Frontlines: Fuel of War

Gosh, you've really got some nice toys here. Worth: $30
based on Xbox 360 demo

Is war really hell when you've got so many cool gadgets?

Toy remote-control cars are always fun. I love steering them around my living room, especially under the coffee table because my dog goes bananas trying to chase it under there. Go get it girl! Woof woof! Now imagine that you have an RC car packed with enough C4 to blow up a tank. Who says playtime isn't Army training?

FFoW is a smooth and solid FPS with a good premise and lots of creative and well-executed gadgetry to help you mercilessly slaughter the enemies of, uh... us. Whoever "us" is. Ahh, hell, who cares? The bad guys make my aiming reticle turn red, so they must be unholy monsters that deserve to be riddled with bullets, blown to bits, set on fire, and/or crushed to death. Makes sense to me, and not just because I've been raised to do whatever my warlord Premier (oops, I mean Secretary of State) tells me to do.

It's touted as an "open-world" shooter. What they really mean is you get a finite area to fight in until you've killed everything in whatever order you want. This relative flexibility, combined with at least 3 or 4 ways to achieve each objective makes this a game I'm really looking forward to.

UPDATE: Feb 28
New videos from Xbox Live shows some fantastic Multiplayer features. Much more objective-based than most other games. Strategy has been built in to every map, and they all seem very team-oriented, which is smart. I think a lot of gamers have had enough free-for-all deathmatch and are looking for something more strategic.