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PostPosted: 20 Feb 2008, 21:30 
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The story of this game has you 16 years in the future with oil resources dwindling and two global factions fighting for what's left. The Western Coalition of the US and Europe against the Red Star Alliance of Russia and China.

The graphics aren't quite as good as CoD4 but the gameplay looks like it could be better. It's way more diverse, open ended and vehicles galore including futuristic helis, tanks, jets and drones, all of which you can pilot. There are also numerous achievements you can go for. If you want a thorough but quick video run down, check out the 4th video down called CES 2008: Battlefield Tactics Interview. http://www.gametrailers.com/game/2833.html

The 3rd video on the list, Loadout Tutorial, explains the weapons pretty well. It has some funny frag scenes too including a guy on a crane that gets sniped yelling all the way down as he falls to his death. Makes me wonder if they have a diverse AI damage/hitbox system. The EMP and Air Strike Tutorial videos are also very good. With capability of 64 player mp, the lead dev's mention of satisfactory frame rates doesn't sound far fetched. This may be a much better project for THQ than STALKER was.

So far this is my fave video, which showcases the vehicles. It's in 720p though so it's a 165MB download even though it's only about 3 min long. http://www.frontlineswar.com/download.php?file=14

It's taken from this long list of videos on their website: http://www.frontlineswar.com/?page=videos


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PostPosted: 21 Feb 2008, 10:32 
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Joined: 09 Aug 2006, 14:17
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I played the single-player 360 demo and really liked the game... fun military playground stuff with a good story to back it up. I will definately be picking up the PC version next week.


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PostPosted: 21 Feb 2008, 12:56 
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Since I just found out about it, there's still a lot I don't know, but you just answered one of my questions. I saw the developement timeline but wasn't sure if they were at the open beta stage or 360 demo stage. Hopefully they'll be able to release it soon then, despite one of the Kaos Studios guys saying there's no guarantee it will be released Feb 25th as originally stated. Best Buy told me Feb 26th.

Right now I'm debating whether preordering to get the bonus sp map will be worth it or not. There is a different bonus map in the Best Buy vs GameStop preorders. The bonus map preorder deal is for North America only, everywhere else preordering gets you the Collector's Edition. I just registered on their forum and suggested maybe they could release a special edition version to the US with collector's items and both bonus sp maps after the price on the regular version drops.

I may be wrong about the graphic quality not being quite as good as CoD4. It's hard to tell whether the HD videos of it were compressed below the gameplay res. Anything that uses Unreal Engine 3 is pretty decent really, and it will be fully moddable with mod tools included (UnrealEd).

BTW, if you're going to get it that soon, I would just preorder it now, that way you get the bonus map or Collector's Ed, depending on where you live.


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PostPosted: 22 Feb 2008, 04:09 
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I did preorder at Gamestop but they didn't give me anything... might get it when I pick up the game. It's a single-player map? That's interesting...

Anyway, the graphics on 360 looked damn good... better than CoD4? Maybe, maybe not... that game is more about style and optimization than real blow-the-doors-off graphics, so Frontlines could look better maxed out.


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PostPosted: 22 Feb 2008, 13:53 
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Well for sure the gameplay looks much less linear in Frontlines vs CoD4, and with at least 10 hours of sp campaign gameplay it should be much longer too. In fact they said if you fully make use of all battle options it can run 30 hrs long. CoD4 is so short, scripted and linear it's more like a novelty expansion sp campaign than a full game.

I've read two different stories on the number of sp maps in the stock game though. First they said 8, and now they seem to be saying 7. I'm wondering if originally they planned 8 then decided to make two different versions of one of them and offer it as a preorder bonus.

I never preorder games or pay full price for them. Typically I wait until they're inthe $30-$35 range as I don't play mp anymore and they're often buggy when first released anyway, which can ruin your first play throughs. This is the first preorder perk I've seen that has me wondering if I should. I worry that I'll wind up pissed and find both bonus sp maps available for download somewhere though.


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PostPosted: 11 Mar 2008, 08:25 
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BTW, just wanted to let those know whom may be interested in this game that you can unlock the bonus maps I was referring to just by typing sp-street or sp-village into the Extras menu text box. They are the Urban and Village mp maps with bots and objectives and quite good.

I've played through the game once on Casual and the two bonus maps on Normal. There is one more difficulty level beyond that for 3 total. I wanted to get a feel of the map layout and AI placement on Casual first, as usually when a game has only 3 difficulty modes and styled after mp play, it's fairly challenging.

Normal is quite a step up from Casual and the enemy AI WILL retake objectives if you take too much time advancing and/or don't entirely clear an objective area. You can't use squad commands or take field roles like in mp, and you can only change your loadout after dying. It appears you get a limited number of respawns on higher difficulty levels then have to start the level over if you die after they're used up.

I'm liking the game quite a bit but it runs a bit choppy and the helis are too hard to fly IMO. The remote controlled heli drone is much easier to fly and does make up for it some though. Hopefully forthcoming patches will smooth things out some but I do feel it was a worthwhile purchase, esp for the $36 I paid for it.


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PostPosted: 11 Mar 2008, 12:14 
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It's a very good game... the graphics leave something to be desired in some cases with too-close fog and jaggies that seem immortal no matter what you do, but at times the game surprises with its detail and size... The objectives are standard but the weapons and vehicles you use to complete them are fun and interesting.

Probably not a BF2 killer for most but certainly worth some of your time... I'm playing mostly singleplayer rather than jump in and learn the nuances of yet another mp game, and I still think it was worth the pricetag.


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PostPosted: 12 Mar 2008, 04:28 
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Joined: 11 Mar 2008, 07:11
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I love the game. I find it a much better and more fun version of Battlefield.

As for the jaggies, you can force AA in DX9 (XP) with a hefty performance hit. If you have DX10, you should be able to enable AA with little performance loss.


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PostPosted: 12 Mar 2008, 04:54 
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I just found out Best Buy has it for $30! Dang, should have waited a week. As for how it compares to BF2 the one thing I don't like is the aircraft are hard to fly like the old DC mod they did rather than the way EA made them in BF2. It's still a pretty cool game, but a bit arcadish in some ways.

I get a bit tired of seeing enemies go flying sometimes when I shoot them, but it cracks me up. Once I shot a guy on a fixed gun with a sniper rifle through the small opening in the shield and he went flying 10' in the air. I think they need to tweak the physics some with a patch.


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PostPosted: 12 Mar 2008, 05:43 
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As for the jaggies, you can force AA in DX9 (XP) with a hefty performance hit. If you have DX10, you should be able to enable AA with little performance loss.


I tried forcing it by renaming the .exe. and I didn't think it worked, or at least didn't work well... Guess I have to play with it.


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