Fire Chief

Richard relives his Backdraft induced delusions of heroism...

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The fires themselves are implemented in a partly scripted and partly dynamic fashion that is largely dependent on the level. Each fire has an energy bar associated with it, the higher the bar the fiercer the flame. As you can imagine if the fire goes unchecked it will spread through a level, and this progression is generally only halted by the level design. So part of a building may be burning but no matter how bad you do it will at some point stop spreading until you've completed a goal of the level, e.g. rescue some people. Once this happens though the fire is free to spread once more. This can present some weird situations. For instance in some levels you can completely extinguish a fire only for a scripted sequence to cause it to erupt again for no real reason. The inverse of this is that if you know the level then you can simply ignore a huge inferno in the knowledge that once you've completed a goal it will simply burn out as the next sequence is triggered. Most of the time though the illusion is not broken and you get a definite feeling when a fire is raging out of your control or when you've finally got it contained in some way. You see in order to successfully tackle a fire you need to keep your eyes open for flash points, smoke billowing out of windows, any small isolated fires and definitely anything that might explode. To bring it under control requires a methodical approach and as you fight back the flames you have to make sure that you've completely extinguished any embers behind you, because if one small flame is left and you ignore it you can often find that it quite quickly grows out of control.

The game claims to have 34 missions set in 10 environments, which I would say is quite misleading at best. I would more accurately describe it as having one training level plus nine other main levels. Each of the levels has a few different goals in them, like rescue everyone and try and save important artwork, but it's an exaggeration to call these sub-goals as missions in their own right. Some of these goals do seem to placed rather odd priorities upon the action, too; in one level your top priority is to save the luxury car collection, then worry about the people trapped in the burning building...nice. Each level then takes approximately half an hour to complete, that's only once you get a sense of the right way to approach it and expect a couple of failures along the way. While this may sound like a raw deal each of the levels is unique, posing a different scenario and challenge each time and I would certainly prefer that to a forced repetition of design. The rigid structure of the levels and the goals provide a needed amount of pressure on the player but also hinders the replay value. Most RTS games offer up an interesting sandbox experience where you can try a number of different tactics and strategies. Here there is less freedom to experiment, and the 'correct' method is often quite quickly apparent.

There is a feature in the game that allows you to change the look of the main fire fighters and the vehicles to match different countries, namely Britain, USA, France and Germany. While this appears to be purely cosmetic it is a nice touch. In fact the graphics are nice throughout the game with the fires being well rendered and the damage of a burnt out building looking spectacular indeed. It would have been nice to have a few more effects on display; the most notable absence is the lack of suitable explosions. When a car or some barrels blow up it merely causes the fire to spread quickly. The effect offers no real sense, other than a nice sound effect, that this is a violent eruption that might spread debris. It's a minor issue though and the other effects, like gases and electricity, go someway to breaking up the monotony of a wall of yellow flames. This is matched with some good sound effects that help convey the situation in hand.

There were a couple of technical problems in the game. Grouping units didn't seem to work at all but when you're only dealing with six or so men at a time it wasn't all that important. A couple of times when I moved the ladder away from a fireman who was just about to descend he would get stuck running around in mid-air unable to do anything useful. Not very good. This belies some of the stronger technical points of the game though, particularly the AI of the firemen. They were great at finding their way back and forth through a level and when moving as a group not once did the guy trailing decide to wander off on some weird scenic detour. If left on their own they are not quite powerful enough to be effective, but put two or three together and when positioned on opposing fronts of a fire they work methodically putting one flame out then the next. Their dependency then alleviated much of the micro-management that can tarnish such games.

Even with all the good points it is still, unfortunately, quite a short game. Once you have played a level and you know where the next scripted event is going to happen it can also be very easy, even on the harder difficulty levels. This is because you can use the games design to your own advantage. Simply get the fire completely under your control before you rescue someone and you can fix when the scripted events will occur and ensure you have assets deployed appropriately. It's worth noting that this lack of longevity actually reflected in the price. The game retails for twenty pounds rather than the more typical thirty plus pounds and at that price it's worth a shot. Fire Chief is an interesting idea that is mostly well executed. While maybe not a title that you'll remember in years to come, and probably not one you'll play again once completed, it does provide for a fun little diversion between all those Warcraft sessions. Like playing with matches, it's only fun and games for a while.

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By Richard Clifford