“Front Lines: Fuel of War” First Impressions
March 2, 2008 11:56 pm Games for Fun, Gaming
So, a couple of guys at work convinced me to get Frontlines: Fuel of War. Apparently, it’s from the guys who did the Desert Combat mod for the Battlefield 1942 back in the day. Anyway, I saw a couple of videos and saw some cool shit with drones and air strikes. Since other people at work are playing it, I figure “What the hell,” and take the $60 (plus tax) plunge.
The first thing I did was hop into single-player to get a feel for the game. The game felt pretty smooth. The frame rate stayed at a solid 60 (a necessity for any FPS worth it’s salt), and the weapons felt decent. The story has a pretty cool premise, but I’m not sure about this reporter guy. I felt a little disconnected. I’m sitting there thinking to myself “Oh no, they’re going to make me play as this reporter that turn out to be a bad ass,” which fortunately they didn’t. They seem to be spending a lot of time on this character, so I guess he becomes important later.
Anyway, I complete the first mission, and the drones were a pretty cool gameplay element. I was hoping for a little turret you could shoot right away, but maybe they get to that. For now, I got some flying bombs which isn’t a bad way to start. Also, my AI squad seemed to stay around me and move around enough, so that’s good. The enemy ragdoll is a little silly though. I pepper an enemy with a few rounds and they flip head over heels. I prefer a little more realistic ragdoll, maybe even blended with an animation. I dunno, maybe it’s an Unreal engine limitation? I see a lot of games with unrealistic looking ragdoll.
Eventually, my friends jump on and we get into an MP match. We start running around this huge city map, and my immediate impression is that this game is going to be epic. It didn’t take me long to “learn” the map, but after playing it for awhile, I became frustrated. At least one-third of my deaths came within seconds of spawning in. It was pretty crazy. I felt to me like people were already learning how to spawn camp, which is something I remember happening in Battlefield 2 (PC) as well.
I was a little disappointed in the two things I wanted most in the multiplayer portion of the game: drones and airstrikes. I would blow up drones close to enemies and they would die. I would use airstrikes near enemy positions and I wouldn’t score any kills. I think because those abilities are accessible as soon as you play, the designers made them underpowered. I get where they’re coming from, but I think I’d rather not have something weak available from the get go. Maybe they could have structured it where you play for X amount of time, or get X amount of kills, then you have access to drones which are bad-ass, rather than drones which aren’t bad ass right away, then probably a mildly-bad ass drone, and once you really skill up, you get the bad-ass drone.
One last thing, was more than half the matches I tried to get into gave me an error saying “Session is no longer available.” Okay, well, why is it still in the server browser? I tried joining the first 10 matches in the browser and they all game me the same message. My friends would invite me, and half the time I got the same error, the other half I was able to play. I imagine they’re coming out with a title update to fix that soon.
The squad design was pretty cool. My friends were able to invite me easily, and you can spawn on the leader of your squad. Also, I think you can only talk to people in your squad, so I didn’t have to put up with 12 year-olds calling me racial slurs, which was a nice change of pace. Plus, you can see where all your squad-members are at all times, which is crucial to coordinating attacks. Overall I think they did a good job implementing the squad stuff. The only thing I was wishing for was some way to ping guys in game to let them know I joined their game. I guess I could just send them a message through XBL.
So, overall, the game has some issues I’m trying to see past but I’ll keep at it. I’m hoping that once they fix some bugs and I learn more about the game I’ll be able to get my squad-based future war FPS fix.
March 4th, 2008 at 3:08 am
I gotta disagree about the airstrikes. I find that the first-level air support ability is way more useful than two of the other three tracks – if a tank stops for about 7-10 seconds (common at chokepoints and with nooblets in general), you’ve got a one-shot kill on the most powerful ground vehicle in the game. That’s pretty pimp for an ability you don’t have to earn. And the second- and third-level airstrike abilities more than make up for the lack of splash damage on the first-level ability: Carpet Bombs and Fuel-Air Bombs are total infantry ownage. So I think that that track is actually very powerful once you get a bit more familiar with it – even at the outset of each match.
I think they’re going to have to do something to buff the EMP class, though – not having an active first-level special ability sucks pretty hard. At least guys trying to get auto-turrets (ground support) can repair vehicles from the jump.