps, which is also disappointing.

In the end, the Frontlines does enough to entertain on the multiplayer end to make up for the woeful single-player experience. It’s a shame Kaos didn’t scrap the single-player altogether to focus completely on honing the online experience.

-MATT BERTZ

BOTTOM LINE:
7.25
CONCEPT:
Bring large scale FPS multiplayer to consoles and throw some gadget weaponry into the mix
GRAPHICS:
The earth tone, near<2011>future environments look okay, but no one will mistake this for Gears of War or Call of Duty
SOUND:
Your standard cacophony of whizzing bullets and exploding vehicles
PLAYABILITY:
Guns feel well balanced, but many land vehicles control like dump trucks
ENTERTAINMENT:
The decent multiplayer counters the forgettable single-player campaign
REPLAY:
Moderately High

ADAM BIESSENER : 7.75
Whatever you do, don’t buy this for the single-player. It’s terrible. Online, however, has some decent potential to go along with its frustrations. The combination of loadouts (assault, anti-vehicle, etc.) and roles (ground support, EMP support, etc) lets players tailor their capabilities to the situation nicely and provides some fun toys like deployable turrets and special grenades. The maps are massive, and the bread-and-butter Frontlines gametype – which is effectively Battlefield’s Conquest mode but with only a few active contested points – is relatively deep and interesting. Still, some issues keep this from being the new online hotness. Deployment load times, where after your respawn counter is up several seconds pass while you load back into the map, are a constant irritation. Vehicles control poorly, and the lack of party-based matchmaking bites. Even so, Frontlines pulls off its massive online battles well enough to scratch that particular itch, if not much else.