Introduction

It's been nearly a year since FiringSquad got a chance to see a build of Frontlines: Fuel of War (and that was a non-interactive demo at E3 back in May) but at THQ's Gamer's Day press event on Thursday night we finally got a chance to play a build of the near future first person shooter for ourselves. We have been waiting for this moment ever since the game was announced along with the team behind it. Developer Kaos Studios was created from the ashes of the former Trauma Studios which made the popular Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 2142 and later joined with Battlefield developers Digital Illusions to help make Battlefield 2.

Frontlines takes place a few decades in the future, where the world is facing a massive energy crisis that serves as the motivations for the two super powers (the US based Western Coalition and the Russia/China based Red Star Alliance) of this timeline to wage war for control of the energy supply, and therefore the planet. Unlike the current games in the Battlefield series, Frontlines will not only have a multiplayer mode but a true single player campaign, complete with characters and a storyline to run through.

We got a chance to play the first mission from the single player game during the THQ press event. It starts out with an in-game cinematic showing a Western Coalition helicopter flying through a battlezone and containing members of the "Stray Dogs" team along with a embedded reporter. The fast and tough banter between the helicopter passengers is cut short due to an attack on the chopper by Red Star Alliance enemy forces. After killing off a number of the soldiers on board the game switches to first person mode and puts your character right in the thick of things as you fight off the enemy as they storm the wrecked helicopter remains. You get some help from the the AI controlled survivors of the crash but it’s mostly you and your futuristic assault rifle as you shoot at the hordes of hostiles. After you secure the crash site you are sent to secure other areas of the map (a oil refinery as it turns out) via locations displayed on your HUD. Your final objective in your first single player mission turns out to be rescuing the reporter who was on board in the first place. Of course things are never easy as you have to also kill enemy forces who want to keep you from heading to those points. Forces not only include foot infrantry but armored SUVs and even a massive tank that you can take out with an available anti-vehicle rocket launcher.


Visuals are handled by Epic's Unreal Engine 3 and its clear Kaos Studios is using the advanced features to the hilt here. The single player level in the game is a massive outdoor location and Kaos has made certain elements destructible, which means that sometimes cover for yourself and the enemy doesn't stay up for very long. Character and weapon models, especially facial animations are first rate as well.The Xbox 360 port that we played the single player mission on did have some cases of the jaggies but we will put that up to the early build we got to play (the game just entered its alpha development stage).

We also got to play two multiplayer maps from Frontline during the press event as well. One map ran on Xbox 360 dev kits and was a relatively smaller level centered around a bombed out cityscape. We got a chance to try a number of the game's multiplayer classes, from snipers to assault to anti-vehicle and more. People will be able to customize their weapons load out with various items and even choose among one of four sub-classes to further customise your character, from the ability to call in air strikes to controlling drone units. The second multiplayer level, which ran on PC machines, depicted a much bigger and more open outdoor level where we got the chance to steer the massive future tanks for ourselves. Kaos Studios is promising to have over 60 weapons and vehicles in the final game and their concept of "frontlines" on the map (hence the title) that turns the normal control points of the Battlefield series into more of a real war front that each side tries to push into the others territory.


Besides the PC and Xbox 360, Frontlines: Fuel of War is also scheduled to ship for the PS3 as well. When asked about the possiblity of having PC and Xbox 360 players fighting against each other in multiplayer battles via Microsoft's Windows Live service we were told at the press event that was indeed being looked into but nothing final has been decided. Overalll our brief hands on time with the game showed that it had lots of promise and that even with the game still several months away from its scheduled release date (summer-ish/fall-ish is the goal) it was a lot of fun to play. Look for more info on Frontlines in the months ahead of its completion.