Frontlines: Fuel of War

 

 

Frontlines Fuel of War looked like a typical run of the mill mid 2008s fps campaign game, and since i always find those fun to blast through in a day or two I picked this up for like $5

The premise and story is simple. Its just a war over oil and resources. Americans and russians one reason or another fighting for territory and resources. It's all extremely cliche formula, the characters esepcially are the most cookie cutter dudebro military guys imaginable.

Theres really not much to say about Frontlines. It plops you into some battlefield, and the first impression isn't amazing. The graphics are not good, even for the standards of 2008. I've seen games from 2003 look more visually impressive with better shadows, shaders, and color pallettes than this game. It's not much to look at.  So you are dropped into these missions where you just look around and follow the objective markers in a big Battlefield (game series) open map type level. Usually you have multiple objectives to complete, and you can do them in any order you want. Most of the objectives in the game comprise of "Go to this area and stand in this spot and capture the area"   or  "Blow this up"  or "Defend this area"   thats basically really all there is for objectives. Every level looks the same, I cant really remember or tell them apart. One level is at night time with a sniper that was kind of fun. Another level starts you off in a helicoptor, but the controls were so abysmal i crashed the heli then just ignored using it and continued on as usual. So there is a degree of freedom in how to approach the missions atleast.

The shooting mechanics really arent that great either. The default assault rifle is downright terrible and next to useless. The accuracy system works in a way that you have to stand still for a moment then wait for the crosshair to get tightened up so youre more accurate, so it does attempt to have some nuanced gun mechanics and accuracy system. Its just not that fun to use and just way too generic. And  the guns themselves kind of suck and arent satisfying. There game handles death and loadouts strangely. When you die, it will say "Deployments remaining" so it basically has a lives system, and you just respawn somewhere - never actually losing any progress its like you respawn in a multiplayer match. I've never actually ran out of lives and 'game'd over' so i dont know what happens there. But even weirder, is the game actually does have a Loadout system, where you can change what weapon you get - BUT only after you've died. It doesnt ask you what loadout you want at the start of a mission, and you can only check to see what guns you can get after you die , as each mission has different avalible loadouts.

I mostly used the sniper/shotgun the whole game, the shotgun is actually kind of satisfying as it has a chunky sound effect and the enemies ragdoll away dramatically. There are frequent times where you have to blow up tanks or helicoptors so it becomes nessesary to either pickup a rocket launcher, or spawn with one by first dying and choosing the anti-tank loadout.

Theres also quite a bit of driving and vehicles in this game, if you choose to. One mission is entirely dedicated to tanks, but other than that it is like a multiplayer match of Battlefield where you can just run around this big map and enter vehicles if you want. Mostly just tanks. But the tank controls and especially the enemy tank AI is kind of annoying where the enemy tanks will be able to aim at you inhumanly fast and you just end up exchanging rockets and it kind of sucks.

Theres always some random squad NPC's following you around. But they dont really follow you around, its more like they just randomly spawn next to you sometimes. They can be a good distraction and bullet sponge thankfully. The game tries to put a lot of emphesis on drones and gadgets as I guess some way to prove to the audience that they have some gimmick about the game and its doing something different? But I never really cared, its just a dumb novelty that is just really like another rocket launcher in disguise to blow up tanks.

The enemy AI is really stupid and unchallenging and not very fun, you can just sprint past them and take cover slightly ahead of them and they will rarely not even chase after you or flank you or anything, this is another game with the example of enemies that arent actual threats, but more like minor annoyances like mosquitos or something.

It has a regenerating health system and playing games like this in 2022 really is just showing the triviality of such a system. You take damage and you just find some object that exploits the enemy AI long enough until you can regain health, then you just sprint past all the enemies and onto the next objective.
Infact the enemies in this game arent so much challenging threats, its more like that typical badly designed game thing where you can really just sprint past all the enemies and go straight for the objective, which is what I did for most of the game.

Not sure what else to say except its REALLY short. Howlongtobeat.com said it was 5-6 hours long, well I beat it in 2 sessions at a total of 3 hours!  since its so short it wasnt like an awful or boring experience or anything, but the gameplay just really is not a great example of an amazing fps campaign or anything. And because of the poor graphics, medicore weapons, and forgettable levels its a very average/medicore game. The ending was really underwhelming you just defend some square for a minute then it rolls end credits, its funny how they try to imply that "its not over yet" as if there will be a sequel, like they really expected people to be clamouring for a sequel to this thing. Still an alright action game to mindlessly play over the weekend though.

5/10

Just Cause 4

After a few years not thinking about the Just cause series, i noticed that the latest one was on sale for $13 so i decided why not, its just going to be some open world mindless fun to chew through in a weekend.

I had a decent time with the previous games, the highlight being JC2, which I thought was pretty amazing at the time, the JC forumla is the standard kind of GTA clone, but with a twist, being this huge scale tropical playground where you can scale huge heights with this grappling hook and parachute and all that.

