Real Heroes: Firefighter Review

Wii fight fires here.

I like playing with my Wii hose as much as the next guy. Bring on the virtual cats in trees, and if I had time, I could save a few people from being burnt alive. So when I saw Conspiracy Entertainment’s first-person shooter Real Heroes: Firefighters, I was excited. I knew the company that had brought us such memorable and edgy titles as Action Girlz Racing and Monster Trux Arenas (*sarcasm*) probably wouldn’t let me down even if their title was slightly less patriotic than G.I. Joe’s Real American Heroes (With Guns).

[image1]There is some kind of background story to the game. something about it being a record hot summer with no rain. but that doesn’t really factor into anything other than the end credits. You start off as a probie, which is short for probationary firefighter, not something the Greys use when they abduct rednecks.

RHF’s gameplay can be intense at times. You battle to keep fires from spreading as you try to escort civvies and other firefighters from one area to another. Each level requires the use of most of the tools of the firefighting trade: your hose, fire extinguisher, axe, and halligan bar. The other tools of the trade, like a buzzsaw for making doors and hydraulic spreaders, are used less and their inclusion often feels contrived and tacked on.

The problem with the gameplay is that a lot of your missions and tools feel forced and restrictive. Not all fires can be put out by your hose, whose length is determined by a programmer rather than any dependable rule set. Your axe can only break certain doors and most boxes seem to shrug off your blows. Don’t try this theory on any of the barrels of flammable liquid populating the levels, if you want to keep your Wii eyebrows. Your halligan, think a crowbar on steroids, can only pry open certain doors and plates. The only consistent tool you have is the fire extinguisher, which has the same limited amount of spray no matter where you pick it up.

It is pretty hard to foul up a mission, since the game has an automatic checkpoint system. If you do happen to be overwhelmed by flames or electricity, and turn into one of those nifty plaster casts of burned people at Pompeii, you are given the option to restart the level or restart from wherever the last inconsistently placed checkpoint was.

[image2]The game makes good use of the Wii-mote’s built-in speaker. Its major role is that of your walkie talkie, the Talk Talk 9000, over which you’ll constantly hear the banter of the other people on your crew as well as orders from your superiors. The Pro Logic surround sound has its moments, but for the most part, it fails to immerse you anymore than games with only a stereo option.

To call the voice acting bad isn’t fair, since it certainly doesn’t fall quite within the realm of "Godzilla movie-dubbing bad", but at certain times, you can’t help but laugh at the bad delivery. Though the game takes place in an undisclosed city on the west coast, most of the other firefighters have Brooklyn accents. These people come prepared with the cookie-cutter banter you find in every movie and television show with firefighters. It is bearable but just barely. Apparently, these east-coasters were the only people willing to work in a world where the same mohawked six-year-old appears at almost every fire.

As a side note, you will have a lot of people talking to you, though not all of them move their mouths when they do. To add a little spice to the game, I decided that most of the NPCs were mute and that an unseen ventriloquist was standing behind me at all times. Fact: 62% of all fires are started by ventriloquist dummies being lit on fire during labor/management disputes. Worse yet, many of the NPCs sound the same.

The graphics are a step up from my favorite firefighter game, Burning Rangers, for the Sega Saturn. When you walk into a blazing room that is nearly or completely engulfed in flames, you can get distracted by how pretty the fire is. It will take you back to when you first learned a lighter and a can of hairspray can be hours of safe and exciting fun. Once you start to get the fires under control, the graphical squares they are mapped onto become rather evident and everything becomes much less visually luxurious. Most of the NPCs you save show up at other fires or sometimes twice in the same fire. That coupled with the inconsistent lip movement when people talk makes the game feel rushed.

[image3]While every mission is technically different, most of them will feel pretty much the same: hose this, run there, find or escort that person. The programmers decided to add four collectables to each mission. Three of them are pieces to a picture in your Captain’s office that when combined form a photo of the cause of the fire. This has no bearing on the story or gameplay, and no one seems to care about what started the fire anyway.

The fourth collectable is a new skin for one of your firefighting paraphernalia. But since this is a FPS, that means you don’t get to really bask in the new shiny glory of the ‘Red Hot hose’. I like to think this is for the best. After each fire, you are allowed to replay the level in order to find any items you missed your first time through, with each play-through lasting about five or six hours. The only real replay factor is being able to change the difficulty setting on a new game. A higher setting speeds up the spread o the fire, making it harder to control and contain.

Real Heroes: Firefighter has some very good moments when you are running from fires, along with a few other action-packed moments. There are even one or two chuckle moments in the dialogue and movie titles that make you say "What?" in a good way. Though it does claim to give an unspecified amount of money to the Firefighter’s Cancer Support Network, they would probably get more if you rented the game and gave the money you saved directly to the charity instead.