Frontlines: Fuel Of War is a tactical first person shooter developed by Kaos Studios, a division of THQ.

Single Player

Frontlines takes place in the not so distant future where two large allied groups of nations fight over the last remaining Oil. The two factions are the Western Coalition(NATO) and the Red Star Alliance(China and Russia). In the single player campaign you take the role of a soldier in the “Stray Dogs”, an elite group of soldiers from the Western Coalition. You fight in 7 missions that’ll take you about 6-8 hours to beat on Normal. While, the entire campaign is pretty fun, and there are some great experiences, such as “The Mountain King” level, there are better campaigns to be found in the other FPS’s on the Xbox 360. The story is far from Oscar worthy, and you never really get attached to the characters in your squad, however, as I have said before, the fun factor is still there.

Multiplayer

When you pop in Frontlines, the vast majority of your time will be spent playing Multiplayer. Frontlines: Fuel of War does some amazing things, no other shooter has ever done before on the Xbox 360, such as 50 players matches and Dedicated Servers. With the dedicated servers, you will rarely find any lag even with 50 players. The only problem with the servers are that the ranked ones are near impossible to join, not because they keep filling up, but, because it is extremely hard to connect to the servers. Kaos has said they are working on it, but for the time being, you will most likely only be playing Player matches. As for gameplay, you have to capture objectives and thus, advance your team’s Frontline. This mode is very strategic and never play the same way twice, however, some people may tire of playing this mode after a few months. And the maps you’ll be playing on? There is a nice diverse range spanning from the HUGE, Jet and Helicopter filled “Solarfarm”, to the night helicopter invasion map, properly titled, “Invasion”, all the way to the Urban Combat no vehicle, “Streets”.

The Invasion Multiplayer Map

The maps are very fun and you do not need to worry about getting bored. One thing that sticks out as bad, is the communication system. You can only talk to people in your squad, and you squad can only hold up to 4 people. This is due to the high amounts of bandwidth required to allow 50 people to all have open chat. All in all, the multiplayer experience is very good.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Frontlines are alright. They are no Call Of Duty 4 graphics, but they aren’t bad.

The Frontlines System

The sound is what shines in this game, you can tell how far away people are shooting from, and when you are in the middle of an intense firefight, your whole room will rock.

Conclusion

Frontlines: Fuel of War is not a game that screams “Game Of The Year”, however, it is very fun, the multiplayer will suck you in and won’t let go. The single player is more if a side dish and if you don’t have Xbox Live, I wouldn’t recommend picking this up. However, if you have Xbox Live and are looking for a fun Battlefield like game, this is the game for you.

I give Frontlines: Fuel of War:

7 Live-360 Radars out of 10.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 2:52 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.