Frontlines: Fuel of War Hands-on Preview

Initial Thoughts

The more I played Frontlines, the more I started to have conflicting feelings for it. Chatting to Luis and co. after the event, it slowly dawned on me why this was.

Frontlines, to me at least, is almost identical to Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, not only in terms of mechanic and the futuristic feel, but also in the history of the game.

Splash Damage, just like Kaos Studios, was a group of mod makers who made it big and were put to work on a fully commercial copy of a game which they had previously only modded for. From that basis, both developers have managed to pull out gameplay which is at least fairly derivative and lacking in true innovation, but have compensated for it by having large levels and accessible gameplay.

Also, from what we saw, although the levels tend to be very impressive in size they can also be quite empty and sparse at the same time, resulting in a lifeless feel to the game. In other, better received teamplay games like Team Fortress 2 the gameplay has always been built so that players are actually mostly independent but are forced to form a cohesive whole by clever level design and streamlined game mechanics.


Unless you play at a higher level, most Unreal Tournament 3 and Team Fortress 2 games are actually quite casual and rarely require use of a microphone or regular communication – unless you suspect there’s a spy in your midst.

Frontlines, like Quake Wars, isn’t built like that. Instead, it’s constructed so that players need to communicate if they want to accomplish complex goals. It’s something to which the level design is a heavily contributing factor as, in Frontlines, there is rarely any set path or route to follow. It’s an open world – players are given helicopters and tanks and told to do something however they want.

The result is that everyone tries to pull in different directions, meaning that communication is essential.

This doesn’t mean that Frontlines is a bad game, because I had fun whilst playing it and, if nothing else that’s a great scale to measure a game by. It does mean that the experience (as opposed to the gameplay) isn’t as accessible as some games though – it targets itself much more at someone who wants to really invest themselves in a game, creating clans and organising matches.


If that’s the type of thing you find yourself doing often then Frontlines could be right up your street. However, even then Frontlines may not be anything that is especially worth picking up as the game is really quite generic and derivative. Again, it’s not that it’s that bad; just that it doesn’t really take great strides forwards or have anything that really sets it out from the crowd. If the competition manages to make even a small step beyond in terms of either technology or game design then Frontlines could get left behind quite easily.

A solid team-based shooter at its core, Frontlines suffers from a lack of accessibility and inspiration, but there is still plenty of time to go until release and the open beta is due to start soon. Shove those two ideas together and you realise that there’s still a lot of time for Frontlines to change and become something else – something worth shouting about.