Whereas online gaming has been with us for some time on the PC, Xbox Live has taken that to new highs, both in terms of the sheer number of people playing and the quality of games on offer.

It also means that we are seeing more games focusing on online play at the expense of the single player experience.

'Frontlines: Fuel of War' is very much such a product of the multiplayer era — with even its single player campaign doused in the atmosphere of a massive online romp.

It is the year 2024, the world is running out of oil, and the US/Europe (Western Coalition) and Russia/China (the Red Star Alliance) is battling in the middle-east for the few remaining drops of black gold.

This then is the basic set-up for what turns out to be a rather familiar theatre of war, in which everything revolves around pushing the enemy back, capturing this or that position, and so on and so forth.

Dusty and brown, filled with gunfire, tanks, and choppers, comparisons with the 'Battlefield' games are soon unavoidable. But somehow the game never quite thrills or engrosses like that series — something that may well have to do with the game's relative poverty of atmosphere.

Still, it should be noted that the ability to drive tanks and to direct futuristic attack drones at your enemies does give the game a sense of freedom. And when you combine this with open-ended levels in which you can often take on objectives as you like and in what order you like, there is certainly the right foundation for a quality experience.

Yet, something about the game just doesn't quite feel right. Shooting and taking cover just isn't what it is in something like 'Gears of War' and the sense of atmosphere also falls short of what one expects of a modern shooter.

These shortcomings are most troubling in the single player campaign. And when you add some rather unimpressive AI to the mix, what you have is a lot of unfulfilled potential.

Played with 30+ other human beings over Xbox Live, however, is quite a different story. Here the freedom to use all the various weapons, combined with large, interesting maps, delivers wonderfully chaotic sandboxes in which to indulge in destruction on a massive scale.

If this kind of multiplayer carnage gets your heart beating, 'Frontlines' is certainly for you.

Technically the game's visuals are not bad, but it is somewhat lacking in artistic flair. The resultant lack of atmosphere is exacerbated by some rather poor sound effects and repetitive voice clips.

Add it all up, and 'Frontlines: Fuel of War' feels just a little undercooked. The multiplayer part of the game certainly offers good value. Still, you never quite escape the feeling that you are dealing with a slightly unpolished clone of the 'Battlefield' games.