Pouring oil on troubled waters and striking a deathmatch!
While in the "real" world, many wars have been fought over the past few years, in the gaming community, there's one battle that's refused to go away – can a game ever be used as a political commentary? The answer, it would seem, is a resounding yes, as with Frontlines: Fuel of War, Kaos Studios has produced one of the most effective examples to date, coming up with a near-future storyline that’s as plausible as it is devastating.

Frontlines is set in 2042, with the super-powers of the world coming to blows over oil. Mirroring the real-life situation of today, the Earth's limited supply of oil is running out, and as resources become more scarce, tensions between two factions, the Western Coalition, and Red Star Alliance begin to mount. Eventually, this culminates in a full scale war between the two parties, as the East and West duke it out over the last remaining oil reserve on the planet. It's all a bit terrifyingly believable.

Dogs of War
Dropped into the midst of this mess are the Stray Dogs Company, a surprisingly characterless group of soldiers, who watch the war unfold before their conflict-hungry eyes. Taking the reins of one such soldier, Frontlines’ single player mode consists of a disappointingly short series of missions, taking you to all sorts of "exotic" locations, from Kazakhstan, to Moscow. But while the environments change, it's somewhat upsetting that the objectives don't, as each mission sees you completing a number of similar objectives, which 99% percent of the time involve simply planting C4 on some sort of installation, or capturing a defined point.

To this extent, the single player in Frontlines feels a lot like you're playing a slightly more scripted bot-match, with the odd interesting objective thrown in for good measure. Never really engaging you beyond the "kill the constantly respawning enemies, move to point, capture point" gameplay, you would think the campaign would begin to feel tepid, but surprisingly, the gameplay more than makes up for the lack of variety. With destructible environments, drivable vehicles, and all sorts of remotely controlled futuristic drones to experiment with, Frontlines is actually a lot more fun that you might imagine, and each of these features really boosts the experience. The destructible environments especially often force you to rethink your strategy, as a wall that was preventing you from reaching a base comes crashing down, opening a new route, or bringing a legion of soldiers flooding out, and it's this ever changing gameplay that helps keep Frontlines exciting.

The drones are probably Frontlines' single unique touch, and these too add another layer to the gameplay. Letting you send in a robot first to do your dirty work, there's a selection of drones on offer, from airborne reconnaissance, to miniature attack helicopters, which is basically a toy chopper with a few fireworks strapped to the side. Each drone has a specific purpose, but can also be used in many different makeshift ways. Our favourite is effectively a radio controlled C4 with wheels, which you can drive under an enemy tank, or at an enemy soldier, before blowing it to smithereens. But while the single player may be exciting, it’s the multiplayer that's arguably the main attraction for Frontlines, and thankfully, this doesn't disappoint either. Allowing up to 64(!) players to compete online, the battles in Frontlines are huge, and, thanks to its unique "Frontlines" system, can also lead to some pretty tense contests.

Fringe benefits
The online game is very similar to Battlefield 2 - split into two teams, you choose a class, then fight your way across the map, capturing points as you go. However, in Frontlines, rather than have all points available to fight over instantly, you can only capture the objectives on the fringes of your control area. Effectively splitting the map in half, you'll be forced to capture the two points ahead of you, and push the enemy back before you can press further into their territory, and this can lead to some close-fought games.

The vehicles too are a highlight of the multiplayer experience. Letting several players man various positions at once, you can turn an otherwise sterile helicopter into a bustling gunship – and while this isn’t a new feature, it's certainly a cool one, and something we welcome seeing included. With a killer soundtrack in place, a thought-provoking real-world storyline, and some fantastic Battlefield-style gameplay, Frontlines succeeds in everything it tries to do, but doesn’t quite do enough to make itself a classic. When compared to games like Quake Wars, or even Battlefield 2, there's a layer of sheen missing that could have taken this through to be a classic – as it stands, it's still very highly recommended, but just not quite a must buy.

89%
Big battles, big explosions, big fun!
Ian Morris