Reminiscent of classics like Destruction Derby or Motorstorm, Fireburst is capable of delivering some high doses of fun and adrenaline when played with friends. Yes, it's very tricky to find opponents online, but the local multiplayer is all you gonna need when it comes to burning and beating your friends to a pulp.
Even though the game controls and physics feel awkward and make driving the cars harder than it should, the different powers you have access to and the risk/reward factor in using them make your multiplayer sessions truly chaotic, seeing your friend risk too much and explode just before the finish line allowing you to easily take the first place and win the race is something amazing. Crazy and random, this is how truly local multiplayer games should be designed.
Unfortunately if you remove the friend factor what remains is pretty mediocre.
While the game flaws help make the anarchic multiplayer fun and chaotic, they certainly don't help the single-player. For starters the vehicles just feel too floaty, it's as if they weight absolutely nothing. This makes controlling them extremely hard, especially when you are trying to hit or dodge the many barrels spread throughout the tracks. While it's something you can get used to, it never feels truly rewarding as even with pitch-perfect driving you can sometimes get screwed by the erratic game physics.
The risk/reward factor talked about earlier rests on the premise of using fire to boost your car to ludicrous speeds. Problem is that using this boost makes your vehicle overheat, abuse it and kaboom! You get to watch your beautiful car turn into a nice ball of fire. Here is where the more experienced players will get some advantage over their opponents, water sources like barrels or big puddles of water allow you to cool down your car a lot faster, so memorizing the tracks and the locations of some of the water sources is key to using your super powers as much as possible.
Another problem with the single-player is the lack of a career mode. Having the chance to compete against all the quirky characters that Fireburst throws at you in a mode where you could upgrade your car, buy new vehicles and maybe even level up to unlock new events would be awesome. Other arcade racers like Death Rally, Flatout or Super Hang On have done this before and it has always proven to be the most satisfying and time sinking mode in each of those games.
The way the game is structured just feels like a waste of the hard work the developers put into creating such unique characters.
Visually Fireburst looks interesting and competent, the Unreal Engine does the job of rendering the big and expansive tracks pretty nicely allowing you to play at a constant frame rate most of the time. It's not perfect, but for an arcade game it's certainly above average.
The soundtrack is what you would expect from this sort of racing game, punk rock and some heavy metal constitute most of the playlist, it has enough quality to make me worry about looking those artists up on the internet.
Fireburst had real potential, unfortunately the lack of any time-sinking single-player mode cripples the game and might actually keep some players from buying it. Still, for those of you who love to bring your friends over and play some split screen multiplayer like in the good old days, Fireburst might be just what you are looking for.
Year of Release: 2013
Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Developer: exDream
Publisher: indiePub
6 out of 10
NRLB would like to thank indiePub for providing a review copy of the game
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