In JC4 it takes that fun gameplay formula underneath, but instead throws a clusterfuck of bullshit at the wall in terms of the missions structure. At first glance, you get put into the open world and have this map system, which is the most god awful, confusing, unintuitive mess of a UI i've ever seen in a video game. Really. I think the UI in this game is maybe the worst I've ever seen. Period. It's hard to explain just how bad the UI is in this game. Visually being a mess, nothing making sense, all sorts of stupid icons all over the map, shields, tringles, random letters, its imposible to tell what the main mission is. Not only that, but the controls for navigating the menus are fucking horrible too. I think half of it is to do with a bad PC port, but its like 1 to open map, then 2 and 3 to flip menus, and everytime you change menus you get a bunch of obnoxious popup prompts and this and that - It's a mess.

I had to spend a hefty amount of time frantically googling trying to figure out WTF is the main missions in this game. Or even wrapping my head around how to do them. Its that bad. After eventually figuring out that the OPERATONS with the shield icons are the main missions, and that everything else is 'optional' - OK. The problem is, you cant just simply go to the main missions. No, if you try to do a main mission, it will have a list of pre-requisites you have to do first. Which all basically means doing side missions. The pre-requisites are usually like (Do this side mission first) or (Conquer this region first) - So theres this weird psuedo territorial squad based system where you have to recruit an invisible army via blowing random shit up and SLOWLY increasing the chaos meter, conquer different regions of the map by then taking that invisible army number and pressing Unlock on the region you want, and THEN you can do the main missions. What the fuck? The previous games didn't have this confusing nonsense, just let me play the game. To make matters worse, the pre-requisites it forces you to do are extremely mundane simplistic copy paste bullshit. For example, you frequently have to do these 'Region assault' side missions which are ALWAYS the same objectives. Sometimes you wont be able to do any main mission unless you just wander around and blow up random red things, though its only worth doing when you see on your hud that it says "2x multiplier". So you just try to wander around until that happens, then blow stuff up to try to fill the bar to get more squad to progress to main story. It's only a huge issue in the early game, later on in the game you seem to always have enough to do what you want, but its so odd that they made the early game the most confusing, tedious, and boring. Just bad game design. The fact that I had no clue how to do the main missions or what missions where what is staggering, that I had to google it for a good 30 minutes scratching my head until I figured it out. Shameful.

Basically, every single objective in this game , Side mission OR main mission is:

- Go to objective marker and press the button
- Go to objective marker, press the button, get stuck in an animation and dont get interrupted or repeat it
- Go to objective marker, use your grappling hook to rip off shielding on a generator then shoot it
- Go to objective marker, use you grappling hook to flip a switch on
- Go to objective marker, defend it
- Go to objective marker, Blow thing up
- Escort this hacker guy then defend him

Thats the entire game. Even the main missions. It gets old fast. Especially since it forces you to do all this  stupid side content, then you finally get to the main mission. and its the same objectives.. One of the most frequent obnoxious frustrating objectives is "Press the button, then go into a 20 second long animation, and dont get shot once or repeat" It happens so often, its not fun. it fucking sucks.

There was so many fucking frustrating things in this game. The controls are terrible. Theres like a billion different controls its just very clunky. Who thought putting SPACEBAR to eject out of your vehicle is a good idea? The amount of times ive tried to look for a handbreak button only to randomly fly out of my vehicle by accident is mind numbing. The game is extremely glitchly and the physics system is garbage. Pretty sure its just worse than the previous games in this deparmtent. Frequently if you just nudge your helipcoptor or vehicle against a wall or some other object, it will just explode instantly. The grappling hook controls are a fumbling mess as well. I can get use to it, and travel super fast across the enviorment grappling onto stuff, using the new wingsuit which is the best part of the game probably, gliding through the air, snapping onto things for speed, but the awkward controls of constantly flipping out into your parachute and then back to the hook is just bad. The controls overall just suck. I don't understand why every JC game got progressively worse since JC2. Maybe its just my nostalgia talking, but I thought JC2 was pretty damn good. These other games are a shadow of its former self. Also its glitchy. Frequently you will get stuck under vehicles and glitch out. Frequently you will get ragdolled over and over by random crap, its just annoying. The enemies are not really a challenge, its more like an annoying swarm of flies stuck inside your apartment. They're not going to kill you, just really piss you off and be annoying. More control issues, its not consistent. You can grapple onto helicoptors then press E to steal it, but if you sometimes the prompt just doesnt pop up even though youre in the right spot, and if you try to press E while youre in the air grappling onto it, you start to do other random actions. It sucks so bad. The UI is contantly spitting out tons of random nonsense information all over your fucking screen like regurgitating leaderboard scores and giving you huge lists of controls and this and that ITS A FUCKING MESS.

