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Frontlines: Fuel of War
An oil shortage and massive global recession have turned 2024 into a dystopia of bread lines and panic. The outlook may be bleak in Frontlines, but your Stray Dogs strike force comes equipped with a remarkable array of thoughtful gear that cleverly refreshes the military mold.
A quick tap of the B button lets you pop into a first-person cockpit view.
The central task of all eight solo-campaign missions is the same: Push the front-line forward until whatever ridiculously detailed, bombed-out husk of a city or desert wasteland you’re invading gets colored a friendly blue on the overhead map. Each massive environment is broken into intersecting streets with Swiss-cheese buildings and an almost complete lack of contrived blockades. The many objectives sprinkled throughout these impressively wide-open areas can be tackled in whatever way seems best to you at the moment. The tasks themselves are familiar — secure blueprints and ammo dumps, defend towns from takeover, detonate collateral — but your freedom of movement creates an exciting illusion of tactical authority, even if you can’t order around your disposable steroid-brigade buddies.
Frontlines ships with only one multiplayer mode, but additional unrevealed match types are planned as downloadable content.
The solo experience delivers only six hours of gameplay that’s light on realism (enemies shrug off headshots like they’re mosquitoes), and it exposes peculiarities such as the inability to cook grenades, pick up weapons from fallen enemies, or refill your ammo anywhere but large, marked caches. For every oddity that might irk veterans, others are guaranteed to excite them. As in the Battlefield series, you can choose to respawn from any objective you’ve captured, but the difference here is that it has to be behind your front-line. That means no more cheap multiplayer tactics like capturing an objective right in the heart of enemy territory and flooding your forces in through an unfair back door. Wisely, Frontlines uses this same respawn system in single-player, replacing the cheesy script triggers that dominate most shooters. Instead, you stay on the move against a huge number of mobile enemies who flank and seek cover in ways that make each engagement considerably more satisfying.
Detail stretches off into the distance, and the framerate never seems to dip even a little.
The campaign is worth your time less for the hackneyed story — which oscillates between overwrought cautionary tale and mindless jingoism — and more for the fact that it effectively prepares you for the intensity of the massive, thrilling 50-player online battles that resolutely refuse to coddle amateurs. To become an effective Xbox Live tough guy, you’ll need to acquaint yourself with some occasionally finicky and inconsistent controls to enjoy the exhilarating firepower of humvees, battleships, and jets. You’ll also need to be intimately familiar with the six loadouts and four roles that define upgradable strengths.
Loadouts determine your primary weapon — ranging from rocket launcher to drum-fed shotgun — while roles throw goodies like repair torches and air strikes into your bag of tricks. Every spawn is an opportunity to try a new combination. This two-tiered system adds complexity, and the fact that Western Coalition goodies differ considerably from Red Star equivalents increases the already intoxicating variety.
Against other tanks, angle yourself for a fast escape after their turret swings around.
Better yet, a little creative thinking reveals inspired possibilities not possible in other games. Combine the special-ops loadout with the drone-tech role, and you can load your remote-controlled rolling mini-gun with enough C4 to take out a platoon. Plant an EMP tech’s lightning rod on a heavily trafficked flight path to disable stealthed choppers as they streak by, and you can slaughter the crew with a heavy assault rifle, then take off in your enemy’s hardware. Stack 25 players with this kind of insane flexibility on each team, and add in a first-class sound design that pulsates with satisfyingly beefy gunfire and explosions that’ll rattle any living room, and you’ll see how just eight maps and a sole objective-capturing mode can still command surprisingly rich flexibility and gripping situational diversity.
In single-player, you’ll have to control a vehicle’s path and targeting simultaneously. In multiplayer, the duties are split.
With so many meticulously constructed possibilities at play, it’s only natural to expect a steeper learning curve, and Frontlines could certainly have benefitted from having a Call of Duty 4–style graduation system. But it’s hard to complain about a lack of handholding when even death comes in so many inventive forms.
ON XBOX 360
+ Rich and deep loadout, role, and redeployment systems.
+ Killer graphics and multiplayer.
- Short campaign; quirky vehicle controls; only one online mode.
? Why are vehicle control schemes so variable?
9.0
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Legolas12280
December 30, 2008 at 4:13pm
Frontlines was an especially great game. Though the campaign was kind of cheesy drama. Its especially annoying to get spawn killed in multi-player. Doesn't have very destructible environments like Battlefield: Bad Company
Gamerboi666
December 28, 2008 at 8:20pm
the game is fun but the multiplayer it gets annoying when you respawn it should be like COD4 but its the way it is and i would recomend it especially to shooter loving gamers or like me who will probably love any game with LIVE
rustyreaper0
August 22, 2008 at 8:22pm
Gameinformer gives it a crappy rating because gameinformer sucks
MitchyD
March 21, 2008 at 12:26am
After playing it, I`m enlightened to the score. I`m not convinced, but hey, to each his own! -- http://www.nukoda.com -- Gamertag: MitchyD88
GMAN CLAN
March 18, 2008 at 10:09pm
I'm having trouble understanding how this game gets a 9.0 from you and then i see on IGN and in game infromer getting like a 7.5 or something like that. what is it that is so different between the 3 views? --My Gamertag is GMAN CLAN. Check me out on xbox live!
wrathoftheninja
March 06, 2008 at 1:07pm
how come oxm gives this game a great rating but gameinformer gives this game a crappy rating?!?!?!
