Frontlines: Fuel of War review PC

Frontlines: Fuel of War portrays an almost too-close-for-comfort near future, in which the world's oil reserves are finally running dry and all the major world powers are embroiled in a conflict to gain control of the dwindling supplies. That's the 'fuel' of the war - geddit? You'll take on this apocalyptic vision of the world as one of a band of mercenaries, and you'll have the opportunity to explore it in both single player mode and online multiplayer, giving you two quite different experiences of this thought-provoking (but still fun) game. Check out our Frontlines: Fuel of War review now to find out how we rate it.
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Frontlines Fuel of War review for the PC

While in the "real" world, many wars have been fought over the past few years, in the gaming community, there's one battle that's refused to go away – can a game ever be used as a political commentary? The answer, it would seem, is a resounding yes, as with Frontlines: Fuel of War, Kaos Studios has produced one of the most effective examples to date, coming up with a near-future storyline that's as plausible as it is devastating. Frontlines is set in 2042, with the super-powers of the world coming to blows over oil. Mirroring the real-life situation of today, the Earth's limited resources become more scarce, tensions between two factions, the Western Coalition, and Red Star Alliance begin to mount. Eventually, this culminates in a full scale war between the two parties, as the East and West duke it out over the last remaining oil reserve on the planet. It's all a bit terrifyingly believable.

Dropped into the midst of this mess are the Stray Dogs Company, a surprisingly characterless group of soldiers, who watch the war unfold before their conflict-hungry eyes.

Taking the reins of one such soldier, Frontlines' single player mode consists of a disappointingly short series of missions, taking you to all sorts of "exotic" locations, from Kazakhstan, to Moscow. But while the environments change, it's somewhat upsetting that the objectives don't, as each mission sees you completing a number of similar objectives, which 99% percent of the time involve simply planting C4 on some sort of installation, or capturing a defined point.