Nice destructible environment though.
Now, in the pre-release flurry of press releases, screenshots and the like, much was made of the destructible environment in Frontlines: Fuel of War and here I’m pleased to report that at last someone has done this sensibly. Not everything is destructible by a long way but you can destroy the stuff you’d expect to destroy, with a couple of odd exceptions.For instance, in the first mission, there’s a few concrete barricades that the enemy are using for cover… lob in a couple of grenades and the barricades disintegrate in a spray of rubble. A nice touch is the amount of damage an object will take before collapsing. Two grenades will kill a barrier but no amount of rifle fire will bother it… whereas one round from a tank will obliterate the barrier and most of the surrounding area. Make no mistake, this is a good thing.
Click for larger imageBut there are the usual anomalies. Such as a stairway blocked by a pile of furniture that must be made out of the same top secret mixture of titanium and ceramics that cover the US M1A2 Main Battle Tank as nothing in your arsenal will even scratch it. The same goes for that collapsible table blocking the doorway or that tangle of wooden chairs down a corridor…
But the key here is that the non-destructible stuff doesn’t get in the way of the gameplay. Yes, it’s there to mark clear boundaries of where you can and can’t go but Kaos have made sure that the destructible environment is an extra in the game rather than a key focus. So rather than make you launch grenades at a whole load of same-looking walls to find the one that will collapse, Kaos have designed Frontlines: Fuel of War so that a collapsible wall might be handy for making a short cut or a new route through the map but is in no way essential to overall progress.
Click for larger imageNow the sound effects deserve a mention here as they simply have to be some of the best effects I’ve heard in a game in a long time… they really are very, very good. Indoor and outdoor explosions and weapons fire have completely different sounds even though I’m just using onboard sound. Whoever coded the sound effects deserves a big pat on the back as it really is very good.