Stop, drop, and roll away from the PS2. Review

Stop, drop, and roll away from the PS2.

Even before the events of 9/11 turned them into action

figures, firefighters performed good deeds on a daily basis. Did your cat

run up a tree? Call the firemen. Did your car skid into a ditch? Call the firemen.

Did you accidentally set fire to your girlfriend’s irritating toy poodle that

refused to stop barking, even AFTER you glued its mouth shut? Call the firemen!

Then, call a shrink.

And while you’re on the phone with them, recommend that they visit Konami’s HQ to

find out exactly what was going on upstairs when they decided to create a game

all about firefighting. After all, the “fireman” genre hasn’t exactly produced

big winners over the years ” unless you consider either this or this to

be a winner. Hmm’on second thought, don’t even bother calling a shrink. The strange Firefighter

F.D. 18 isn’t really worth the effort, though it certainly scores points

in the “What Were They Thinking’ column.

The

premise, at least, is rational. You play as the ruggedly-named Dean McGregor,

a fireman with a seemingly insatiable hatred for flames. Over the course of

this short single-player game, you put out fires, save victims, and battle

your inner demons while getting to the bottom of a string of mysterious arsons.

Following a linear, melodramatic storyline, you go from scenario to scenario

accomplishing tasks, almost all of which involve saving people stuck in burning

buildings. But while this kind of game has actually been made before, Firefighter

F.D. 18 tries to make it more immersive by literally throwing you into

the fire and making you hose your way out.

Conceptually, it works; functionally, it’s a mess. Level after level sees you

inching along in third-person, squirting water from your seemingly inexhaustible

fire hose at the flames while you make your way to trapped victims by following

a handy little map. You’ll occasionally have to navigate around fallen objects

or find a keycard somewhere before opening a certain door, but it’s mostly a

straightforward meander through the fire.

And by meander, I mean meander. Dean moves at a snail’s pace thanks to the sluggish

control. Just moving the hose around seems like a chore; his evasive maneuvers

consist of an awkward jab step in one of four directions. Though the bulk of

the fire creeps along slowly as well, occasionally it will spout out some flame

balls that are nearly unavoidable. Couple that with scripted explosions that

toss you around like a rag doll and you wind up with a game that’s harder to

play than it should be.

Fighting the fire itself is decent enough due in large part to the fairly life-like flames. It’s a lot like virus containment; you’ll spritz down one area while another spreads, really giving you the sense that you’re fighting an uphill battle. Different kinds of flames require different solutions, so you’ll occasionally have to use other methods like fire extinguishers and impulse blasts. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of different items and more often than not you’ll wind up just using the hose.

This leads to some repetitive gameplay, made even worse by the fact that you

keep doing the same thing over and over again. The number of people you need

to rescue changes from level to level, but without fail you just spray down

the fire and navigate to the victims. There’s very, very little creativity in how you play Firefighter

F.D. 18.

However, you can’t say the same about the oddest bit of all: the Boss Battles.

At the end of each level you’ll

face off against a Boss Fire that forgoes the otherwise realistic movement of

the flames in favor of traditional Boss patterns. Fighting these Bosses is a

bit like that old carnival game where you squirt water into a clown’s mouth to

inflate a balloon, except you also have to avoid flaming gobs of cotton candy.

Just keep the water focused on the middle of the Boss and dodge the nasty bits.

The strategy is pretty much zilch and renders what could have been the best part

of the game into tiresome, predictable affairs.

Firefighter F.D. 18 does get one thing right ” the fire itself.

The flames look real enough and when bunched together into an inferno really

give off a sense of chaos and heat. Couple that with thick smoke and exploding

cars/pipes/walls and you get some truly intense moments. But sadly, everything

else is bland and uninspired. Dean shuffles along like a zombie through gray

environments that feature little in the way of interaction. They’re really just

set pieces for the flame and very much feel that way.

But compared to the voice-acting, the bland graphics are Halo-esque. Between Dean’s overwrought cheeseball Kurt Russell imitation to the grating teenage drama queen antics of news reporter and constant irritation Emilie Arvin, you’ll relish your moments alone with the flames and the silly heavy metal soundtrack.

To top off this flaming disaster, Firefighter F.D. 18 can be

completed in about 7 hours, after which there’s no reason to play anymore except

to try out the harder difficulty levels or to try to improve your performance

on each level to get better reward medals. Not exactly worth your money.

The life of a real firefighter is filled with danger and fraught with peril, but Firefighter

F.D. 18 misses the mark completely due to its slow pace and boring gameplay. Fire bad, indeed.