Frontlines: Fuel of War (360) Review

My woes with this game did not start when I put it into the xbox, oh no.

I went into blockbuster to get Army of Two, they had probably 8 copies, 6 were out. Both of the remaining cases were 'dead cases' where the game is mysteriously missing.

I saw the review for Frontlines along with the Army of Two review in this months GI, so I figured id grab that and review that instead.

Uncomfortably acceptant of my decision I walked out with Frontlines instead of what I had originally intended to get, Went home, and started playing Bioshock, which I had gotten earlier in the same day (Monday).

I Finished Bioshock today at around 8pm, dicked around for about an hour and a half or so, Put in Frontlines and started playing that.

I left to return it at 11 pm.

Graphics: The artists for this game should be given some credits, the environments were realistic, including small objects littering the ground and whatnot. Very believable that it was the places you were at. The characters have great faces, whoever is responsible for that needs to go work at a better game company. The textures and objects all looked really good, the guns looked believable for 2024 guns. If this game were a movie I would actually watch it, but sadly it is a game, and as such it fails.

Gameplay: Where to start, wow. The guns 'feel' pretty solid from what I saw, but looking through the achievements prior to playing (which I really need to stop doing) I laughed when I saw a "Have 50% or above accuracy for half of a mission" achievement - but in reality that REALLY IS AN ACCOMPLISHMENT because the guns are completely fucking inaccurate. Theres a standing/prone/crouching ala call of duty but in this game it pretty much sucks. I don't think you an run out of ammo, at all. The vehicles are boxy and rediculous to control, its like a box with a gun - please steal more ideas from halo, at least they do vehicles correctly. The AI - holy shit. The AI is completely fucking retarded, crouching behind a half wall I panned a scene of like 15 guys shooting at me, and just shot each one in the head in turn down the row without getting hit. BUT THEN in like the next stage, I shot a guy from like a half mile away with a sniper rifle, while hiding, on a fucking mountain, and everybody near him turned and instantly just started actually hitting me, nice realism there. I figure this game was basically made for multiplayer, but I couldnt even stand it long enough to bother connecting to xbox live to try it out. The units in the single player are either super-accurate bots from multi, or totally idiotic 'stand and shoot me' bots. I think the single player was rushed together at the last moment.

Concept: War over oil in like BFE asia against an alliance of russia and china in 2024. Playing a pseudo-realism card on the intro by showing pictures of random presidents knowing this war is coming when oil starts running short. Sadly this turns out to be a Battlefield clone (complete with spawn points and limited respawns (LIVES, IN A GAME THESE DAYS THAT ISNT A SLASHER, HOLY SHIT). Overall a meh concept but semi-believable.

Sound: The sound in the cutscenes and movies was fine, even the VO - but the random radio chatter during missions, which I assume is where most of the storyline comes from was too quiet to be heard unless I slammed my face against the speaker and didn't shoot, hid from enemies, turned off the music, told my wife to stop breathing, turned off my ceiling fans, broke the fan in the xbox, and made the lights in my kitchen stop humming. The other random sounds seemed fine.

Additional Info: The pause screen actually says "Get back in the action!", seriously xtreme dood.

Basically if you have a hankering to play a War game, go get call of duty 4. If you have a desire to play a good war game online, get call of duty 4. If you want to listen to politics involving oil and war you are way better off just turning on MSNBC or CNN and skipping this one.

Overall, Frontlines: Fuel of War earns a 3.75 from me, nothing really remarkable from this one aside from how good it looks. Even the concept is meh, either totally skip this one or go get call of duty 4.