Although "Frontlines: Fuel of War" is a game clearly focused on the multiplayer mode I was more interested in playing its single-player campaign. Even though the reviews I've read about the campaign were not too encouraging, stating that it was there just to train for the multiplayer levels, I felt there was more to it and bought it recently for a really good price. I'm gonna write about my impressions of the single-player campaign in this post, I've read the multiplayer is very good, but I haven't played it.

After installing 2.2 GB of patches to be up to date to version 1.30 of the game, I was prepared for the 3-4 days it took me to finish the campaign playing around 2 hours a day. Not much, but similar to what has become usual lately for first person shooters.

The story is simple, presenting a war between two alliances fighting for the control of the last drops of crude oil, but the videos are good and make the plot interesting enough. Powered by the omnipresent Unreal Engine, graphics and special effects aren't top of the line but good, with some levels I especially liked visually like the last ones in Moscow, showing a destroyed city under attack.

Gameplay is clearly adapted from the multiplayer one, with massive fights with the objective of controlling some areas of the map. There are even respawn areas where you appear when you die. This reminded me of a sadly forgotten game I enjoyed years ago called "Devastation", which also managed to make me feel the rush of multiplayer game inside a single-player campaign. Not everybody will like this, but for me it's refreshing to play a game like this from time to time which mixes some of the good things of single player and multiplayer game modes.

Weapon selection is the usual: handgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle, rocket launcher... same as with the vehicles, except for the remote controlled ones (mini helicopters, drones...), which is a nice touch.

One of the things I didn't like so much was the AI. Enemies behave strangely some times and allies wait for you to take the initiative too often, which makes sense most of the time so you can be in the middle of the action in the key moments but makes the feeling of being just part of a great battle less 'real'.

Overall, "Frontlines: Fuel of War" was fun to play.

my rating: