http://www.gamer20.com/gamehub/frontlines-fuel-of-war-ps3/review/1226

OUR RATING: 7.3 VERY GOOD About our ratings

TANGIBLES: Gameplay: 7 Visuals: 8 Audio: 7 Value: 8 Quality: 7

Why you should buy it: Hour-long online sessions will keep you playing long after it's due back. Why you should rent it: Despite some solid concepts, Frontlines fails to execute on many fronts.

UNIQUE RATING: 7.3 SUGGESTION: Rent It

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.

While you are struggling to turn your vehicle though, you may look around and enjoy the crisp textures and dense smoke around you. The graphics in FFOW are rendered using Epic’s unreal engine, which leave them particularly detailed. It’s quite the accomplishment that Kaos was able to achieve the graphical fidelity it did given that the environments you will traverse are huge and render sans loading and minimal pop-up between objectives. A cool feature added to the HUD is the optional enemy indicator, which will identify your enemies to you with a subtle red circle. All the HUD, including weapon reticule and ammo meter, is optional, so you can make the game look as true-to-life as you want. The enemy indicators are primarily needed because, like many next-gen shooters, the colors in FFOW favor darker hues, making spotting enemies harder. These drabber textures lend credibility to the war-torn cities you’ll tour through, but after going through the same environment for the majority of the game, you’ll grow tired of it. As mentioned before, only parts of the environment are destructible, and there doesn’t seem to be a pattern to it, so you’re left to guess. As a consolation prize, practically every texture will render bullet holes and dents as you shoot them, further creating a realistic war scene.

The audio is mostly standard. Each weapon sounds appropriately thunderous, and the whistle of incoming rockets will make you seek cover. Some notable inclusions are the distinct clap of a sniper round being shot from a distance, and the fact that your allies will yell out enemy positions for you if you are close enough to hear. The music in the cutscenes is dramatic, exaggerated, and appropriately paced, while the in-mission music takes a backseat as background noise to subtly push you along.

Multiplayer in Frontlines is a step in the right direction for shooters. Following Bungie’s model, games are automatically created by Kaos’ servers, which in theory means players won’t be stuck trying to find a game or debating whether they should be the one making and hosting it. Again, this looks better on paper than in execution, as many of the server-created games are not available to you anymore after you’ve tried to select them. When you do get a game, it is a fairly fun tug-of-war between up to 32 players on 2 teams, trying to take capture locations on the map to achieve victory.

We are not really as displeased with Frontlines as we may sound in this review; it’s more that we are disappointed that a generally fun and entertaining game is marked with so many little flaws that put a damper on the entire experience. Like most games, FFOW leaves room for a sequel at the end, so we pray that if THQ does in fact greenlight another title in the series, they’ll fix these flaws and it will get the praise it deserves. For now, though, Frontlines is just another average shooter with a political slant.

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I could have sworn this game was cancelled for the PS3

http://www.psu.com/Frontlines--Fuel-of-War-cancelled-for-PS3--a0002519-p0.php

Apparently it was!

Talk about a site losing all credibility.  This was announced two months ago yet we get a review in March of a cancelled game.  Remember kids not all online reviews are created equal heh

I think he just didn't realize its not getting made for PS3. I beat the game 2 days ago actually and the reviewer sounds legit in most of his points... I'd give it an 8 out of 10 tho. :)

disolitude said: I think he just didn't realize its not getting made for PS3. I beat the game 2 days ago actually and the reviewer sounds legit in most of his points... I'd give it an 8 out of 10 tho. :)

Well this brings up another point.  He basically used the same exact review for the 360 and PS3 version.  Is that acceptable for people?  Mind you the game content should be just about the same other aspects might not be.  Basically should a reviewer just play through 1 version of a multi-platform game and put the same info like they played all the versions?  Again I think it hurts their credibility a bit.

Too many places any more seem to think that one size fits all for reviews. (Then again, some sites do that, then give higher or lower scores based upon how they feel about a console -- which is even worse)

For example, G4's review of MLB 2K8 is based on the Xbox 360 version, yet meta sites list if for the PS3 and Wii as well.

Mike from Morgantown

elnino334 said: disolitude said: I think he just didn't realize its not getting made for PS3. I beat the game 2 days ago actually and the reviewer sounds legit in most of his points... I'd give it an 8 out of 10 tho. :) Well this brings up another point.  He basically used the same exact review for the 360 and PS3 version.  Is that acceptable for people?  Mind you the game content should be just about the same other aspects might not be.  Basically should a reviewer just play through 1 version of a multi-platform game and put the same info like they played all the versions?  Again I think it hurts their credibility a bit.

I agree that it hurts the sites credibility but its not really possible for most sites to review every game on every platform. Lack of manpower... IGN could probably do it but they are just lazy.

In today's PS3/360 multiplatform games, there isn't nearly as much difference as SNES/Genesis days for example. If someone posted the same review for snes and genesis Mortal Kombat back in 1993, I would certanly boycott that site...

Now that I think about it... I miss the old days, when 2 different teams would handle the ports for each console. Today they make it one one, port to the other.

 

disolitude said: elnino334 said: disolitude said: I think he just didn't realize its not getting made for PS3. I beat the game 2 days ago actually and the reviewer sounds legit in most of his points... I'd give it an 8 out of 10 tho. :) Well this brings up another point.  He basically used the same exact review for the 360 and PS3 version.  Is that acceptable for people?  Mind you the game content should be just about the same other aspects might not be.  Basically should a reviewer just play through 1 version of a multi-platform game and put the same info like they played all the versions?  Again I think it hurts their credibility a bit. I agree that it hurts the sites credibility but its not really possible for most sites to review every game on every platform. Lack of manpower... IGN could probably do it but they are just lazy. In today's PS3/360 multiplatform games, there isn't nearly as much difference as SNES/Genesis days for example. If someone posted the same review for snes and genesis Mortal Kombat back in 1993, I would certanly boycott that site... Now that I think about it... I miss the old days, when 2 different teams would handle the ports for each console. Today they make it one one, port to the other.

Good points though I disagree that most sites should have time to review games mainly because there are just aren't that many games coming out.  Most games know days are also typically less than 10 hours especially if they have multiplayer etc.  Just seems like a weak excuse for me.  I mean if I am buying their magazine and spending time reading their sites I expect they done their job and actually done work on what I am reading. 

you know whats sad, even though the PS3 version was canned, the TV Ad still has a PS3 box at the end.