The graphics are an inconsistent mess as well. There are times where it looks great, with big draw distance and shading, but then othertimes like ALL of the cutscenes, it suddenly looks like a fucking PS2 game. What happened? the cutscenes look so terrible I was wondering if my computer or graphics settings were messed up or something, but no. Low resolution textures, wonky looking eyes and hair, no shading or shadows. Its a mess. Not only the cutscenes, but some parts of the map look decent, and other parts of the map look like its from a different game. Dont know whats going on but its jarring.

There is a lot of fumbling through the awkward menu systems, trying to figure out where the next main mission is, then reading the pre-requisites for it, then setting a waypoint and dropping yourself a jet or helicoptor to fly there, which can take a boring 5 minute meaningless travel, getting to the Required Side Mission (lol), doing one of those stupid afformentioned objectives, fumbling through the mess of a UI system to try to advance your squad through the map regions to unlock a main mission - Finally doing the main mission, being just as generic, forgettable, and boring as the side missions. Repeat until end credits.

I JUST finished the game and I dont think i can really remember any main missions. A few of them were like, ride a train and defend it. Another one was like drive this stupid weather car through a tornado which was almost cool I guess. Other ones were like escort missions. There are things you can unlock, I found out all of the missions with random letters are basically missions you can do to unlock guns/vehicles and stuff. Didn't do any, dont care. I did notice a few years ago when people were playing this game, that they all complained about the 'ring missions and driving through hoops' - I didn't do a single one of those. I think those reviewers didnt know which missions were the main ones, and which was side missions. So they played all of the terrible boring side missions and thought it was the main game. Thats how bad the game design is. I wanted to avoid doing that, so yeah I googled how to tell the difference. Poor guys. Not like the main missions are that much better.

The story is one of the worst i've ever seen. By that I mean, it wasn't particularly terrible as in point your finger and laugh at how bad it is - No , its just insanely boring. No one is appealing, you dont give a shit about anyone, everyone is generic, they dont say anything, every cutscene is just some idiots standing around making really stupid jokes and talking about some boring plan they're going to do. its bad. All the characters are forgettable, there is only one mildly entertaining or interesting character and its just a generic kind of conspiracy theorist guy who thinks reptiles are in charge or some shit. Most of the game I had the sound muted and was mindlessly playing as I watched youtube vids on the other monitor. It's kind of fun for that, but damn if you were just sitting there with headphones on paying full attention the game would be paiful. Also whats up with these modern games and having to color code everything like a fucking toddlers TV Show? why are all the characters wearing bright neon yellow/blue/red outfits. Like as if they have to have the enemies wearing the most glow in the dark red outfits ever or else you cant tell theyre the baddies. It just looks cheap , cheesy, and lame. Theres no character or 'soul'. It all feels like a corporate bullshit hivemind product of a game, like theres no genuine passion gone into it. I don't know, I'm just feeling annoyed for all the stupid shit in this game, the bad controls, the fucking awful UI, the terrible objectives, the dumb story. Fuck.

It's not all bad, like I said its a pretty mindless action game, flying around in the glider suit is pretty fun, the draw distances and sheer sense of scale, blowing stuff up, it is a modern AAA game so the graphics arent like terrible or something, but they are really inconsistent. Flying helicoptors and jets, doing barrel rolls, its fun. The shooting is the most cookie cutter generic of all time, I don't know if theres a ton of different weapons I didn't really give a shit, I just picked up the same 3 or 4 weapons off the ground the whole game. Like the assault rifle, its whatever. The grappling hook has some new addition in this game where you can equip balloons on them or something? dont know, looked fucking stupid, didnt care or use it much. The cutscenes frequently show them standing around drinking beers and talking about shit, and you know what? thats what the game is good for. Just spending a weekend with a six pack, playing this stupid game, watching youtube videos on the side, barely paying attention. And before you know it the game is over. It's not that bad, but its definitely not good. Its just a medicore, lukewarm, mostly boring but mildly entertaining shitty action game. I guess the 'twist' or unique asset in this game is the weather effects? Like theres tornados, sandstorms, lightning and stuff. Its suppose to be a cool selling point, but it often does little more than just ragdoll you around, or slow down your movement, or just be really annoying in general to deal with. Like youll be walking around and suddenly get zapped by lightning. Or youll be in a sandstorm and if you jump youll just blow away in a random direction, or walk really slow. It just sucks frankly, doesnt make the game any better.

The most bizarre thing that happened, I was about 12 hours into the game, thinking I was only halfway through, but the map was mostly conquered, I'm just mindlessly playing, half asleep, doing a mission, didn't seem much different than all the rest, went isnide some building , defended against some soldiers, blew up a few helicoptors..........END CREDITS. What? That was the last mission? I could barely tell. Thats how anti-climatic it is. It does end with you blowing up some rich politicans plane or something, then it just goes END CREDITS. WTF. Ok then. That's Just Cause 4 I guess.

5/10