Artur Tabiszewski, what, in the name of all that is combustible, were you thinking? As you are listed in the credits as Fire Commander’s designer, producer, and lead programmer, I’m guessing you are the person who made the bewildering decision to leave fire hoses out of this 2022 firefighting RTS.
The only place you’ll see a snaking water conduit in Fire Commander (£5 on Steam at present) is on the splash screen. If hoses were simply invisible this emission omission wouldn’t be a massive problem. Unfortunately, the Varsovian gamewrights haven’t simply failed to depict a firefighting fundamental, they’ve failed to simulate it. The units in FC are, for all intents and purposes, armed with giant replenishable fire extinguishers and must run back to a tanker truck periodically to refill them!
Having put a big fat fib at the heart of their game, daft Atomic Wolf then made dealing with the consequences of that fib one of the core elements in their campaign. A couple of hours into the mission sequence, I’ve run into a scenario I can’t win because the ‘extinguishers’ carried by my team are too dinky and deliver water too slowly.
Three frustrating failures on the trot is the game’s way of telling me I need to go back and replay earlier missions in order to grind the XP necessary to upgrade my personnel’s extinguishing efficiency and water use stats. Repeating familiar micromanagement-heavy, puzzle-like outings in order to unlock unfamiliar micromanagement-heavy, puzzle-like outings? Count me out.
Equipped with hoses and a solid skirmish generator, good-looking FC’s sojourn on the THC hard drive would definitely have been longer than three hours. Compared to yesterday’s auditioner, it handles blaze growth sensibly. Yes, all the furniture in the last office fire I attended appeared to be manufactured from blue spruce, and backdrafts and wind don’t seem to be simmed, but in Fire Commander I can at least look at a level and think “If I don’t deal with that fiery tentacle sharpish, in a couple of minutes time, the fire will have spread to that building, vehicle, or propane tank”.