Who dares to proclaim that he has never dreamed about being a fire-fighter when they where a kid? Ok, you can lower your hands now. But it’s a fact that the firemen, even more than in the old days, are being looked upon as real heroes. Over at Monte Cristo they noticed this and placed their deeds of courage in a game, so that the gamer can calmly replay them behind his PC. This time no acts of terrorism, but storms, accidents and nuclear power plants on the verge of exploding. Fire me up baby!

First, let’s give a short overview of the situation: You are the chief of the 615[sup]th[/sup] fire station. Your station holds a number of fire-fighters to put out the fire, ranging form regular firemen to technical officers and “high risk” specialists. A fire team without sirens is like fire without smoke, so there are a number of vehicles. Thankfully they can do a lot more than produce sound. ;) Your men are fearless, and the same is expected from you! You’ll have to keep a cool head during a forest fire, an armed robbery and, as mentioned earlier, a nuclear disaster-in-the-making.

The game plays as an RTS without the resource management. At the start of the mission, you get a number of units, and during the mission, reinforcements arrive. The highest number of units you’ll have to command at the same time never exceeds 10, but I can assure you, this is more than enough. The controlling of your units is the same as in most RTS’es: a left click selects a unit, and a right click makes them do something. Can it get any simpler?

The vehicles have another, more original, way of moving. You select the vehicle, and then while pressing the right mouse button, you drag a green arrow to where you want the vehicle to go. But the vehicle won’t drive around obstacles; you’ll have to direct it around. Best way of explaining this is imagining a cord between you and the vehicle. You drag the vehicle using the cord, and the further you drag your mouse away, the harder it will drive. This may seem a little complicated, but after a few tries, you’ll be directing them around like you’ve never done anything else in your life! Personally I like this way of moving them, because it requires more involvement from the player.

The first thing to catch the eye when I started to play the game is that the game has some fine graphics! The game is completely in 3D (Oh my god, that's completely new to me! ;)) and the units and surroundings are nicely detailed. You can rotate and zoom while everything keeps looking nice. Only the vehicles look like they are a box with some photos taped on, but since you’ll spend most of your time in buildings with your men, this isn’t a big loss. Also, your arch nemesis, the fire, is depicted realistically. When you let your attention fall for a few seconds, the fire will have spread and given some of the surroundings a nice black colour. The fire is made up of a number of concentric circles which you’ll have to put out one by one. Each circle has a bar that rises slowly: if filled, the fire will spread, if lowered by your firemen, it will faint, and eventually go out. But as said before, the fire is completely dynamic, so keep your eyes open at all times!

Your units will be troubled by the smoke and will eventually fall without oxygen. This doesn’t mean they will faint, it means they won’t be able to put out anymore fires. Quick refill is the way to go! The game also has an overview of all units, where you can switch the units skins to those of other countries. Not much to say about this option, since it doesn’t chance anything than the look of the units.

The sound is an area where the game starts to fail. During the first mission (the tutorial) I didn’t hear anything for during the first missions. I thought there was something wrong with my configuration, but after I selected the first unit he responded with a “Yes sir”. There is no music (except for the menu) and the number of other sounds is very low. The sounds that are in the game however are ok.

The website states that there are 34 missions in the game, spread over 10 scenarios. I can tell you this is much exaggurated! These missions are usually: “Put out that fire” and “Rescue everyone in the building”. A more accurate description is just saying the game has 10 missions (including the training), which isn’t a lot, if you know that the most complicate mission takes about an hour.

The missions are divided into +-3 separate pieces, with separate objectives (hence 34 ‘missions’). You can’t advance to the next part if you didn’t complete the previous objective. An example: I was putting out the fires in a gas station, when I noticed the adjacent building was burning inside. When I ordered one of my men to go and take a look, he told me it was not priority (He would have been fired immediately, but sadly that’s not an option in the game :)). Luckily this was one of the few examples where it’s so noticeable, but it’s a shame these are all scripted. If you play a mission and you have put out a fire, and afterwards rescued all the people in danger, suddenly a tractor catches fire! The first time you’ll have to be really quick to stop it from spreading, but when you play a second time, you can anticipate this, because the tractor will never catch fire unless you rescue all the victims. Just place some firemen around it before your rescue your last victim and it will be a lot easier! Clearly this makes missions replay value very low.

So, this game is a short, but explosive cocktail! The game has a great gameplay and has really surprised me. To be honest, my expectations weren’t that high when I started this game, but now I’m glad to have played it. The best game we can compare it to is “Emergency”. If it would have had more missions, this would have been a hit, but now it sinks away amid other big games. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll probably be putting out fires for some days, but after that, there isn’t much left. The only thing you can do is increase your score, which might occupy you for some time, but not infinite. If you’re still unsure, try the demo, you won’t regret it!