Hanging up my axe, hose, and hydrant spanner at the end of Firefighting Week proved harder than I’d anticipated. Not only am I still exploring new (to me) extinguish-em-ups, battling all those virtual conflagrations seems to have altered my attitude to fire safety. On Sunday I finally got around to replacing a household smoke alarm that’s been broken for longer than I care to admit.
Wildland: Initial Attack was a mere sixty minutes into its audition when THC’s giant shepherd’s crook hauled it off stage. Available only in free playtest form at present, Chris Wingler’s project aspires to do for wildfires what the Battlefield series does for warfare.
Greeted by a tempting array of winged and wheeled firefighting appliances and the genre’s most spectacular smoke column, my hopes were high at first. It took an hour of accident-prone aviation, lonely/insipid chainsawing, and interface confusion to fully waterlog that early optimism.
Things might well have been different if the playtest had come with a proper tutorial… if I’d found myself toiling alongside industrious bots and fellow playtesters… if firetrucks had been more than glorified taxis.
Judging by the fact that there’s a work-in-progress multiplayer FPS lurking within the playtest build, I may not be the only one who’s lost interest in Wildland: Initial Attack.
Real Heroes: Firefighter HD is much easier to recommend than Wildland.
Assuming Joe Purchaser realises he’s buying something closer in feel and structure to an FPS than a sim, and doesn’t expect too much operational freedom, he shouldn’t end up disappointed with this £6 (for the next few hours, at least) offering.
Tightly plotted (yet time limit free) missions awash with action and studded with well hewn banter, partially explain the profusion of blue thumbs on Steam and gold stars on GOG.
The invisible hoses are unfortunate and the fire effects mediocre, but when you’re hosing an escape corridor for a trapped colleague, or running for cover as a warehouse roof comes crashing down, the shorthand and shortcomings probably won’t seem all that important.
And, thankfully, it’s not wall-to-wall blaze quenching in Real Heroes. Along with a fair bit of axe swinging, door prising, crate shoving, and victim carrying, there’s a healthy dash of exploration and puzzle solving too.
Flashing Lights, a regularly updated 2023 sim that lets you impersonate police officers and paramedics as well as firefighters, surprised me yesterday evening by breaking one of the genre’s weirder unwritten rules.
I was dealing with a randomly generated house fire when I somehow managed to set myself ablaze! Suitably alarmed, after trying and failing to spray myself with my own hose, I dashed outside where, thankfully, my flaming togs quickly went out.
If it wasn’t for relatively weak AI, FL would be up there with the genre’s best. The GTA-style island on which you serve is large and lively, the random job generator capable and cat-friendly, the first-aid side fascinating, and the hose mechanics involved without being onerous.
What a pity developer Nils Jakrins hasn’t got around to providing solo players with able silicon squadmates yet. You can summon additional fire appliances to challenging fires, but the personnel that spill from them on arrival only seem willing/able to wield extinguishers.
* During my first RTA shout, amongst other things, I applied a neck brace and performed CPR.
“During my first RTA shout, amongst other things, I applied a neck brace and performed CPR.”
Hopefully in-game!
But I wanted to respond to this: “trying and failing to spray myself with my own hose”. This is straightforward, factual and in context very logical.
It’s also made me giggle.