[Multiplatform] FRONTLINES: FUEL OF WAR

Bumped like a motherfucker.

This is out on 29th of Feb over here and having downloaded and played the demo, I'm really looking forward to it.

The game plays essentially the same as Battlefield 2 only instead rolling back and forth over the same six objective points, the maps are MASSIVE, with the battles focused on a smaller area, with six or so objectives in, the frontlines of the title.

Like Battlefield, there are different classes of soldier to choose from. In fact the classes are almost exactly the same except that the engineer has no shotgun and there's a new close combat class (With a shotgun). According to the publicity though you are able to customise your class and pick the equipment that suits you best. There are apparently some 60 different equipment items including radio controlled buggys with C4 on and drone attack helicopters (Really fun using the nose camera and chasing people down corridors). I think more weapons become available as you advance in rank but whether this is from offline play or from gay as all fuck medals like Battlefield 2 I couldn't tell you. Also, you can carry six different weapons at once.

There's a funny squad thing whereby you can assign other soldiers on your team to your immediate squad on the fly and issue them standard commands (Attack, defend, regroup). Quite how this will work, if at all in multiplayer remains to be seen. The AI seems pretty decent though, cleverer than Ghost Recon and a better shot than Rainbow Six as far as I can tell.

From playing the demo I noticed a few things. There's no health bar or anything. If you get shot up, your screen starts to flash red and you get a heartbeat sound. Rest up for a bit and you recover and can carry on. I think this suits the idea that this game is all about pressing forward to grab more territory. A soldier hiding getting their health back will probably be little help in big multiplayer games.

Driving vehicles is more Battlefield than Halo. The turret on tanks move independently of the tracks which can take a bit of getting used to and pushing up on the movement control rolls a tank the way it's facing, not upwards into the screen as it would in Halo, I personally find it easiest to use the in-car view.

The airstrikes are hilarious and watching the videos on Live, the bigger airstrikes are even more hilarious, can't wait to use the bigger daisy cutter bomb.

The whole game looks mental though and there's tons going on. Even playing on my SD tv it looks gorgeous, I imagine it's all kinds of special in HD. Also the prospect of the biggest multiplayer games ever on Xbox mean I'll almost certainly be getting this at release. If nothing else, it should fill a gap until the new Battlefield game hits in summer.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

So the powering up works more like that Star Wars game where after a certain number of kills or whatever you can access better character types? That's sweet as fuck, meaning more casual players won't get continually dicked just because they've not spent 100 hours online boosting their levels. Given the size of the maps in the single player demo, I'd be surprised if they play each 5 times, that'd take forever as if I understand right, the winning team is the first to push the frontline right to the opponent's side.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

UPDATE:

I played the multiplayer demo last night, got into a few decent 32 player matches.

At first the map annoyed me (Oil fields it's called). It's basically a big open space with a cluster of buildings around each objective point. Compared to most of Battlefield 2's maps it seemed pretty empty. Actually though, this suits the big tanks and huge explosions style of the game pretty well. Once you capture an objective you can hole up and have pretty good fields of fire to defend yourself.

The weapon advancement works well. Every time you score points (Get a kill or capture an objective) you get points towards your current skill set (Air strikes, EMPS, Engineer or Drone) and after a certain number of points that skill levels up. You keep skill points when you change class and when you get killed, also between matches. This means that by the fifth round of a rotation most people have the level three skills. The only downside to this is if your team takes a beating and the enemy pick up a bunch of points, you're likely to keep taking a beating in the subsequent rounds. Knowing how much Americans hate to play on the losing team I can see this leading to a lot of in game drop outs if the tide turns against a team.

The various skills weapon sets seem pretty well balanced. I particularly like that the rocket guy's rockets won't fly straight without a lock-on making him very vulnerable to assault types. I think each class will get more weapons in the finished version, mines especially would be a bonus.

The tanks are pretty well balanced but the helicopters are way over-powered. They come with flares to distract missiles and there's no laser target thing to bring them down with like in Battlefield. With a concerted effort you can shoot them down but I can't see that level of teamwork happening at the demo stage sadly. Also, the full game will include fighter jets so that should keep the helicopters honest.

All in all, it's a good game and I think the full vesion will be well worth getting. I did notice though that Amazon are listing the release date for Battlefield Bad company as the end of march now though so I don't know whether to wait for that...

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I played about five hours of the demo last night and I swear this game just gets better. On Oilfields I'm mainly playing as an anti-vehicle type with ground support. The wide open areas are perfect for mass slaughter of infantry by minigun and sentry gun. Choppers are a lot more killable with a few people shooting at them too. The sentry guns are pretty helpful on the Streets level too but the drones are pretty funny too. I can't wait to get my hands on the full game now.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I just pre-ordered this from Amazon. The PAL 360 special edition version comes with an art book, t-shirt, soundtrack album and poster and oddly, was three pounds cheaper than the standard edition. Can't see me getting to bed on friday night...

I was speaking idiomatically.

I really like Frontlines but I'm not sure I play it enough any more to warrant spending £8 on new maps.

How ya doing, buddy?