Frontlines: Fuel of War

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and David Hollingworth feels fine.

At first blush, newcomers to Frontlines: Fuel of War could be forgiven for thinking it a not too subtle clone of the Battlefield series of games. There’s a similar spread of classes, a point-capture mechanic to move each individual game forward, and a familiar mix of vehicle-based and foot-slogging action. Even the dystopian near future wracked by resource shortages and constant combat could be a rip-off of Battlefield 2142.

But those newcomers would be wrong, as they quickly discover the subtle depth to Frontlines, along with a host of original flourishes and toys that sweep a refreshing broom (or should that be rake?) through the sandbox warfare genre.

The game’s story is a simple one – vital resources, such as oil, are running out, and in 2024 it all goes to hell in a very big military handbook. Nations mobilise to secure areas of vital economic and energy/resource importance. The battlelines fall along roughly classic east/west lines, and players can choose to fight for the vaguely evil Red Star Alliance and the vaguely good Western Coalition. Thankfully, there’s little jingoism as the game’s single player storyline progresses; rather, there’s a pervading sense that the world has simply gone wrong and that everyone is merely doing what it takes to survive.

The real meat and potatoes of the game, however, is in the multi-player – as it stands, the single player campaign uses the same maps anyway, and near identical mechanics, but simply populated with bots. The bots aren’t bad, but it’s still just a training prelude compared to the mayhem and promise of tactical depths once you log on to a server with either 32 (on the 360) or 64 players (on PC) all trying to push on their objectives.

You’ll need that training, too, thanks to two big twists on the standard gameplay in this type of game.

First up is the class and equipment system, and the equipment itself. You get to choose between six classic weapon load-outs (Assault, Sniper, Spec Ops and so on) and four equipment loadouts; this means you can use the weapons you want, along with the toys you want, without having to compromise; no more having to put up with crappy weapons if you want to play an engineer, for instance. The 24 different combos really each play very differently, thanks to some very cool equipment.

"Somebody set us up the bomb!"

The four equipment-based roles are Ground Support, EMP tech, Drone Tech, and Air Support. They pretty much do what they say on the box, letting you set up repair stations or weapons turrets, if you’re a Ground Tech, or call in devastating air strikes if you choose Air Support. The kind of strikes or equipment you can employ upgrades as you eliminate the enemy or take objectives.

However, easily the most interesting role is that of the Drone Tech. With this loadout you can deploy UAVs to scout out enemy positions, bomb cars to drive under tanks or into bunkers, or even armed UAVs to really keep enemy heads down. With all the different infantry weapons, a larger than usual array of vehicles to get carried away with, and the drones, Frontline’s battlefields are amongst the most target heavy and chaotic that we have seen.

But the game’s developer, Kaos Studios (who, incidentally, were the R&D team behind DICE’s Battlefield games), has added a mechanic to reign that chaos in and keep the action tight and focused – and, oddly enough, that mechanic focuses on pushing your frontline forward.

Like the Battlefield games, Fuel of War’s combat zones are split into objectives, but each objective forms part of a larger frontline. To push forward, you’ve got to take the entire line before other objectives open up. Each map tends to open up to about three objectives wide in the middle, and then narrow down to one final capture point. In practice, this effectively does away with the issue of simply not being able to defend all points at all times, and it makes the warfare seem more focused and intense.

At this stage we’ve only seen preview code, so graphically the game still leaves a little to be desired – there are some really great textures, but texture pop-in, especially on vehicles, is still highly evident. Similarly, there’s some great physics in the game, but that’s still being polished as well – some vehicles do exhibit some rather… problematic behaviour. Nothing game-stopping, but if all the niggles and issues can be worked out of the final product the Battlefield series might well be looking at a very popular competitor.