Today's selection is...
Fired Up! on the PSP
Previous days' games can be found HERE
Before I get into looking at Fired Up!, I noticed that this has moved the 'Played' counter on the spreadsheet I use to keep track of my games to a nice round 1100 - so a quick thank you to those of you who are reading regularly for keeping me going. Next target: Getting that 'Unplayed' counter down below 600! Anyway...
It was all the way back on day one of this journey when the random game selector - henceforth to be known as ‘Selectron™’ - last chose a PSP game. That was the excellent Luminees II whereas today we’re in slightly more obscure territory with Fired Up!, a game I think I own because I got it confused with Pursuit Force. (Pursuit Force, by the way, is fantastic!)
It doesn’t take long with Fired Up! before you realise you’re playing the Single Player bolt-on to a very multiplayer focused game. If the back of the box doesn't give enough clues then you’ll soon notice that the design of each of the first two maps bear all the hallmarks of multiplayer arenas. They are clearly designed to be fun as automotive battlegrounds, and the ‘get A and take it to B’ in the alloted time ‘missions’ have been superimposed as something of an afterthought.
Actually, that’s unfair. There is definitely a story, however rudimentary, to try make the missions more cohesive and there are one or two attempts at mixing up the fetch-quests a little: The second map has you burning around taking pictures of suspicious crates as part of an investigation, which is made extra fun by the excellent handling of the buggy you have for this map; it’s a loads of fun to just hoon around in.
As well as the ten or so missions on each map there is some standard open-world filler bulking up the experience. Firstly, there’s your icon-hunt collector-thon. This has the added benefit of increasing the number of health and weapon drops there are around the map. Secondly are the game’s equivalent of GTA’s ‘Frenzys’, these are eponymously referred to as ‘getting Fired Up!’ and involve destroying a set number of vehicles in a set time.
And that’s more or less it. There are four maps in total for the Story Mode but apparently more are/were available as DLC. I played the first two and, in all honesty, I’m not sure I’ll be heading back to finish the other two any time soon.
The best thing I can say about Fired Up! is that it makes me sad I didn’t play it when the multiplayer was active. I mean, yeah, the collision detection seems like it might be frustrating as all hell, and the various weapons are more or less identical but, as I mentioned, the car handling is really fun, and I imagine it would be the best kind of fustercluck with 7 mates.
I was going to end there but there’s just one last thing I want to make a point of: One of the player characters is a Ghanaian called Addo. Throughout the first set of levels his heritage is constantly brought to our attention by the main NPC contact (a white guy) who refers to him as a ‘Crazy African’, ‘my African friend’, or variations thereupon.
I hate to politicise something which is clearly not based in malice, but the fact that he wasn’t just referred to as a ‘crazy man’ or ‘my friend’ made me a little uncomfortable.
Anyway, far be it for me to get offended on anyone else's behalf, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
Previous days' games can be found HERE
It was all the way back on day one of this journey when the random game selector - henceforth to be known as ‘Selectron™’ - last chose a PSP game. That was the excellent Luminees II whereas today we’re in slightly more obscure territory with Fired Up!, a game I think I own because I got it confused with Pursuit Force. (Pursuit Force, by the way, is fantastic!)
It doesn’t take long with Fired Up! before you realise you’re playing the Single Player bolt-on to a very multiplayer focused game. If the back of the box doesn't give enough clues then you’ll soon notice that the design of each of the first two maps bear all the hallmarks of multiplayer arenas. They are clearly designed to be fun as automotive battlegrounds, and the ