Reviewed: August 11, 2003
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
DreamCatcher Interactive
Developer
Monte Cristo
Released: July 29, 2003
Genre: Strategy
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen
8
8
7
7
8.3
System Requirements
It’s always nice to see an original idea emerge from the sea of copycat titles that stream endlessly into our software stores. To the best of my knowledge Emergency Fire Response is the first firefighting simulation available for the PC.
The concept is simple and even a bit familiar if you’ve played games like Diablo. You take a small group of warriors (firefighters) into a dungeon (burning building) and fight monsters (various patches of fire) while completing quests and rescuing helpless victims. Sounds pretty romantic – no wonder kids want to be firemen when they grow up.
But EFR shatters this romantic illusion with the brutality of the profession, the dangers, the hard work, and the heat! Thanks to some clever level design and intricate story telling that would make the writers of C.S.I. stand up and take notice, the men of Station 615 aren’t fighting your average fires. Nobody drops a cigarette in their bed while sleeping and candles don’t accidentally set the drapes on fire. Oh no.
Emergency Fire Fighter follows the “adventures” of a group of firefighters from Station 615. You begin with some very basic training that only hints of the action to come. After you have mastered these basic skills you can begin your tour of duty that lasts for ten missions of increasing difficulty.
Each of the ten infernos (levels) you must battle is a masterpiece of design, creativity, and an ongoing list of unique mission objectives. Each fire begins with a lengthy story that sets up the action and also generates your first set of objectives. After that the mission is composed of three or more stages, each with their own goals that you are graded on based on speed and thoroughness.
The interface and controls are standard strategy issue with icons along the bottom of the screen showing character status and allowing you to select units via their portrait or by clicking or dragging a selection box around them on the game screen. You can zoom in and out with the mouse wheel and rotate the view using the arrow buttons in the corner of the screen. Your cursor is context sensitive so clicking on a firemen then clicking on fire will start hosing down the flames. If you get near a person you can talk or administer first aid and if something can be broken like a door or window the axe icon will appear indicating the default action.
The few problems I had with the game were mainly all due to the interface and some quirky AI. Firemen will continue to fight new fires as long as they are adjacent to the one you told them to fight in the first place. If there is ever a break in the flames a “?” will appear on their icon meaning they are waiting for you to command them. A little bit of AI would have gone a long way here as in later levels when you are juggling a dozen men and trucks it gets pretty frantic.
I also missed any type of formation or way to organize my firefighters when they were grouped as a single unit. I tend to group like units into numbered clusters so when I tap the “1” all of my basic firemen are selected, but when I point them to a section of fire they all attack the same spot. It would have been nice to have them work to put an “area” or “180 arc” of the fire. In D&D it would be the equivalent of having a party of five encounter five monsters. Instead of each man taking on their own monster they all bash on them one at a time.
Also, the men seem to wander dangerously close to the flames before using their extinguishers, often catching on fire and taking damage. This is unexplainable and unacceptable when there is a perfectly fire-free safe zone three steps behind them. The pathfinding AI needs a bit of work.
The timing of the game also seems to be a bit off. In the first game you are putting out a warehouse fire that is suspected arson. Actually we “know” it’s arson thanks to the opening movie, but it’s up to our firefighters to prove it by collecting any “suspicious” evidence. Your first time through the game you have no idea what to look for and when the game finally shows you some explosives in a small cutscene the bomb goes off in that same movie before you even have a change to collect it. This concept is repeated throughout the game with plenty of time-sensitive objectives that you can only really discover through failure, guaranteeing multiple replays for most of the missions.
By design the game requires a lot of planning and strategy but you are seldom afforded the time to think. You are constantly micromanaging every unit to counter the poor AI. The men also run out of Oxygen and Water quite often forcing them to return to the truck to reload. This means you are constantly trying to position the truck outside as close as possible to the nearest available entrance to the building, but even in the short time it takes to re-supply you can lose much of your progress.
Realistically, previous patches of extinguished fire can solder and re-ignite, even trapping your men inside if you aren’t careful. Also true to life are backdrafts, flashovers, and other realistic dangers that these heroes face everyday. To battle the increasing dangers you have a variety of unit types at your disposal and while they all have special abilities they can all join with your regular guys to put out fires at reduced efficiency.
