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IGN Review of Real Heroes: Firefighter
Though first-person shooters have been there for the Wii since the system's launch, the early games in this genre weren't all that hot. It wasn't until Metroid Prime 3: Corruption hit the scene where developers saw the potential, and teams like High Voltage Software ran with that potential in games like The Conduit. The early days of FPS games on Wii were shaky at best, but we're at a point now where we expect any first-person shooter on the Wii to keep up with the standards laid forth by the developers learning the console and tweaking the controls for the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. With those standards, we've reached a certain comfort level: even a budget title like Real Heroes: Firefighter can end up an impressive and intense experience because of the inspiring FPS games that have come before it.
We've seen firefighting games before in the past -- SEGA has had a fire fetish for years with games like Burning Rangers for Saturn and Brave Firefighters in the arcade. Epicenter Studios' design is more the latter than the former, but even with the similar names its Wii game is an original title.
It might be a little unfair to classify Real Heroes: Firefighter as a first-person shooter simply because it doesn't exactly fit that mold: You don't blast away at infiltrating enemies with an assortment of high-powered rifles. But you do control the game from a first person perspective and you definitely do a lot of shooting at enemies – water instead of bullets, fire instead of soldiers – so it's not exactly inaccurate to force this game into the genre.
As the title suggests, you play as a firefighter – a rookie, to be more specific -- right smack dab in the thick of the action. After a brief, handy tutorial that walks you through the various techniques and controls that the adventure offers, you're thrust into your first mission to save a warehouse and its victims from 3000 degrees of doom. Now, while the game follows certain firefighter guidelines and tries to really give it a "you are a firefighter" experience, a few liberties have been taken to turn this intense experience into a videogame. But for the most part you're living the life.
The designers rightfully took inspiration from previous successful first person shooters like Metroid Prime 3: Corruption in order to really nail the FPS controls. Real Heroes: Firefighter features solid default control but also enables players to tweak their sensitivity. I do wish the interface was a little more intuitive here, since it's a little unclear how adjusting the different percentage markers will affect the player's movements. But after a bit of clunky back and forth from game to options and back again, I think any player will find their preferred setting.
In game, much of the action involves following designated paths to checkpoints, and to survive you'll need to wield the power of fire extinguishing. You've got two at your disposal: a portable, limited extinguisher that's weak but effective, as well as a fire hose with two settings: full on stream for the faraway fires, and a spread to get those up-close flames. Since you're one of a team of many, you're not really trying to put out the fire more than you are trying to complete specific tasks within an inferno. If the goal in a specific mission is to completely douse the flames of a structure then more power to you, but for the most part you're trying to put out fires along walls, floors, and ceilings in order to cut paths to your next objective. As you move through the environments you'll need to dodge timed gas leaks and chop down structures to gain access to the next room, all the while keeping an eye on your extinguishers: even though the developers don't render it behind you, your hose can only go so far before it becomes useless. You'll need to scope out the locations of your "ammunition" before you can move forward, because if you get overwhelmed by the heat you'll die. Unlike a real firefighter though, you'll bounce back to the previous checkpoint to try again.
The developers create a fire engine, no pun intended, that allows for flames to take on a life of their own. You might manage to put out the fire temporarily, but you can watch that inferno grow back to its massive size through programmed behaviors. It's a bit of give and take, though: the fire effects are really good, but it must've come at the expense of other visual effects. Not that Real Heroes: Firefighter is a bad looking game, but it's a little rough around the edges in some cases. Team member animations are a little stiff, and there's very little in the way of water effects, which is a little odd considering how many thousands of gallons of water you're dousing all over the walls and floors. But with all that's going on, the framerate only hitches on slight occasions and for the most part the game's a smooth FPS experience.
Because you're putting out fire instead of blasting enemy invasions the gameplay of Real Heroes: Firefighter definitely feels like a much different experience than the traditional FPS affair. There's more meticulous work involved: you'll need to constantly "paint" the water over the fire before you can move on, but the designers do a pretty decent job making sure that's not all you're doing. There will be times where you'll have to use a spreader to open up elevator shafts, or pull out your axe to shatter windows for ventilation, or even take control of a blade cutter in order to slice through structures. These are all handled through Wii remote motion, and applied in such a way that it feels integrated into the experience and not a tacked on, unnecessary control. You'll have to deal with an unfortunate side effect of remote motion in a FPS: even though motion won't be recognized until you "lock in" the tool with the B trigger, after you swing your axe your view might wander exaggeratedly because your pointer will be aimed at a different location than when the swing started.
As fun and intense as the game can get, I did encounter a few issues where it shows the game's slight lack of final polish. Victims follow a specific scripted path, so even though you might have had a clear cut path to safety behind you, they'll want to head somewhere else that really makes no sense in context. The game also fails to tell you exactly what you did wrong, leaving you to unfair trial and error events to get it right. For example, in one scenario, you'll wander into a house through the back door into the kitchen, where the oven will promptly explode and kill you on impact. There's absolutely no heads-up here, so you're forced to learn from this death and pull back before you trigger the explosion. You also have to learn not to shoot live wires as the game fails to really tell you why you're being electrocuted if your stream gets too close to the deadly circuit.
