Real Heroes: Firefighter – Review

The Switch paved the way for many indie developers to release their projects on Nintendo’s latest platform. While the Wii U already had its fair share of digital indie releases, it seemed there was at least a little bit of quality control before games reached the store. Sadly, when it comes to the Switch’s eShop, it seems that everyone can drop their game online and sell it to the consumer. We now dive into Real Heroes: Firefighter, which is one of those games that was seemingly thrown on the store without any QC. As this game was originally a Wii release, we reckon the publisher wants to rake in some extra cash by putting out an already developed game on a popular platform. The game was afterwards released on Steam, but the store has no visible trace of the game anymore, which speaks volumes.

Story

You are a new recruit in the Los Angeles fire department and you’ll be thrown into the game without any proper introduction, safe for an excruciatingly bland and boring tutorial level. The game does have some dialogues, but they are all banter between fellow firemen or the orders you get during a mission. We reckon this is yet another attempt at a semi-simulation experience that’s all about the experience, rather than a proper story. Do we miss a story in this game? Not really.

Graphics

Real Heroes: Firefighter uses cel-shading to cover up its extremely shitty graphics. The game looks as if it belongs on a PlayStation 2, rather than our current generation of consoles. More than often, when looking at the backdrop, the developers didn’t even create a background and they just have a children’s drawing in place. Objects move through walls and other items, and items that you shatter have worse animations than they did on the first generation of 3D consoles. The fire animations look too lifelike compared to the rest of the game, but at the same time, they look very crappy as well, as they seem to be spread around the levels in a Minecraft-esque way. We learned that this game was originally developed back in 2012 for the Wii. The graphical prowess seems to go hand in hand with the fun, but dated console. Even though the MythBusters proved they could polish a turd, this one would need a whole lot of love and polishing to make it look like something presentable.

Sound

There is no background music when playing the game, which is a sensible and understandable choice for a game such as this. The voice acting is actually quite decent and the sound effects suffice for what you’re doing. We can’t say anything too bad about the sound design, which is seemingly the only part of the game that received a proper amount of love.

Gameplay

Real Heroes: Firefighter is a first-person simulation game that shows us the hardships of being a professional firefighter. You’ll go from one mission to another, extinguishing fires, saving civilians, disabling harmful structures and so on. Overall the game does focus on the right aspects, but the actual gameplay is slow, boring and dreadful. This game tries to be a simulator experience but for some reason, and we honestly don’t know why, the final mission will throw you in the path of a dragon. This destroys the entire concept of the game, namely presenting you with a lifelike experience of firefighters. This actually makes a mockery of the game and proves it’s total rubbish.

During the levels you’ll have to handle different tools, such as an axe to break doors, a prying tool to open sturdier doors, a water hose for big fires, an extinguisher when you have no hose nearby and even a saw and a hydraulic spreader to free civilians who are stuck in their vehicles. As mentioned before, the game does have a proper focus on things that matter or that make the experience somewhat realistic, but the gameplay should have been remade from the ground up. Everything moves so slowly and looks so poorly finished that you will get bothered mere moments into the game. You’ll also notice that the physics in this game are bonkers.

Conclusion

Real Heroes: Firefighter might be setting consoles ablaze back in 2012, it’s only setting fire to your good mood in 2019. The game does have a proper focus on depicting the tasks of a firefighter, but the execution is extremely poor for a game in this day and age. The game looks like a regurgitated mess you’d get on your plate when you allow your dog to cook, making it clear that this is just an attempt of the publisher to earn a few extra bucks on this hot mess. If you’re looking for a great experience, dust off your Wii and find a copy of the original game, as a console with the processing power of a PlayStation 2 could be forgiven to run garbage such as this.

Ibuki

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Aspiring ninja.

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