Frontlines: Fuel of War

A simplistic review.

I enjoy this game.


The slightly longer version.

    Negatives:
Quite frankly, this game has some glaring issues at release(similar to the COD4).

Hit detection is severely hampered by any little hiccup of lag, although it hit detection (or lack thereof) is also present to some extent in the single player campaign. This is especially noticeable if you are sniping, some times I one shot the target like a pro, the next time they may not even realize that some is shooting at them until their friend in a chopper sees me and gives me a rocket bath.

There have also been some issues with joining Kaos's dedicated servers, even though the server shows a zero population. However, I've noticed that this has gotten better since the release, so it is not as prevalent. I'm not sure if this is due to more servers being brought online, or fewer people trying to join them.

Finally, lag. This game does not handle lag well, i.e. at all. This is mostly apparent when joining a regular player hosted game, and Lord help you if more than one person is unleashing with the AA Tanks.

    Positives:
This game is serious fun, when my internet and the games server are properly aligned. Usually my iSPmanages to screw this up somehow.

Some people have complained about the squad chat component(myself included), but I have come to appreciate the fact that I don't have to listen to timmies, EVAR. I haven't noticed too many problems in bigger games when only 4 people are in each squad. I've been in games where the independent squads worked quite well, even without inter-squad chat.

The vehicles are obviously a major selling point of the game, and they are a blast. They range from jets(and the steep learning curve) to main battle tanks. My personal favorites are the Anti-Air tanks, flak cannons and homing missiles are fun for knocking little timmy and his friends out of the sky. Even when the sucker jumps out of his chopper, the flak will usually kill them before they have a chance to deploy their parachutes.

The roles loadout were a wild card to me when I first started. I have come to love them, while they lack the complete personalization of COD4's perks,  it is easy to switch to different loads between lives.  The goodies range the gamut from RC toys that go boom to EMP rockets that nerf vehicles for a time to air/gunship strikes to, my personal favorite, the sentry turret (the great lag equalizer for me).  So far all of the loads have places where they are extremely useful, and places where they can be utterly uesless, providing a good chance to mix things up.

Overall

This game is a blast to play, though it lacks some of the social networking aspects that would give it real staying power, i.e. no lobbies between rounds or clan support. I would recommend this game as a rental for anyone that enjoyed the BF series. Also, the achievement points are pretty easy to grab, and the entire single player campaign only took 4~5 hrs on normal, though the multi player is where this game sometimes shines.