Fire Fighter Review

Now and then, a game comes along that succeeds in boring the hell out of me. Fire Fighter is one of the most useless and boring titles I’ve ever come across. It’s a real shame because it could have been a lot of fun and it doesn’t look or sound half bad at first. But, a few seconds later, you don’t even feel like moving to turn it off because your respiration has slowed to the point of near-death. I’m even so bored with this damn game I hardly feel like putting the energy into reviewing it, but move forward I must.

Fire Fighter actually has some decent graphics. The building is designed fine and the way the fire slowly creeps up the windows is pretty cool. The person trapped inside is convincing, as are the movements of your fireman and the truck he jumps from. I have to say this is probably the game’s strongest category, even for an Atari 2600 game they pulled off some detail.

The sound, however, isn’t necessarily a strong point for Fire Fighter. Your fireman’s movement is the typical step effect from many Atari games, but I was really bummed out by the flames. They took the classic ‘aircraft’ sound found in a variety of other titles and tried to pawn it off as fire crackling. Nice try. Doesn’t even sound close. And you’d think they would have added a funny bleep for a scream of the person trapped in the building or sound for your fire hose, but no, what I said is what you get. There is a pathetic little track when you get the trapped worker out, but it lasts about half a second and isn’t anything worth noting anyway. Could have done better here, at least with the fire.

Fire Fighter’s worst point is the gameplay. The graphics are fine, the sound could have been better, but the gameplay is worthless. You have to extinguish the fire in each building and then move the ladder to whatever level the person inside is running on, move your fireman up and wait. Once they get to you the round ends. It’s actually a pretty cool idea. The controls are a bit odd, but once you figure out how to move the ladder they’re easy to master. What sucks, though, is that Fire Fighter never goes much of anywhere. You don’t get any points and each game is just timed until you get the person to safety. You don’t lose anything if you just sit there, your time just keeps running. Yep, lots of fun when you consider it never gets more challenging. I almost wonder if this was supposed to be marketed to really, really, young, like 2-year-old children it’s so pathetically easy. I need some points to collect or a certain score to achieve. Heck, at least a little danger wouldn’t hurt, you can let the flames go up and nothing even happens, they go out on their own. What a stupid, boring title. Here, watch for yourself, but have a pillow handy so you don’t knock your head on the table after you collapse into apathetic slumber:

I’m going to give Fire Fighter a few points for creativity, however. This is a great idea for a game, it’s just not well designed. What could be more perfect than making a game out of a fireman saving someone from a burning building? Too bad they didn’t work harder on the game itself after they figured out the concept.

As you can assume, Fire Fighter has as much replay value as standing in front of a train. I’d never play this game again and I can’t even imagine it being the remotest bit interesting with someone else you can compete against to ‘get the best time’ as the manual suggests you do. It’s pretty short too, most players can easily finish even the larger buildings in about thirty-eight seconds. Trust me, that’s seriously as long as you’ll be willing to play.

Fire Fighter is lame, but it serves as a great example of an excellent idea that was improperly constructed. Imagic had a number of interesting titles for the Atari 2600, so this is definitely an abscess under the armpit of their reputation. It could have ended up being a very enjoyable game had they upped the difficultly and added scoring. As it stands, it’s just too boring to want to do more than throw it in the garbage. I hardly had the strength after I played it to do so, I swear my melatonin levels shot through the roof after a few seconds of it. Don’t even bother, if you’re looking for a decent fireman-type game for the system, go with Towering Inferno.