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Real Heroes: Firefighter HD<\/strong> is a game that should not be good. It is a first-person shooter based around fighting fires instead of gunning down hordes of communists, it has a title that makes it sound like a German simulator game, and my 7-year-old nephew didn\u2019t like it when I made him have a go.<\/p>\nSo why is it that I almost completed the game in one marathon session the first time I played it and haven\u2019t stopped raving about it since? Can Real Heroes: Firefighter HD live up to the good name of the real-life heroes it portrays, spit in the face of danger and turn out to be an actually<\/em> decent game? Or will it be relegated to the dingy back room of the Xbox Store, where you\u2019ll have to avoid suspicious looking men in long coats browsing copies of Road Maintenance Simulator to find it second-hand for 99p in a bargain bin? Do bargain bins even exist anymore? Read on for answers to most of these questions.<\/p>\n\n
If you weren\u2019t already aware, the HD <\/em>part of Real Heroes: Firefighter HD\u2019s title may have clued you in that this is a remaster of an older game. Launching on the Wii in 2012 as one of the console\u2019s few first-person shooters, Real Heroes: Firefighter bears a few hallmarks of its original console; the shovelware-y sounding name, the family-friendly approach to first-person shooting, and the fact that it becomes apparent early in the tutorial that the game was intended for motion controls.<\/p>\nAbsolutely none of this gets in the way of the fun, though, as from minute one you are sent into a fire training building with an axe and an extinguisher and shown the ropes. You\u2019ll be doing everything you\u2019d expect a firefighter to do, from chopping down doors and carrying unconscious people to safety, to prying car doors off with a hydraulic-spreader and, of course, putting out numerous fires.<\/p>\n
Every single facet of the firefighting experience is fully interactive; using the hydraulic spreader for example requires the player to position the tool, open the jaws to pry the door open a bit, close them, reposition the tool and repeat until the job is done. Far from being tedious or annoying, every unique gameplay element is intuitive and well-done, turning manual labour into joy, rather than a chore. The fact that your character\u2019s actions are accompanied by some deeply satisfying sound effects helps the process along, and thanks to a decent level of realism, by the time the training mission is complete you\u2019ll probably be feeling pretty confident that you\u2019ll fly your workplace\u2019s mandatory fire safety training next time it needs renewing.<\/p>\n
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Real Heroes: Firefighter HD feels a little bit like watching that part in Friday the 13th<\/sup> Part 3 where the guy is yo-yoing at the camera to show off the 3D effects, to the amazement of cinemagoers everywhere. You can tell the game was intended to be played with motion controls \u2013 everything about it feels like it was designed that way \u2013 but despite losing a bit of interactivity from being played with a normal controller, it controls just fine and is still a blast to play.<\/p>\nThe game plays like any other FPS, really, you aim with the right stick and fire with the right trigger, your pistol is a fire extinguisher and your assault rifle a hose, there are even on-rails turret sections (am I the only person that loves these?); the difference here is that the enemies are fires and pieces of fallen timber, rather than demons or North Koreans. It is quite refreshing to play something this wholesome; with all of the doom and gloom around lately, there\u2019s a charm to playing a video game that involves doing good deeds instead of stealing cars and committing casual genocide.<\/p>\n
The fire physics will undoubtedly not amaze anybody who has played Far Cry 2 or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in the last ten years, but it\u2019s still nice to have a dynamic enemy that can spread quickly around the level, blocking off escape routes and potentially killing you if you take your eye off it for too long. It keeps you on your toes and can provide a real challenge when the game takes your hose away and leaves you with a piddly extinguisher.<\/p>\n
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There is absolutely no shame in being compared to simulator games \u2013 they have become something of an art form, as anybody who has spent a few hours playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 can tell you. There\u2019s great pleasure to be found in coming home from work and pretending to do someone else\u2019s job for a few hours. I can\u2019t explain it, but the various Farming Simulator<\/strong> games I\u2019ve managed to complete the entire, rather grindy achievement lists for, speak for themselves.<\/p>\nThat said, Real Heroes: Firefighter HD really should not be compared to them. The title and the box art don\u2019t do nearly enough to sell this game, as once you\u2019re out of the tutorial mission and into the game proper, what begins as a fairly standard Fireman Sim (clever pun count: 1) quickly shows itself to be a product of its time. This is a game from when it wasn\u2019t unusual to have dragons in a semi-realistic firefighting game, or to be expected to stop what you\u2019re doing mid-emergency to rescue a cage full of chinchillas, or a bunch of film reels. The game provides some serious firefighting action, but with a dose of levity that it might have died without.<\/p>\n
It has just the right amount of variety, too; every time you feel like you\u2019re getting a little bit bored with spraying fires with your hose, the developers throw a new tool or a new challenge at you, there\u2019s collectibles to be found that reveal the cause of each fire, and for better or worse, Real Heroes: Firefighter HD is quite short. It is definitely a game that could have outstayed its welcome, so I would class this as a plus, however there\u2019s not a lot to revisit the game for once it\u2019s done, besides finishing up the collectibles or completing it again on a harder difficulty.<\/p>\n
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Real Heroes: Firefighter HD is certainly a product of its time. The cel-shaded graphics, combined with the resolution bump of this HD remaster, certainly help to keep it looking more timeless than other games of its era, and a cast of voice actors from TV shows like The Shield and Buffy the Vampire Slayer do a great job of keeping things entertaining. However, the fire and water effects (arguably two of the more important aspects of the game\u2019s visuals) look unimpressive by today\u2019s standards, highlighting the fact that beyond a resolution and framerate increase, not a lot has been done to make this remaster feel like a game released in 2022.<\/p>\n
Real Heroes: Firefighter HD will not appeal to everyone, but it\u2019s unique and actually quite bold in its vision, managing to make a highly engaging and enjoyable game out of a concept that could have been a complete dud.<\/p>\n
If you want to simplify this whole review down into one sentence I\u2019d say it\u2019s not quite as good as Burning Rangers but better than Rosco McQueen.<\/p>\n
Dance into the fire!<\/p>\n
Real Heroes: Firefighter HD is downloadable from the <\/em>Xbox Store<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n
Real Heroes: Firefighter HD is a game that should not be good. It is a first-person shooter based around fighting fires instead of gunning down hordes of communists, it has a title that makes it sound like a German simulator game, and my 7-year-old nephew didn\u2019t like it when I made him have a go.\u00a0 So why is it that I almost completed the game in one marathon session the first time I played it and haven\u2019t stopped raving about it since? Can Real Heroes: Firefighter HD live up to the good name of the real-life heroes it portrays, spit\u2026<\/p>\n
Real Heroes: Firefighter HD Review<\/p>\n
Real Heroes: Firefighter HD Review<\/p>\n
2022-04-24<\/p>\n
Oliver Swinswood<\/strong><\/p>\n
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