Frontlines: Fuel of War

Moby ID: 32940
Xbox 360 Specs
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Description official description

It all begun in summer 2008 when the global demand for oil exceeded the production capacity of the oil companies. Now it's the year 2024. Oil is as good as none existent and alternate energy sources fail to provide what is needed. And to make it all worse, World War III is at hand since Russia and China formed the Red Star Alliance in order to fight the USA and Europe, now known as the Western Coalition for the last oil reserves on earth. You are a member of the Stray Dogs-squad and as a part of the Western Coalition it is your duty to fight off the Red Star Alliance and secure the oil.

The story of the campaign is told from the view of Wayne Andrews (but you don't play him). He's a member of the press that was assigned to accompany the Stray Dogs in order to make them heroes and give the people back at home something to look forward to. But war is unpredictable...

The goal of the game is always to conquer certain points on the map in order to move the frontline forward. But since you need to control at least two of those control points in order to advance, you also need to make sure that parts of your team defend the already converted point while you engage and take over the other ones.

To fight your enemies you've not only access to slightly futuristic equipment including exploding drones or a small radio-controlled tank but also to assault rifles, rocket launchers and other weapons that make a dent in the enemy armor. There are also several kinds of vehicles waiting for you. Ranging from jeeps over tanks to helicopters there's everything you need to dominate the battlefield.

In single player you only play one character which can use everything he finds on the battlefield. In multiplayer you choose different weapon load-outs and roles. A Dronetech for example makes use of the different radio-controlled vehicles in the game. During a round you can earn experience by killing enemies or capturing control points. Once you've gathered enough, you gain a level and get access to more equipment in your role but once the round has ended, these are reset and on the next map you once again start as a lowly Level 1 (of 3) in your role.

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Credits (Xbox 360 version)

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General Manager
Senior Producer
Design Director
Art Director
Software Director
Audio Director
Art Production Manager
Project Manager
Systems Admin
Associate Producers
Community Manager
Additional Production
Lead Designer
Multiplayer Supervisor
Single Player Supervisor
Lead Level Designer
Level Design
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 77% (based on 61 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.1 out of 5 (based on 14 ratings with 1 reviews)

50 Players online at one time, what more is there to say.

The Good
This game is on par with many other games that compete in this genre. The graphic quality and attention to detail is actually higher than some of the more established titles that compete against it. The diversity in the role/loadout system that is employed makes it very easy to counter attack and adjust on the fly to changes in your enemies tatics.

The Bad
The polish on some of the simpler systems just isn't there. Character animations are a little bit non-congruous. The server browser is clunky and cumbersome. There is a small lack of continuity in controls between vehicles that make for a small learning curve when changing vehicles.

The Bottom Line
Fast pace, open world large scale military combat with plenty of gizmos and gadgets to help you frag all day.

Xbox 360 · by Ian Pilipski (13) · 2008

Trivia

Cancelled Port

On 23rd January 2008, in the update to the fiscal outlook of 2008, THQ Inc. announced the cancellation of the PlayStation 3 version of the game.

Missile Launcher

The Euro-American (or Western Coalition) forces in the game have the advanced man-portable missile launcher they call the Guardian. The website says that it was fielded in 2015, and that to make their counterpart to the Guardian -- called the Stiletto -- the Red Star Alliance had to steal a Guardian to copy it. Not only is it a man-portable fire and forget missile, it can recognize whether it has been fired at a vehicle or an aircraft, people or a building, and react accordingly -- thus replacing every other missile that could only do one or another of these things. Furthermore, if you pick the the thing that you want to shoot at, and then click and hold and drag to a second point (say, around a corner) then the missile will go to those points in reverse order, thus shooting around the corner to hit the target so that you don't have to expose yourself. No wonder someone would go to so much trouble to make their own version!

On the "skin" of the polygon model of the missile launcher that the player character holds in his hand, you can seen there is written "Titan RLS" (which must be short for "Titan Rocket Launch System") and not "Guardian." You can see the same thing in the game's concept art. I would say that this means the game developers first planned to call the launcher the Titan, but then they realized that that there is already a US Air Force heavy lift rocket called the Titan for launching space satellites. So, they changed the weapon description to call it the Guardian, but neglected to change the writing on the side of the missile. Either they forgot, or they ran out of time to make changes.

On the outside of the Red Star version of this missile, the Stiletto, there is an arrow pointing towards the muzzle with the Russian word for "party" written there, as if to say that "the party comes out of this end."

Shotgun

The standard-issue combat shotgun used by the Red Star Alliance (i.e., Russo-Chinese power bloc) is described on the game's website as 18 millimeter, which is 13-gauge in US shotgun measure, and is referred to by the model name "Layats 15". Literally, this means the "Bark 15" shotgun. That is to say, in Russian, "layats!" (лаыатс) is one of the words you can use for the noise when a dog barks. However, more often one says "gaf gaf" (гаф гаф) in Russia to express the sound of a dog barking.

Weapons

There are many signs that the developers tried to make the military technology portrayed in the game plausible - in terms of what kind of vehicles suitable for combined-arms warfare, what kinds of small arms, what kinds of heavier weapons (for example artillery), what kinds of basic tools, and what kinds of electronic warfare assets might be available by the year 2024. I hope that sometime very soon I will have time to add more examples to prove why this is so, I have a plan for how to do this.

However, to start with I can say that the reconnaissance jeep of the Red Star Alliance (i.e. not the Euro-Americans, but the other side, the Ruso-Chinese power bloc) is referred to in the game as the "GZ-550." It seems clear from this vehicle shape and designation that it would really be "GAZ-550" -- made by the Russian vehicle manufacturing company GAZ (Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod), which in real life makes a wide variety of light to medium ground vehicles for military and civilian use. For example, GAZ makes the various series of vehicles that Western observers today lump together by calling "the Soviet/Russian equivalent of a Jeep" and "the Soviet/Russian equivalent of a Hummer" respectively. Without having paid for a license from GAZ, the makers of the game cannot call their idea of a futuristic "Russian jeep" a GAZ-550, for then they would be sued. You can also see this because on the game web site page where a description of this vehicle is provided, the writer at first calls it by the "laundered" name "GZ-550," but then in the second line of text the writer has actually made a typo and has accidentally written "GAZ-550" instead. It seems reasonable that this is imagined to be what will come after the brand new GAZ-2975 Tigr (Tiger) which the Russians have today, especially because the model numbers of GAZ vehicles do not have to be in order. You can see from the game descriptions that each side in the fighting has a vehicle for this role, the Western Coalition calls theirs "Light Vehicle, Standard" (LVS). Both of these are described realistically as next-generation hybrid vehicles, both have features like capturing extra energy from braking and engine designs that give surges of extra power in an emergency. Both run on new combinations of regular petroleum and synthetic fuel. This makes perfect sense in a world where oil shortages have gotten so bad that a new World War has broken out because of it.

Information was also contributed by 88 49

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Sicarius.

OnLive added by firefang9212. Xbox One, Xbox Series added by Eufemiano Bullanga.

Additional contributors: Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, Victor Vance, firefang9212.

Game added February 29, 2008. Last modified February 28, 2024.