Frontlines: Fuel of War - the first 24 hours

Review :

It's been a bumpy first day with a game that I have been looking forward to for a while. Things didn't start well - releasing a demo on the 360, but not on PC was a bad sign, that we probably should have heeded. Nevertheless, what I saw on Live, between the cursing about stupid 360 gamepad controls was fun, so I continued with the pre-order.

So, I get the game on Thursday (courtesy of the people at GAME/Gameplay), and set about patching with the release-day 1.01 patch. All is well, I booted up and set the game options, but played no further till Friday. It has to be said now, I love the premise of the game - the near-future, all-too-possible scenario make the action more compelling (even if some of the weaponry is less realistic!). Then the first problems hit! I loaded the SP for a bit of training, only to find that the game freezes every few seconds, and then completely locked up after a minute or so. In the past, on less uber-rigs, freezing has occurred when the game has to load assets from the HDD, rather than from RAM so I checked the HDD which was happily doing it's thang. Now suitably incensed, I travelled to the forums, only to find legions of Vista owners complaining about the fact that they can't play. NOT HAPPY.

After scouting around, I found reference (and then got told by a forum user) to a fix involving turning all the foliage off, and also updating the OpenAL for my X-FI. This I did, and success! the game worked. I then spen most of the night, playing MP both online, and on LAN. Here are my impressions (bet you wished you'd skipped to this bit right from the off, eh!):

Pros

• The gameworld is great. It's not just a BF clone, the background is more fleshed out, and the reason for fighting is clearer. It relates to where we are now as a civilisation, and what could well happen if we don't do something. The story has no impact on the gameplay at all, but rather acts to immerse you a bit more than BF2's 'rag-heads v yanks'.

• The engine (barring trees it would seem!) is really excellent. It's not the most detailed, and the environments aren't hugely varied. But the physics engine is outstanding, and a real asset to the gameply. Do you know an enemy is hiding in that house? Stick some grenades/railgun fire/remote-controlled bombs into the wall and remove his cover. There's hundred of nice little touches like this that add extra oomph to the firepower.

• There's no classes as such - you mix and match. The system is simple and easy to understand, but with enough variety to suit both your playing style and the teams requirements. Your loadout is comprised of 2 tiers - the gun you hold (assault rifle/RPG/sniper), then a selection of technological goodies with 4 pools to choose from. Each pool has one starting tech, and 2 others to gain through experience. Some of these techs are just awesome, and really change the gameplay. It doesn't have persistent stats or the grinding of COD4's RPG, which to my mind is a good thing. It'll take you just long enough to get the really cool gear, but unlike COD4, the starting gear is also great.

• The gear itself is inventive and meaty. The guns pack a real punch, and feel deadly. You and your opponents will take a number of bullets to put down, so it's no CS:S or Hardcore COD4, but the guns do pack a punch, and the sound work is pretty good. The techs range from wicked remote-controlled tanks and flyers, to gun emplacements, EMP techs to counter the drones and air-strikes of varying pwn. There's a job for everyone and the potential for composite teams, where every member can do a different job.

• The MP is fun - the cap points are only available on the front line, meaning no back-hacking, a feeling of progression and a focus for the action. This is a good thing and means the fighting is contant and motivated.

Cons

• It's buggy. There are legions of gamers who are having problems, and I definitely get the feeling that they rushed the PC release before testing was complete. The problems range from SecurROM issues, to not being able to load the game at all, to stuttering to a number of gamers whingeing that they couldn't use a gamepad on their PC copy (which made me LOL hard - they're gonna have a GREAT time!). To Kaos's credit, they have also now released a hotfix for the 2 big issues, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

• The SP is a vaguely cheesy campaign, that wastes the story of the world and basically acts as an extended framework for training you how the toys work in MP. It's most like the UT3 campaign in that regard. The AI of enemy soldiers is also pretty lacking, it's no Crysis that's for sure. I get the feeling that this is an MP game with a SP tacked-on. Having said that, it's still dumb fun for a rainy afternoon.

• It doesn't have a lot of game modes or the persistent levelling of COD4, I know that will turn some people off. Hopefully, they can add variety through patches.

• The WORST part by a long chalk is the server browser. There's no friends list. There's no way to quick refresh. EVERY time you log on to the browser, it updates EVERY server in the world. Well, I say updates. What I mean is; accesses the server, then makes up a random number of players and then gives you a 'server unreachable' error when you try and connect. There's no way of looking for the server IP to give to m8s. This basically means that if you get on a server, there's as much chance of winning the lottery as a friend joining on there with you. Shite.

So - a promising game which is top fun when you actually get on a server. But getting there is nigh-on impossible.

Video :


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