With some regret I finally just had to “put it down.”  Like the dog at the end of ‘Old Yeller,’ Frontlines: Fuel of War has become a derranged, rabid version of it’s previously happy yellow lab self…

Wait a minute, no it hasn’t!  It never was a happy dog that made me 100% in love with it.  From the beginning this game was plagued with network issues, glitches, and other things that made it a retarded pug at best.  

In the beginning it the biggest problem was that no one had this game!  I couldn’t get into the story from day one, (take note of that for later on) so I decided that it would be online multiplayer or bust for this guy.  Which was fine, except that since no one bought this game till a couple weeks after launch, those of us that had it from the release had barely anyone to play with.  I know that I personally lost interest at first and ended up playing hours of Saints Row instead, randomly killing hundreds of hobos just to hold me over.

If that wasn’t bad enough, when everyone did start picking up this game the lag was terrible!  I mean I would unleash a volley of missiles with my chopper only to have them fly out in front of me what could be 5-10 seconds later.  It was completely crippling to everyone except the host.

When things finally started getting better is right when they got the worst in my opinion.  People started playing, so the servers were either full or near full, which wasn’t a huge problem, unless you wanted to bring a friend in a game with you.  I sometimes sat there for half an hour trying to find a game that me and James could both play in. (although not entirely the game’s fault do to his ’strict’ router situation) On the upside, the game didn’t seem to be as accessible to the 10 and under crowd.  I can’t really say that I heard all that much pre-teen obscenity while playing, oh wait…  that’s because there is only chat available to 5 people at a time! (well not entirely, but close enough) Yep, due to the way game-play was squad emphasized, you could only chat with that squad out of the up to 25 people on your team.  Needless to say I would either lone-wolf it or just team up with one of my friends in private chat.

So why am I getting rid of this game?  Well, 2 reasons.  The first reason is that Doc and the rest of Sarcastic Gamer are correct.  This game suddenly became an absolute griefer’s paradise.  Let me explain.  As soon as a lot of people started playing, they soon realized the power of the RSA’s (Red-Star Alliance, the red team in the game) auto-turret, which is the final weapon unleashed if you build up ground support.  This weapon can be placed just about anywhere and will furiously spit an insane amount of firepower at any enemy troop or vehicle that enters it’s range.  That being said, everyone except a few people would be ground support in order to unlock them and what would happen is that everyone on the blue team would end up having to tip-toe around the level because there could be an auto-turret around every turn.  Meanwhile the red team would just run around slaughtering us.  Usually ending with the blue team’s 1 or 2 spawn points surrounded with these turrets, killing us instantly the second we spawned until the red team won the match.  I am pretty sure that Doc was also right when he talked about people spawning in the field before they started playing on their end.  I was caught many a time with my controller vibrating because I was being shot while waiting to spawn, only to appear with one bullet hit’s worth of health and the last one already screaming toward me.  That being said, everyone would usually switch to the red team, which would result in my team’s epic heroics to try and beat the red team’s 30-35 people with our 15-20…  no we are not Spartans and quickly get totally overrun.  The unbalanced team equipment and poorly executed re-spawn mechanics completely ruined the multiplayer for me and as quickly as I had become enthralled with the cool vehicles and neat little gadgets that the game offered, I started to loathe how each time I played I just got bent over more and more.

What is the other reason I am getting rid of this game?  Well, I decided that maybe I should give the single player another chance.  I remembered that one of the reasons that I had stopped playing it was, other than the dreams for the multiplayer, that I got stuck on a sniping mission, got frustrated, and just stopped.  So with my gaming skill finally returning after my few month drought thereof, I thought I would breeze through that mission and have some fun again.  I was wrong of course.  Right after that mission, the entire game consisted of desert and urban tank battles, with barely anyone from my side of the battle surviving past the first few minutes to help me.  An let me tell you!  There’s nothing more grinding than playing the one man (an absolutely normal man, who dies with one explosion or about 4 bullet hits) vs. an army for about 6 hours.  As it turned out, the story itself never got any better.  I never gave a crap about the characters or their situations at all.  At points members of the squad would sacrifice themselves etc, and I literally could care less, they all looked the same except for their hair and hats!

The only thing that could have made me sadder than sitting through this game, that I only beat for the gamerscore points, (because I am tired of James being the only one who beats crappy games for the points before returning them, something I failed to do, else I would have about 3000 points more than I do right now.) is the fact that they completely leave it open to another campaign and a possibility that this crappy future world might someday have to be revisited…

So goodbye Frontlines, thanks for the good times I had for about a week when I first bought you.  Now you can actually do something good for me, become credit towards the purchase of GTA 4.  (which along with RS:V2 and CoD4, will be the only thing that anyone should expect to see me playing for quite some time.)