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Review: Frontlines: Fuel of War - PC

by Nick Haywood on 8 April 2008, 10:08

Tags: Frontlines: Fuel of War, THQ (NASDAQ:THQI), PC, Xbox 360, FPS

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Conclusion and awards

So, time to sum up Frontlines: Fuel of War and overall I have to say that I’m less than impressed. The possibly promising single player campaign is marred by dodgy scripting, unreactive AI and that bloody annoying rifle scope. It’s even more of a let-down when you add in that damn tank mission bug which, so far, has prevented me from going any further even though I’ve restarted the mission twice.

On the multiplayer side, the Frontline mode is a nice variation on the ‘capture the strategic points’ theme but it’s actually nothing new. Unreal Tournament 2004 was doing it but called it Onslaught, Quake Wars uses it as the basis for the entire game and Battlefield: Bad Company on the Xbox 360 does it better… which is something I never thought I’d say… that a console game does an FPS better, but sadly it does.

Click for larger image


But Frontlines: Fuel of War, if it weren’t for the above mentioned bugs, does do a good single player game. Your AI squad always moves up to support you and though there’s some Half Life 2 moments as the AI gets in your way, overall it’s more CoD4 but without the AI buggering off leaving you all alone. The only problem is that for me, being stuck in the middle of that tank mission, I’ve got less than half a game.

So is Frontlines: Fuel of War worth the dosh? Well, as it stands now, it has to be a big no. Even if you’re buying this for just the multiplayer aspect I’d strongly advise to think twice. Sure, that Frontline multiplayer mode is a lot of fun and there’s nothing quite so satisfying as forming a decent squad but ultimately there’s more robust, complex and satisfying multiplayer games out there… and if you tire of online war, there’s not a lot to keep you happy in the single player.

Click for larger image


I’m told that developers Kaos are patching Frontlines: Fuel of War again very soon which may fix some of the problems I’ve mentioned and that may be so, but I can’t recommend a game just because it’ll be patched and that may fix the problems. So leave this one on the shelf for now.

Pros
Great sound
Sensible destructible environment
Decent AI squad

Cons
Broken single player campaign
Enemy AI often asleep
Multiplayer nothing new

Frontlines: Fuel of War – could’ve been good, ended up poor

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HEXUS Forums :: 2 Comments

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Posted by Steve A - Wed 16 Apr 2008 17:04
I have to say a quite like this game, i thought it was much better than the total disapointment of 2142 (1 game that bored the pants of me),

dont get me wrong its not the best game i have ever played but deffinately not the worst,

i could quite easily play a good 2-3 hours on this, which is more i can say for some other titles,

just my 2p's worth.

:)
Posted by Nick - Wed 16 Apr 2008 17:16
Oh I agree.. if only they'd playtested this a bit more, it'd have received a much more favourable review.

I finally conquered the ‘stuck in mission’ bug by loading up a saved game I got from a cheat site…

Overall though, the issues as it stands still leave me wishing they'd paid just the little bit more attention… the aiming is a serious pain in the backside.