FireStarter – PC – Review

First and foremost, many of
you may be thinking that a game with the title Firestarter may be an arson sim
or some kind of police / fire drama that pits you against some psychopath. Nope.
Also, let me say that this game has nothing to do with Stephen King or Drew
Barrymore, nor does it have anything to do with the industrial dance group
Prodigy. Firestarter is actually an FPS title by Hip Games (the same crew that
brought you kill.switch) that is actually somewhat of a tip of the hat to some
older first person shooter titles like Doom or Quake III Arena. With that being
said … lets break it down and see if it could be worth the twenty-dollar price
tag for ya.

The story to Firestarter
really doesn’t do much for the game or the plot as you will see while you’re
playing it, but just so you know the Firestarter is actually a virtual reality
machine that folks in the future hop into. Well, everything is not well, and it
turns out that the Firestarter gets infected by a demonic virus that kills the
people who play it, and it’s up to you to of course jump in and clean it out. In
standard FPS style, you can expect lots of big guns like the heavy machine guns,
bazookas, big shotguns, and even a nasty circular saw weapon to use if you
happen to run out of ammo and get into a bit of a bind. Also, controls are
pretty standard to the rest of the FPS world, with the W,A,S, and D keys
controlling movement and the spacebar to jump, and one thing that a lot of you
may like … no reloading.

There are a couple of unique
features to Firestarter that I really thought were pretty cool. First off, there
are six selectable characters up front versus the standard single character to
play with that you run into so frequently these days, and each character
actually has their own stats (speed, armor, and health) that will level up as
you progress through the stages in an “RPG light” kind of format, like an extra
10 points to one of the three or getting to select the option of a greater
versatility to help avoid falling damage, etc. Also, each character’s stats will
actually determine how they play and what kinds of weapons they will use, which
really does give you some room to find one that fits you the best. For example,
the Cyborg has a ton of armor which helps in getting hit, but due to the
increased protection he actually moves a lot slower and has less health than say
the Gunslinger, who may not have a bunch of armor but makes up for it in lots
more health and a greater speed. There is also a Marine and a Policeman to
select from which provide a good balance of all three for the beginner.

Another really cool feature
to Firestarter is the addition of some special abilities that the characters
will obtain as they progress through the stages as well which act similar to
magic abilities that you may have seen in other games. These are triggered by
picking up artifacts that will appear throughout the stages and activated by
using the F1 or F2 keys, and will do such things as Vampire which will suck
health from a targeted monster and give it to the player or Mind Controller
which takes over a targeted monster’s mind and causes him to go and attack other
monsters instead of you. Overall, there are about 11 of them in all, and they
can definitely help out if you get into a tight spot.

One thing that I thought
could have been done a little better in Firestarter is to give the player the
option of turning on or off a sort of “bullet time”, Matrix like slow down
feature that kicked on every time a monster got within a certain radius of you.
It is in there obviously to help out so that you can have a little more time to
react if you get charged by something (or a few somethings), but it also made
the action factor slow down and get a little too choppy for my tastes. This also
gets particularly annoying as you get into higher levels, since the intensity
and frequency of the monsters attacking you can cause the game to speed up and
slow down constantly.

Another issue I had which
was a big action breaker for the game is the fact that everytime a new monster
came out, a new weapon spawned, or an artifact popped up, the game has to stop,
go to the item or creature, and do a couple of camera spins around it to show
you what it is. Since it appears on the mini map to give you the exact location
of where to go and pick it up, I felt that this was kind of unnecessary and got
a little aggravating if I was in the middle of a good firefight or something
since it completely knocks you out of the mental zone and caused a couple of
orientation issues when I came back to where I was. As you progress, this “stop
and go action” tends to get more frequent as more varieties of monsters and
weapons will spawn in. 

Lastly, I have to say that I
wish the developers would have given the player a few different single player
options to choose from to make the game a little more customizable. In single
player mode, every stage is “kill the monsters that spawn in” and grab the
artifact that spawns up within a time period, and to make things a little more
frustrating the game has no save option or save points anywhere. If you complete
a stage, you get to go to the next one, but if you die or have to turn it off
somewhere in game, you have to go back and repeat the entire level over again.
This also includes missing an artifact pick up, since if the timer runs out and
you haven’t grabbed it yet its “game over” and you get to start all over again.
Having the ability to simply do a hunter style gameplay where you can focus on
killing waves of creatures only or having a challenge mode for timed artifact
pick ups or whatnot would have made it a better well rounded experience for
everyone in my opinion. Oh yeah … I didn’t include multiplayer options in this
paragraph due to the fact that there is no internet multiplayer gameplay (even
though it says that there is) and the only multiplayer option is LAN. Yep, this
may really hurt the replayability value for a lot of you out there … me
included.

Overall, Firestarter is a
neat concept and there were some neat things that were done in the game that
makes it a little unique from other games out, and some similarities to some
older arena based FPS titles that mixed in well enough to give us old school
fans something to have a little fun with. Ultimately, the game isn’t really that
long though, and even if the above-mentioned areas that I had some complaints
about aren’t enough to take away your fun factor with it, the fact that there
won’t be a lot of replayability (unless you have a LAN setup) sure might be. For
the $20 price tag it may provide a few hours of gaming fun to you FPS fans out
there, but there may not be much more to it than that so buy with caution. 

Gameplay: 7.3
The controls are
pretty standard for an FPS, and using special abilities unlocked by artifacts
are simply a press of the F1 or F2 keys. Also, the level up system was pretty
cool, and each of the six different characters really does feel unique from the
other five to give you a little personal option on who you want to play with.
The game boasts about it’s “tooth grinding action”, but this unfortunately is
hindered by constant camera cuts to new objects or items that spawn in, and the
slowdown when an enemy gets near tends to get annoying (especially at higher
levels when it gets pretty intense).

Graphics: 7.5
The level design
was good, but if it does get a little repetitive since all of them kind of
pretty much have an industrial quality which reminded me of some of the Q3
levels. The character models were also pretty neat, and monster design was cool,
even if the animations for some were choppy and a little stiff and the blood and
guts effects when they get killed was kind of corny and “red paint” cheap
looking.

Sound: 7.6
There is plenty
of gunfire and explosions as you can imagine in an arena style game like this,
and the music is a pretty neat style of gritty, fast paced dance / techno /
industrial tracks that sets the tone pretty well.

Difficulty: Medium
The difficulty
can range from 25% to about 300%, so there is plenty of room for you to set it
as you want to make it the best experience for you personally. The monster’s AI
and reflexes will get a lot sharper and more impressive the higher you go, and
they will spawn in a lot faster, so be prepared.

Concept: 7.4
I think that the
throwback to older arena based games was a great idea, and the RPG style light
elements that were added in (in addition to the personal character selection and
upgrading) were great ideas. Addition of internet multiplayer and some in game
options to keep the action going really would have pushed this one up a lot for
me personally though.

Multiplayer: N/A

It’s in there, but it is LAN
only so those of you with no LAN abilities are looking at a much shorter
gameplay experience, which was a shame.

Overall: 7.2
Overall, I
thought that the concept and ideas that went into Firestarter (along with a nice
$20.00 price tag) were pretty good, and I was really looking forward to playing
it. After the experience, I have to say that this would ultimately be a game for
those of you who have LAN abilities and friends who can hook in and play with
you. For those of you like me who only have internet multiplayer, the $20 could
be a good buy as long as you are OK with playing the same levels and such and
want to try out the different characters, but buy with caution.