The technical officer is skilled in bomb defusing and analyzing clues leading to arson convictions. He can also drive trucks, and even though you are in direct control of your own firefighting vehicles, there are often cars and trucks that need to be moved out of harms way or to open a path for one of your trucks. You can even drive a forklift in the first mission and use it to raise a jammed garage door.
There is also a high-risk environment specialist who can use a grapple to reach areas inaccessible to the normal men. If lucky he can do something like release a ladder or open a door to allow his team to join him. You also have your paramedics, the extraction specialists (jaws of life), and even a guy in the shiny silver suit that can walk right through fire.
There are just as many vehicle types as there are men. You have your basic pumper that can arc water to exterior patches of fire. The re-supply truck is used to fill other trucks and your men’s portable equipment. It has an area of effect so it only needs to be parked adjacent to the truck in need of water. This was mildly annoying at times. Apparently the men of the 615 have never heard of hoses and fire hydrants. You have your ambulance and your rescue and water ladder trucks; basically it’s the ultimate set of toys for playing “fireman”.
Speaking of vehicles, these were another sore spot for me. Rather than click a truck and point to where you wanted it to go you have to hold down the mouse button and drag (drive) the truck around the levels. These trucks don’t handle all that well and you often find yourself dragging a truck that is off the screen and it’s getting hung up on obstacles, etc. Also, trying to position a truck in just the right spot is frustrating, as they have no real turning radius.
As strategic as the designers wanted to make this game it often boils down to memorization and repeated gameplay. Even though the fire is dynamic and unpredictable the objectives are always the same, so once you have learned (often through failure) where everything is, where you should be going, and the best path and tactics to get there it’s simply a matter of reloading the mission and doing it.
My final nitpick on the game has to do with balancing and perhaps a bit of realism. The first mission has me going into a huge burning warehouse with only 4-5 guys. That may suit the needs of the game design but I find it highly unrealistic. The second mission has my men going into a bank that was just firebombed to distract from a robbery. Again, I go in with a half-dozen men and am immediately supposed to save five victims and get the fire under control. Eventually reinforcements do arrive but then the scale of the fire is also increased. Suffice to say, the odds are always against you in EFR.
The graphics in Emergency Fire Response are surprising good. Rendered totally in 3D you can pan, rotate and zoom the camera around. Your men are often cast in a blue glow so you can pick them out of the insanity that is going on around you. Obviously a lot of work went into the fire and it shows. The flames really do seem alive in this game and will spread, smolder, and you can even pick out glowing orange embers in the debris.
The fire damage isn’t totally dynamic in that there isn’t any progression of damage. You either see flames licking around a good item or the charred remains of what that item used to be. There is a lot of detail packed into the levels but all of the important stuff like buttons, switches, and mission-critical objectives are easily identifiable once you know what to look for.
The modeling on the firemen is surprisingly well done with detailed uniforms and other firefighting gear. You’ll see your tech office lumbering around with his heavy bag of tricks and the environmental guy will grapple and climb to unreachable heights. Your regular men are often concealed in the orange glow of flames but eventually you can see the spray of water and the white steamy mist rising off of the ashes.
The audio presentation is adequate. There is no real music outside of the menus and opening screen. You are left instead with the roar of flames, the booming explosions, the whoosh of backdrafts and flashovers, and the intermittent radio chatter of your men that basically confirms they have received your commands. There is some excellent narration for each of the opening movies and the tutorial.
There are ten challenging levels that encompass 34 unique missions, each with their own list of objectives that you are graded on based on your performance, including an overall rank for the mission itself. Chances are you won’t finish many of these levels your first time through and if you do you probably won’t be happy or satisfied with the results.
The game promotes repeated gameplay, but how much or how often you play will be tempered by your patience. Emergency Fire Response is a great game in small doses. One mission a night will probably be all you can handle giving this game about a two-week or 20-30 hour completion time for the average gamer. You can also adjust the difficulty up or down if things get too tough or too easy.
Despite all my grumbling I really did enjoy Emergency Fire Response. What the game lacks in AI, balance, and vehicle control it more than makes up for with sheer originality, realistic fire, complex missions, and a level of authenticity only achieved through the collaboration with an international fire consultant.
You won’t find a more engaging squad-based strategy game for $20, especially one as exciting as this. While most of us left our dreams of becoming a firefighter back in grade school, DreamCatcher and Monte Cristo now give us a chance to relive those childhood fantasies taking on one of the world’s most dangerous professions in the virtual safety of a computer simulation.