Firefighting Simulator: Ignite

After playing this game for a few hours, I would like to see more missions, a variety of technical rescue missions would be fantastic. Auto extrication, rope rescues, etc. Also I would like to see more apparatus, and customization of vehicles. Maybe a Cheif Car, mobile command, Tiller Truck or USAR apparatus. Another thing is the AI, typically on a fire scene crews stay together or at least with one other person. Having the AI go off and complete tasks on their own just was a bit strange. I understand no simulator game is going to be totally 100% accurate but this game feels like you’re doing one thing, putting out fires. And sure it’s a firefighter simulator. But firefighters do a lot more than just put out fires.

It's not a simulator, even if the word is in the title. I think the game should be thought of in this way: if you're someone that likes to buff fires, this game is for you. Playing the game is like going one step beyond watching fire response videos on YouTube and if that's what you want, you should probably get the game ON SALE. TLDR: not a realistic firefighting game, but it's fun enough. If I had to compare this game to another, I'd say it's just Powerwashing Simulator with worse water physics and the dirt grows. If you can accept this game for what it is, an arcade firefighting game, I think you'll have fun. For instance, many people discuss the poor AI in their reviews. The shortcomings of the AI are easier to accept if you don't treat this as practice for the real thing and more like a "as close as I'm going to get to a modern firefighting game" game. The AI can be upsetting and there's no way to establish strategy or tactics, outside of a few vague commands: search and rescue, extinguish fire, and extinguish fire with the monitor (in the game's case, it means spraying water from the aerial). I've found it makes the most sense to set the AI to search and rescue at the start of the mission and then, usually, leave them to their own devices. Don't go into this expecting to send teams in to achieve certain goals. As far as I can tell, there is no way to do this. To that end, it's also worth mentioning that you're only given three AI teammates... if a three-story shopping mall is on fire, it's up to you and three others to manage all of the tasks that would be involved with such a huge operation. There's no way to pre-plan a job or to check where utilities are. Going back to the discussion on why this is strictly arcade firefighting and not sim, it's important to manage the lack of realistically developed mechanics. I don't want to say they're underdeveloped mechanics because they're mostly good enough to the uninformed player. Though, it's easy to make the argument that the mechanics are underdeveloped when you consider the game's price and the fact it has "simulator" in the title. Regardless, I think it's important for folks to know that you shouldn't go into this expecting the firefighting to be even a little realistic. There is no spraying the ceiling to cool things down or banking water streams for indirect attacks or choosing whether you should fog it out or use a straight stream. It's literally just point and click. Anything you don't point at directly will not be extinguished. So, if you wanted to shoot water at the ceiling to create a water sprinkler effect to extinguish water is on the floor beneath it, you won't actually achieve anything other than making the ceiling a slightly darker color. Worse yet, there's very little feedback to putting water on the fire. A lot of the time, you'll use way more water than you needed to because the way the fire fades away is ambiguous and usually not indicative that the fire is going out. Sometimes you get steam, but I think I usually don't - I really only notice steam when I'm using the fog nozzle. Other than that, once you've put enough water on the fire, it just gradually fades away. It's funny because, if you tell the AI to extinguish a hot spot, you can actually see how little water it takes to put something out because they'll spray it for a fraction of a second robotically then walk away, meanwhile, it still looks like it's burning up like crazy. Eventually, the animation will catch up and you'll see the fire wash away like an ocean wave, but it's just funny to see that disconnect. To finish up the topic of water, I'll talk about water supply and advancing attack lines. For most of the fires in the game, you probably don't even need to think about hooking up to a hydrant. The game doesn't really understand just how much water is coming out of the hose when you're flowing. As far as I can tell, you're using a 2.5" hose, usually all four people flowing water for about six minutes, and it'll tell you you used about 1,000ga of water. I'm making the example up but you'll see when you play that the stat for water used tends to be a lot lower than you'd expect. Especially when you've got the monitor flowing. With regard to advancing line, it's always just gonna be one person raw-dogging a 2.5" with a combination nozzle and the line just traces behind you as you walk. If you only walk five feet, it's a five foot length of hose. If you walk down the road a mile and back, it's a two mile length of hose. There is no need to think about stamina or up time, you just walk wherever you want with it and there's no issues. Another funny mechanic is the unlockable "backdraft" mechanic. The game's version of backdraft has nothing to do with managing flow path, rather, it's a clearly communicated set piece. Seemingly randomly placed, there will be doors that have black smoke puffing out the bottom of them. When you go to open the door, instead of the door opening, a loud sound will play for a few seconds and then the door explodes violently. We're talking TNT on a Western turn-of-the-century bank vault door type of explosion. It's very funny. It's like watching a teammate in Ready Or Not open a booby-trapped door and getting ragdoll'd. On the topic of flow path, it seems like there might be some game system that might spawn a fire in a room randomly if you open a door to said room and walk away. Like, if you search a bedroom and open its closet but don't shut the door then come back later, it's not uncommon for there to be a random fire in the smaller attached room even though the fire never made it to that side of the house. It's strange, but you just roll your eyes and tell your teammate to put it out. You can't carry more than one tool at a time. You can't even marry a set of irons, so it's quite often that you'll have to stop what you're doing to go to the truck. Honestly, the game is overly picky about how you use tools. Like you can't use a halligan to bust a window, only an axe or a stream of water. Also, the ladders magically appear whenever you get to an interactable location. No carrying them or anything fancy, just whipping out sometimes a 35ft ladder out of nowhere and slapping it against the building like it's a wooden pallet. The ladders can catch fire but it doesn't damage them. I'll touch on infinite fire/environmental hazards. If you come across a call with a grease fire, which is pretty much every single residential fire in the game for some reason, you gotta put it out with an extinguisher or it'll never go out. Same with flammable liquids, which need foam or sometimes an extinguisher when the game is feeling cute. And lord help you if it's a grease fire that spilled a little bit and now there's a flammable liquid on the ground. It is so annoying to come across these because you always have to stop what you're doing to go back to the truck to either switch to foam or grab an extinguisher. SOMETIMES, yes, there is an extinguisher nearby but not always. Even if an hour passes, the fires will not burn themselves out, despite a grease fire usually burning up its fuel within five minutes. And you should just start weeping if there's anything to do with a gas pipe or utility box. These will also create fire infinitely, but instead of the source being extinguishable, you instead need to scour the map for the appropriate utility shut off. They're never somewhere that makes sense. Like I was doing a mission for a huge heavy-duty diesel repair shop and the freaking gas shutoff was on the roof WHICH WAS ONLY ACCESSIBLE BY USING THE AERIAL. I've only done a single mission where I was able to shut off power to the structure by accessing an outside panel so get ready for a scavenger hunt. I could probably say more but you get the point. It's a fun game with unrealistic mechanics. If you go in wanting to have some light fire action, the game is good on a steep discount.