Frontline Commando

Frontline Commando offers a decent replication of the traditional console or PC third person shooter experience, and it manages to do so without in app purchases that are overly obtrusive. This isn't developer Glu's first rodeo. The company has made a name for themselves creating shooters optimized for mobile devices, and fans of the company's other franchises will find it easy to jump right into the experience. The game play draws deeply from cover based shooters on consoles, and it's a model that works well for the mobile format. The focus on cover means that players don't have to wrestle with the sort of unwieldy navigation that typically comes with mobile games, and users can focus their attention instead on taking down the opposition with the wide range of guns available. Players looking for a greater sense of mobility won't find it here. Navigation is purely computer controlled and locked in to pre-designed animations.

Given the inherent limitations of the genre and the medium, game play can sometimes become repetitive. But while the majority of the experience comes down to looking for openings, popping out of cover at strategic points, and emptying rounds of ammunition into the opposition, Glu has taken admirable efforts to diversify the experience as much as possible. Most environments offer several different cover points that come with their own strategic advantages and disadvantages, and the destructible environments mean that you can't stay under any point of cover for too long. Between finding the best angle to shoot down opponents, weighing the risk of moving between cover against the disadvantages of your deteriorating cover, and finding the right time to make a run for a nearby ammo station, there are a decent amount of strategic considerations to weigh in every stage.

In terms of environments, Frontline Commando is more or less by the books. It's a modern shooter that represents itself as realistic, and that means that you can expect to see the typical mix of jungles, factories, and urban environments. You'll spend most of your time taking down standard soldiers, but Glu mixes up the formula some with the addition of helicopters and other vehicle opponents. Regardless of the somewhat generic approach to environments, everything here looks exceptional. Glu is one of the best developers around in terms of making the most of mobile hardware, and it shows here. While the photo realistic graphics here aren't good enough to stand up to the latest Call of Duty, they're rather impressive and attractive.

As expected from a free to play game, Frontline Commando combines currency you can earn in game with the ability to make purchases using real money. And while that may turn some players away, the developer is largely restrained in how they handle it. New guns and equipment are generally within reach even if you don't want to spend real money, and the difficulty curve is largely manageable.