But issues aside, Real Heroes: Firefighter is a good time. The price alone indicates the game's not exactly an A-lister FPS, but even at this status the developers poured a really good amount of effort into this budget title. The game's fully voice acted to give the experience a bit of personality, but I'm not going to ignore some of the cheesy line reads from a few of the talent. The game's a good ten hours, enhanced with encouragement to revisit locations to find hidden items and three medallions that, when collected, will show how the blaze started. Pretty cool.
©2009-08-19, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
We've seen firefighting games before in the past -- SEGA has had a fire fetish for years with games like Burning Rangers for Saturn and Brave Firefighters in the arcade. Epicenter Studios' design is more the latter than the former, but even with the similar names its Wii game is an original title.
It might be a little unfair to classify Real Heroes: Firefighter as a first-person shooter simply because it doesn't exactly fit that mold: You don't blast away at infiltrating enemies with an assortment of high-powered rifles. But you do control the game from a first person perspective and you definitely do a lot of shooting at enemies – water instead of bullets, fire instead of soldiers – so it's not exactly inaccurate to force this game into the genre.
As the title suggests, you play as a firefighter – a rookie, to be more specific -- right smack dab in the thick of the action. After a brief, handy tutorial that walks you through the various techniques and controls that the adventure offers, you're thrust into your first mission to save a warehouse and its victims from 3000 degrees of doom. Now, while the game follows certain firefighter guidelines and tries to really give it a "you are a firefighter" experience, a few liberties have been taken to turn this intense experience into a videogame. But for the most part you're living the life.
The designers rightfully took inspiration from previous successful first person shooters like Metroid Prime 3: Corruption in order to really nail the FPS controls. Real Heroes: Firefighter features solid default control but also enables players to tweak their sensitivity. I do wish the interface was a little more intuitive here, since it's a little unclear how adjusting the different percentage markers will affect the player's movements. But after a bit of clunky back and forth from game to options and back again, I think any player will find their preferred setting.
In game, much of the action involves following designated paths to checkpoints, and to survive you'll need to wield the power of fire extinguishing. You've got two at your disposal: a portable, limited extinguisher that's weak but effective, as well as a fire hose with two settings: full on stream for the faraway fires, and a spread to get those up-close flames. Since you're one of a team of many, you're not really trying to put out the fire more than you are trying to complete specific tasks within an inferno. If the goal in a specific mission is to completely douse the flames of a structure then more power to you, but for the most part you're trying to put out fires along walls, floors, and ceilings in order to cut paths to your next objective. As you move through the environments you'll need to dodge timed gas leaks and chop down structures to gain access to the next room, all the while keeping an eye on your extinguishers: even though the developers don't render it behind you, your hose can only go so far before it becomes useless. You'll need to scope out the locations of your "ammunition" before you can move forward, because if you get overwhelmed by the heat you'll die. Unlike a real firefighter though, you'll bounce back to the previous checkpoint to try again.
The developers create a fire engine, no pun intended, that allows for flames to take on a life of their own. You might manage to put out the fire temporarily, but you can watch that inferno grow back to its massive size through programmed behaviors. It's a bit of give and take, though: the fire effects are really good, but it must've come at the expense of other visual effects. Not that Real Heroes: Firefighter is a bad looking game, but it's a little rough around the edges in some cases. Team member animations are a little stiff, and there's very little in the way of water effects, which is a little odd considering how many thousands of gallons of water you're dousing all over the walls and floors. But with all that's going on, the framerate only hitches on slight occasions and for the most part the game's a smooth FPS experience.
Because you're putting out fire instead of blasting enemy invasions the gameplay of Real Heroes: Firefighter definitely feels like a much different experience than the traditional FPS affair. There's more meticulous work involved: you'll need to constantly "paint" the water over the fire before you can move on, but the designers do a pretty decent job making sure that's not all you're doing. There will be times where you'll have to use a spreader to open up elevator shafts, or pull out your axe to shatter windows for ventilation, or even take control of a blade cutter in order to slice through structures. These are all handled through Wii remote motion, and applied in such a way that it feels integrated into the experience and not a tacked on, unnecessary control. You'll have to deal with an unfortunate side effect of remote motion in a FPS: even though motion won't be recognized until you "lock in" the tool with the B trigger, after you swing your axe your view might wander exaggeratedly because your pointer will be aimed at a different location than when the swing started.
As fun and intense as the game can get, I did encounter a few issues where it shows the game's slight lack of final polish. Victims follow a specific scripted path, so even though you might have had a clear cut path to safety behind you, they'll want to head somewhere else that really makes no sense in context. The game also fails to tell you exactly what you did wrong, leaving you to unfair trial and error events to get it right. For example, in one scenario, you'll wander into a house through the back door into the kitchen, where the oven will promptly explode and kill you on impact. There's absolutely no heads-up here, so you're forced to learn from this death and pull back before you trigger the explosion. You also have to learn not to shoot live wires as the game fails to really tell you why you're being electrocuted if your stream gets too close to the deadly circuit.
But issues aside, Real Heroes: Firefighter is a good time. The price alone indicates the game's not exactly an A-lister FPS, but even at this status the developers poured a really good amount of effort into this budget title. The game's fully voice acted to give the experience a bit of personality, but I'm not going to ignore some of the cheesy line reads from a few of the talent. The game's a good ten hours, enhanced with encouragement to revisit locations to find hidden items and three medallions that, when collected, will show how the blaze started. Pretty cool.
©2009-08-19, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved