At some point in everyone life, it’s likely you wanted to drive a Fire Engine, be a fireman or like Greg, watch things burn. It’s also like that most of us aren’t firefighters in real life. Thanks to Firefighters The Simulation you can get an insight into the world of fighting fires, dealing with oil spills, escorting nuclear waste and dealing with more oil spills.
Simulation games tend to suck me in, no matter how mundane the game happens to be. I was genuinely quite happy to review this, though my opinion changed after playing through the tutorial.
If you can bear to watch my video you’ll see how the tutorial pans out. If not you get guided through a lifeless building while Zombie-like fireman aimless wander around not really doing anything. Apart from showing me the different room in the building that all the tutorial did. My first job involved me investigating a bin fire, but at no point did it explain what I actually had to do, before I know I had inhaled too much smoke, suffered burns and my shift was over!
The game expects you to teach yourself, it’s not a difficult game to master, there are some basic guides as to what certain buttons will do, but it’s very much trial and error. If you can’t remember what your current job is you can get a reminder but it will only be brief. The actual amount of jobs you can do isn’t actually that varied. There are plenty of oil spills to deal with and the fires aren’t especially varied, except for in size. Some of the more interesting jobs involve rescuing people inside the building, but it’s never exciting.
The only sense of urgency is the initial timer that counts down on the way to a job, once you arrive at the location the sense of urgency just disappears. 90% of the time I arrived at the job three or four minutes before the rest of station, but the time they arrived I was done and the other vehicles simply disappear.
The map is tiny and a complete pain to navigate, you can zoom in and out but the map is just a tiny circle in the corner, the jobs seem to just circle through the same locations so I had the map pretty much memorised in the first few hours.
Each job you compete gives you points that count towards your promotion. The higher you rank up the big the appliance you get to drive. You begin in a research vehicle before moving up to more established fire engines, each vehicle has unique features that don’t take a lot of time to get used to.
This game is just a mess, the graphics and frame rates are awful. I’ve already mentioned the other Firefighters, but haven’t mentioned the completely full world, lacking any decent textures. The town only appears to have a population of about 6 and the vehicles you do encounter don’t do anything to move out of your way. And when you are stopped at a job the cars drive straight through your vehicle! The oil spills about the most relaistic look thing in the game, even the fire is poor.
I only managed to play this game for as long as I did for the achievements, I feel sorry for the developers on this one. This game could have been fun but it’s lifeless and dull. There are many better simulation games that are worth your time. Play the trial if you need to, otherwise just save your money.
Thanks to United Independent Entertainment GmbH for supporting TiX