STeaMY MaRTiNi
March 02, 2008 at 6:07pm
This will probably ruffle a few feathers but... I just can't get my head around playing a shooter that isn't realistic. "Realistic" meaning mature-related content. I forgave GRAW and GRAW 2: but when I shoot someone, I want to see the character react to getting blown away in a realistic manner. This game is rated "T": how the hell can you have a realistic shooter that's rated "T"? Maybe I'm getting jaded (or spoiled) from the slew of recent great mature shooters.
BIGDADDY DJ Sr
March 02, 2008 at 11:12am
I'm not a big gamer (like my son) but I'll aways try new shooter demos. There's alot of techie flashy screen info, for this old timer a longer learning curve neccessary. Overall, looks tempting, I will rent next before purchasing, my safe side.
saggin good
March 02, 2008 at 10:23am
The game is a lot different from the demo. they showcased the wrong maps. once you get the game there are a lot of good maps. oh and how bout an early turningpoint review. Ive looked at ign but there rating arent like yours. oh and also army of two id like to see a review before i buy it? Thanks
Rapid-Transit
March 01, 2008 at 1:27pm
I support this game for one huge reason. I can't get Desert Combat out of my head and it's been years since i terroized people with the Apache helicopter. The developers behind this game were the PC world community modders of BF1942 that came together over the internet and developed a modern day combat game that stands up to anything we have today. So i admit to buying the game to support my homeboys who brought me so much joy back in the day. This is not COD4 but something totally different and just as exhilarating. There are shades of DC that I immediately recognize in the control schemes and the firepower of the heli. AWSOME!@ So I applaude the newest entry of a team whom I condider my heroes. Rapid out
cenahk
February 29, 2008 at 4:56pm
y the hell does the comerchal look horable and the game is grate?
Art of PROGRESS
February 28, 2008 at 12:55pm
I picked up Front Lines on its relase date and even put it on reserved. I loved the demo and the game. But something strange started happening when i would try to join live on the game and demo matchs hosted by the Koas(the game) it stared:kicking me out in the middle of games,or game is closed ( when there is 8 of 32 palying) and finally i wouldnt even let me sign in at ALL!!!!. i got so mad i called THQ. the rep gave me a lame answer like "there are aware of the problem and are working on it. so keep trying". any one els having this problem?
DarthViking1
February 28, 2008 at 7:58am
Wow a 9 huh? I had high hopes for this game and now can't wait to pick it up and get a better look at it (Anything you guys give a 8.5 and higher to I automatically buy, no questions asked!). I have to admit, when I first played the MP demo, I was on the Oil field and didn't see anyone. I was like, "Did every one quit when I entered the room? And them all of a sudden this helicopter came out of no where (And like a moron I run towards it!) and it blows my as* away! From there on in I kept playing and capturing bases and what not and well, 2.5 hours later I was like dam*, I really like this game! Im not sure yet if it will dethrone COD4 as my favorite MP game (That game is in my system like 95% of the time man!), but it still looks like it will be a great game to play with people.
dietcoke4fatty
February 27, 2008 at 7:40pm
the demos were bad, espeshely the multiplayer demo, there was no one to fight, the single player actually had some actionI thought it was pretty good any wat I trust you OXM so ill giive the game a shot
iThomas
February 27, 2008 at 5:57pm
To the person who said there isn't voice chat in this game, there is. You simply have to create a squad on the fly and invite the people you want in your squad in order to talk to them. It's actually a clever way of incorporating voice chat when there's this many people playing at a given time. I'm currently waiting for this to ship to me from Gamefly. I played both the singleplayer and multiplayer demo and had a blast with both. From what I played, I'm not suprised by a 9.0 score. P.S. Speaking of clever ways to kill the enemy. What I did in the multiplayer demo was strap a ton of mines on my leg and run into crowded enemy occupied areas. If I got shot, BOOM! It also serves as a COD4ish perk called Martyrdom. Even if they don't shoot your mines, once you die, they explode. I've gotten many kills this way and it's quite funny.
Axe Argonian
February 27, 2008 at 5:43pm
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and Condemned 2 deserve a score like that. Anyway,what was your score for DARK MESSIAH?
Axe Argonian
February 27, 2008 at 5:42pm
Sorry,but that demo was vomit-inducing trash. How can the real thing be any different from a recent demo?
Cybertuffguy
February 27, 2008 at 4:32pm
I am totally shocked by this score. Major cons to this game: No Voice chat No party capability No radar of any sort considering the time this takes place. Some maps it is very hard to see anyone. Without some sort of communication it is hard to get a strategy together. This game was clearly rushed out to compete with COD4 and bombs at it. I really want to like this game but it needs fixes ASAP
ROBBMAC
February 27, 2008 at 1:05pm
OXM has been giving a lot of games rather high scores in relationship to my personal tastes. I won't hold that against them but their reviews haven't matched my impression of many games for the last few months. I very skeptical of anything that they score 90 or better. I wasn't impressed by either demo as well but I will see if I can rent it myself and see how much has changed. Map size and player count aren't enough to make a game good for me and that seems to be the draw for a lot of fans of the game. Anybody on here play the game and care to give your impression as well?
ArmoredCookie
February 27, 2008 at 10:14am
Surprising high score. I really thought oxm would chew out this game, but apparently its worth it. i was gonna rent it sooner or later but after reading this maybe ill go with the sooner rather than the later.
Daze Of War
February 27, 2008 at 9:53am
That is a pretty high score. Specially when the demos were not that good. I'll check this out at work and give the actual game a try. Just not sure if I'll buy it though.
MitchyD
February 27, 2008 at 12:34am
Both demos for this game were an absolute joke. Shocking score - perhaps I will rent to be extra safe. -- http://www.nukoda.com -- Gamertag: MitchyD88
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