Frontlines: Fuel of War is a first-person shooter set in the near future. The world is nearly out of oil and the Western nations are locked in a struggle over the few remaining oil fields with a new Chinese and Russian alliance known as Red Star. You take on the role of an American soldier at the frontlines of this conflict, fighting to keep the oil flowing so that the economy back home doesn't collapse completely.

When you first play Frontlines it will pretty quickly become obvious that the game was conceived to be primarily an online multiplayer game. It features a full single-player campaign complete with cutscenes, story, and objectives for each mission, but the campaign has the feel that it serves primarily as the training ground for the multiplayer play. Many of your objectives involve capturing control points, when you die you are re-spawned into the level, and your number of available spawns is capped. You also have the "if you can see it, you can man it" style of gameplay that the Battlefield series is known for, and you're free to do things like man machine gun emplacements, drive vehicles, and fly aircraft.

Does all this mean that the single player campaign is not enjoyable? Thankfully that's not the case here. The single player campaign is certainly enjoyable, but the bias towards online play comes at the cost of intensity. The large maps that give you complete freedom in pursuing your objectives are great - I loved finding ways to flank enemy positions or to approach an objective from a back route. However, the large maps result in plenty of areas devoid of enemies. Fights around objective points usually feature plenty of enemies to keep you busy, but you'll probably have an uneventful stroll or drive between objectives. This leaves you with the feeling that you're conducting a raid on a backwater post rather than fighting at the forefront of a great clash of armies locked in a global conflict. In the end you'll more than likely have fun making your way through the campaign, but it can't match the intensity of the missions in Call of Duty 4 or Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter.

In spite of this shortcoming, Frontlines is still better than your average shooter on the 360. First of all, I like the weapons in the game; they simply feel like they have some heft and power. Even the default assault rifle feels like it packs a punch when you fire it. I also like watching rockets fired from the rocket launcher in flight. The rocket's exhaust trail twists behind it realistically and the rocket itself waivers a little in flight as if it were hitting air pockets and wind gusts on its way to its target. But the fun doesn't stop when it hits its target; the game features destructible environments and the scars of war will persist on the map until you complete the level. I also liked the way that the game lets you both drive a vehicle and fire its weapons at once, eliminating the need to wait around for a random AI character to drive or to fire the vehicle's weapons for you (this doesn't apply to multiplayer, where you'll need separate drivers and gunners). Controlling the vehicles takes a little getting used to though as the steering controls are a little tricky and not completely intuitive.

And then there are the drones. Drones come in both aerial and vehicle forms and when you launch one you control it directly from a third person view right behind the drone. Some drones are mobile remote bombs while others carry a weapon, so they're suited to a variety of tasks. There's a lot of satisfaction in taking out an enemy tank by driving a drone under it and then detonating it, and in flying a small drone through a window and taking out a squad of enemy soldiers defending the building. It's also pretty cool watching enemies react to your drones, as they will scatter, seek cover, or desperately try and shoot the drone. You can chase a soldier with your aerial drone and then bring your little chase game to a fast and deadly conclusion by detonating the drone when he gets run into a corner. You won't be able to send a drone all over the map, though, as they have a limited signal range. The biggest downside of using drones is that you're completely vulnerable while controlling the drone, but this is a bigger issue online than it is in the campaign.

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