Real Heroes: Firefighter HD Review

Actual Heroes: Firefighter HD is a sport that shouldn’t be good. It’s a first-person shooter based mostly round preventing fires as a substitute of gunning down hordes of communists, it has a title that makes it sound like a German simulator sport, and my 7-year-old nephew didn’t prefer it once I made him have a go. 

So why is it that I virtually accomplished the sport in a single marathon session the primary time I performed it and haven’t stopped raving about it since? Can Actual Heroes: Firefighter HD dwell as much as the great identify of the real-life heroes it portrays, spit within the face of hazard and grow to be an really first rate sport? Or will it’s relegated to the dingy again room of the Xbox Retailer, the place you’ll should keep away from suspicious wanting males in lengthy coats looking copies of Street Upkeep Simulator to seek out it second-hand for 99p in a cut price bin? Do cut price bins even exist anymore? Learn on for solutions to most of those questions.

For those who weren’t already conscious, the HD a part of Actual Heroes: Firefighter HD’s title could have clued you in that this can be a remaster of an older sport. Launching on the Wii in 2012 as one of many console’s few first-person shooters, Actual Heroes: Firefighter bears just a few hallmarks of its authentic console; the shovelware-y sounding identify, the family-friendly method to first-person capturing, and the truth that it turns into obvious early within the tutorial that the sport was meant for movement controls.

Completely none of this will get in the best way of the enjoyable, although, as from minute one you’re despatched into a fireplace coaching constructing with an axe and an extinguisher and proven the ropes. You’ll be doing every thing you’d count on a firefighter to do, from chopping down doorways and carrying unconscious folks to security, to prying automotive doorways off with a hydraulic-spreader and, in fact, placing out quite a few fires. 

Each single aspect of the firefighting expertise is totally interactive; utilizing the hydraulic spreader for instance requires the participant to place the instrument, open the jaws to pry the door open a bit, shut them, reposition the instrument and repeat till the job is completed. Removed from being tedious or annoying, each distinctive gameplay ingredient is intuitive and well-done, turning handbook labour into pleasure, moderately than a chore. The truth that your character’s actions are accompanied by some deeply satisfying sound results helps the method alongside, and because of a good degree of realism, by the point the coaching mission is full you’ll in all probability be feeling fairly assured that you simply’ll fly your office’s necessary fireplace security coaching subsequent time it wants renewing.

Actual Heroes: Firefighter HD feels just a little bit like watching that half in Friday the 13^th Half 3 the place the man is yo-yoing on the digicam to indicate off the 3D results, to the amazement of cinemagoers all over the place. You may inform the sport was meant to be performed with movement controls – every thing about it feels prefer it was designed that means – however regardless of dropping a little bit of interactivity from being performed with a standard controller, it controls simply high quality and continues to be a blast to play. 

The sport performs like another FPS, actually, you purpose with the best stick and fireplace with the best set off, your pistol is a fireplace extinguisher and your assault rifle a hose, there are even on-rails turret sections (am I the one individual that loves these?); the distinction right here is that the enemies are fires and items of fallen timber, moderately than demons or North Koreans. It’s fairly refreshing to play one thing this healthful; with all the doom and gloom round currently, there’s a attraction to taking part in a online game that entails doing good deeds as a substitute of stealing automobiles and committing informal genocide. 

The hearth physics will undoubtedly not amaze anyone who has performed Far Cry 2 or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild within the final ten years, but it surely’s nonetheless good to have a dynamic enemy that may unfold rapidly across the degree, blockading escape routes and probably killing you if you happen to take your eye off it for too lengthy. It retains you in your toes and may present an actual problem when the sport takes your hose away and leaves you with a piddly extinguisher.

There’s completely no disgrace in being in comparison with simulator video games – they’ve change into one thing of an artwork kind, as anyone who has spent just a few hours taking part in Euro Truck Simulator 2 can inform you. There’s nice pleasure to be present in coming residence from work and pretending to do another person’s job for just a few hours. I can’t clarify it, however the numerous Farming Simulator video games I’ve managed to finish all the, moderately grindy achievement lists for, converse for themselves. 

That stated, Actual Heroes: Firefighter HD actually shouldn’t be in comparison with them. The title and the field artwork don’t do almost sufficient to promote this sport, as when you’re out of the tutorial mission and into the sport correct, what begins as a reasonably customary Fireman Sim (intelligent pun depend: 1) rapidly exhibits itself to be a product of its time. This can be a sport from when it wasn’t uncommon to have dragons in a semi-realistic firefighting sport, or to be anticipated to cease what you’re doing mid-emergency to rescue a cage stuffed with chinchillas, or a bunch of movie reels. The sport supplies some critical firefighting motion, however with a dose of levity that it might need died with out. 

It has simply the correct amount of selection, too; each time you are feeling such as you’re getting just a little bit uninterested in spraying fires together with your hose, the builders throw a brand new instrument or a brand new problem at you, there’s collectibles to be discovered that reveal the reason for every fireplace, and for higher or worse, Actual Heroes: Firefighter HD is kind of brief. It’s undoubtedly a sport that might have outstayed its welcome, so I’d class this as a plus, nonetheless there’s not lots to revisit the sport for as soon as it’s achieved, moreover ending up the collectibles or finishing it once more on a tougher problem.

Actual Heroes: Firefighter HD is definitely a product of its time. The cel-shaded graphics, mixed with the decision bump of this HD remaster, definitely assist to maintain it wanting extra timeless than different video games of its period, and a forged of voice actors from TV exhibits like The Defend and Buffy the Vampire Slayer do an excellent job of preserving issues entertaining. Nonetheless, the fireplace and water results (arguably two of the extra vital features of the sport’s visuals) look unimpressive by at this time’s requirements, highlighting the truth that past a decision and framerate improve, not lots has been achieved to make this remaster really feel like a sport launched in 2022. 

Actual Heroes: Firefighter HD won’t attraction to everybody, but it surely’s distinctive and truly fairly daring in its imaginative and prescient, managing to make a extremely participating and fulfilling sport out of an idea that might have been a whole dud. 

If you wish to simplify this entire overview down into one sentence I’d say it’s not fairly pretty much as good as Burning Rangers however higher than Rosco McQueen.

Dance into the fireplace!

Actual Heroes: Firefighter HD is downloadable from the Xbox Retailer