Emergency Fire Response

This game is very similar to real-time strategy games such as the Age of Empires series, in that you have to direct individual members of your team to certain objectives: rescue this person, put out that fire, preserve this evidence, all within a certain time frame: fires spread if you don't tend to them right away, evidence as to the cause of the blaze gets destroyed, and if people don't get saved in time, they will die.

EFR is an extremely tense and exciting game: if you enjoy the challenge of puzzling out clues (why did the fire start: was it intentional or an accident?) while trying to avoid danger to your people (fire, explosions, smoke, and flashover, to name a few) and put out a fire in the correct manner all at the same time, this game is for you!

EFR starts out with the offer of a tutorial: this is highly recommended, as the game interface is mostly pictures, and tends not to be very intuitive. During the tutorial, you learn how to drive the vehicles, what kinds of specialists you have available and how to utilize them, how to rescue people, how to "recharge" your people's equipment, and how to put out fires. Then, you are on your own. Reading the Tactical Strategies manual in the accompanying book is a very, very good idea. This shows you how you need to plan your strategy for each of the 34 different missions included in the game.

The first mission is an arson. You need to put out the fire, rescue a few people, and preserve evidence, all within a certain amount of time. If you take too much time, things explode! There are several different missions within each of 10 levels of proficiency; you must get a certain score to advance levels. I personally found that I became too engrossed in watching how the fire progressed to do very well. The semi-trucks blew up beautifully.

This brings us to the look of the game. EFR is very detailed as to buildings, equipment, and flames. Especially flames. Surprisingly, putting all graphic selections on the highest settings did not bog down my mid-range computer with a 64 mb NVIDIA graphic card. The game engine appears to be very stable, with no errors reported whenever I played the game. One complaint I have is that the mechanism for vehicle movement takes away from the "suspension of disbelief": you select the vehicle, hold down the right mouse button, and pretty much drag the vehicle to where you want it. They don't move under their own power, unlike the people. A minor complaint, really, considering the complexity and richness of the rest of the game. This one will engross you for hours!

The game retails for $19.99, which is extremely reasonable for any game of this complexity and richness. There are several sites that are hosting a download of a demo version (120 mb file, whew!) of this game, all listed on the main page of this site.

PROS:
· Very stable game, no known problems, no patches needed
· Low- to mid-range system requirements: (Win 98/ME/2K/XP, 500 mHz or higher, 128 mb RAM, 32 mb graphic card, sound card, 1.5 GB disk space)
· Engaging, not repetitive or easily mastered
· Graphics are well-balanced: well rendered, yet not too complex

CONS:
· Very picky game: you must make sure you achieve all objectives in game to advance.
· Not for the casual "pick it up and play it" gamer. If you don't understand what to use and where to use it, you won't be able to advance in the game.
· Lots of micromanaging of your resources. You need to be everywhere at once, making sure all of your people are doing something, otherwise, when they finish their task(s), they just sit there until you give them a different task. You also need to make sure your vehicles and peoples' equipment is charged with water, oxygen, etc., otherwise they don't work.

For further information, go to http://www.dreamcatchergames.com/dci/emergency/index.html.