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.