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> Results: Wildfire
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by Bernie Dy
May 10, 2005
Remember, only you can prevent forest fires. Wildfire doesn't let your kid prevent them, but it does let them fight the blaze.
Reviewed for PC.
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When Wildfire showed up for review I wasn't exactly sure about what to expect. Would it be one of the legions of cheesy first-person shooter wannabes that I see all the time at retail shops? It surprised me. It was different. Not completely different, but different in a good way.
At heart, Wildfire is a traditional real-time strategy game (RTS), but unlike the usual RTS where players command soldiers to run around a battlefield and shoot, players here direct firefighters to stop wilderness fires. The game's conventions will be quite familiar to most RTS veterans. There's no harvesting, but in each scenario the player has a limited amount of funding to pay for the generation of unit types such as firefighting crews and vehicles. Players select a unit in the field by clicking on it or by ﾑlassoing' it with the mouse, then click a destination or command button to tell the unit what to do.
The game starts with simple tutorial missions and then deals out more complicated challenges as it also makes available new equipment and vehicles for use. The array of tools available to fight fires starts with the basic firefighter armed with courage and a shovel, but grows to encompass an arsenal of bulldozers, fire trucks, fire jumpers (bold crews that parachute into a danger zone), and aircraft that drop water or other extinguishing chemicals from above. The graphics look pretty good for a basic RTS, and if they don't capture anyone's desire for cutting edge detail, they also don't require major PC hardware to see.
There are the usual indications this is a budget title. The mature RTS interface conventions for grouping and commanding units and for managing the camera view, well established in other genre standouts, are more cumbersome here. The missions also tend to feel the same as you play them, with only the weather and the wind providing major random factors to keep the fire fighting interesting. It's still good enough to earn a competent score.
Wildfire is a good alternative to conflict-based RTS games. Though most RTS gamers would probably find it hard to leave the war-based RTS games behind, Wildfire is challenging enough to keep adults interested. It's also a non-violent way to teach children about the danger of fires and also about some of the interesting physics involved in fighting them. Digging fire breaks, cutting trees, and dropping airborne water or jump crews are all real-life measures used to combat flames. Along the way, the game also teaches about the importance of planning and managing limited resources, skills useful for anyone. The historical information on Smokey Bear is a nice extra.
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