Frontlines: Fuel of War (Xbox 360)

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Visually the size of the environments makes up for any roughness

What Frontlines manages to do really well is capture the feeling of war. At times you'll have enemies coming at you from all directions, rockets will be screaming through the air, tanks will be bombarding your position with heavy fire and your team mates will be laying down suppressive fire. As good as this is, Frontlines just doesn't have the spark and edge in its single-player campaign to make it truly special. Developer Kaos Studios has managed to take what is essentially a multiplayer game dynamic and turn it into a highly entertaining single-player game, but Frontlines misses out on the special moments you'll find in the more scripted shooters.

Rather than have jaw on the flaw moments play out in-game, in Frontlines they're relegated to cutscenes. If you accomplish something you want to see it happen in the game, not in a totally non-interactive video. Speaking of the videos, the story in Frontlines isn't quite as engaging as many of the most popular shooters on the market and despite things being told by cutscenes it feels like you're just jumping from one war zone to another, without any real sense of consequence.

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If the single-player game suffers slightly because of its bold approach to gameplay, the multiplayer portion of Frontlines excels. It's a lazy comparison, but what you have here is a Battlefield-like multiplayer FPS, complete with ground and air vehicles, objectives and control points. Given that Battlefield Modern Combat is getting a little old in the tooth this is no bad thing, but the big point in Frontlines' favour is being able to play in mammoth matches of up to 50 players - although only on one map for the time being.

Whether or not you enjoy the massive-scale online battles will ultimately determine how fond you become of Frontlines, as it's by far the game's most impressive feature. Maps are truly colossal in size, absolutely requiring the use of the many vehicles, and the large player numbers means team work is essential. If you enjoyed the Xbox 360 multiplayer demo then you'll no doubt go crazy for the full game, which offers far more content and the larger maps that make for online games unlike anything you'll have played before on a console.

Using the many drones is great fun

Built on the Unreal Engine 3 Frontlines is no slouch visually, but it's not quite as polished as Epic's now legendary Gears of War. In its defence, Frontlines offers levels that dwarf those seen in Gears and there's far more going on here. Compared to its open-world FPS rivals it's by far the best looking, even outdoing id Software's recent Enemy Quake Wars. Things do get a little too hectic at points, causing some noticeable slowdown, but the game moves at a pretty slow pace anyway, making these moments unfortunate but far from a disaster.

Frontlines as a single-player game actually came as quite a surprise. I'd expected its open nature to feel like a series of watered down multiplayer matches, but once you get into the heat of action it's a thrilling experience. It's the multiplayer that will give Frontlines legs though, providing gamers with epic 50-player battles that really give the big boys of the genre a real run for their money. THQ hasn't had the greatest showing on next-gen consoles so far, but Frontlines has the potential to be a very successful franchise.

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