Firestarter

[Ross Scott]

Genre: Action

Year released: 2004

Ross's rating: Unrated

Link to game:

https://af.gog.com/game/firestarter

Free to play: No

GaaS: No

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[HACKFRAUD]

GSC's worst game.

[Blindfolded]

This game honestly feels like it was made in another dimension. A dimension where your average FPS games are really weird and distinct from what we have in our dimension. And in this scenario, this game is STILL trying to do something controversial about the interdimensional industry standard. So maybe that's why nothing lands on me.

As RaTcHeT302 pointed it's pretty mediocre. If I could give a score it would be the mixture of all the ratings, besides fantastic and good/great.  It specially feels like a "Pass", but if this game is not for you, "then for who is it?" you may ask...well, parallel dimension people.

Weirdly, he also pointed out the soundtrack, which I personally would never even consider since the only time you have a chance to breath and pay attention to literally anything is at the menu.
Any other time you're either shooting the damagesponge enemies with your Shitty Rocket Launcher (It isn't even a mini-rocket launcher like in Strife, so it takes the cake as the worst rocket launcher ever) or your extremely heavy assault riffle that shoots rice bullets, or you're jumping around so that a horde of enemies doesn't destroy you, hoping that nothing randomly spawns on your ass, telefraging you into insta death -a masochist's ideal gameplay design- and always having to be close to the artifact spawning area, because if you don't get it in 12 seconds after it spawns (it spawns 2 or 3 times each zone), you die.

The game feels like it wants to be a fast pacing game but it also feels like it wants to destroy that genre in every way possible while pushing the limits of that genre to a degree no one even to come close to.
If you ever wondered what it feels like to be the generic enemy on a Doom or Quake game, or the generic space marines that failed before the Doom guy entered the room, I'd say this game might give you a pretty close idea. No matter how much you run, you're not fast. No matter how much you shoot, you're not powerful. No matter how much effort you put, you're not the guy for the job. This isn't your game, you work on essentially different mechanics than what would be optimal for this situation.

There are some fun ideas, like there is one time you arrive at an area and there are a few enemy drones in the sky, strangely, they don't shoot at you. Up until this point you were indoctrinated to the fact that everything wants to kill you, always running towards you screaming until you die, so you take a moment to even consider the existence of this ground-breaking...flying enemy. But then a new enemy arrives, some weird demonic tank, you shoot it with the rocket and the little drones shoot lasers directly at your rocket making it explode in your face. Your muscle memory takes time to adjust to the idea that the game now hates rockets for some reason.
Haha. By fun ideas I mean really annoying stuff but that I'd give credit for the originality.

That's actually the core problem of the game, that originality isn't enough to make it good.
6 minutes in you'll probably see more than 12 different enemies, all with their own unique stats, abilities, weapons, etc. There is never a "green goblin" followed by a stronger, faster "red goblin" it's always (from what I remember) a different enemy entirely. But there isn't really any substancial weight to any of it, the answer is always to shoot enemies and stay away from enemies and stay close to the artifact area. That's how you solve the problem with the drones and the tank. That's how you solve the problem with the weird baby monster things that are close to a teleporter near a lava pit. That's how you deal with a cyborg shooting rockets from one platform to another, making the whole map shake your screen until you vomit, not containing any longer the nauseous feeling of how awful the game is.

There is no incentive to win the game, once you reach the game over screen and you can't reload again you just feel like quitting the game, or worse, just uninstall it all together...not out of rage, just too uninspired to even give yourself a fith chance to play it.

Great game, part of my childhood, wish it was never made. Wish I could forget it was.

Edited August 5, 2019 by Blindfolded (see edit history)

[Kavot]

This game is the first thing coming on my mind when i think about "fast game to shoot stuff"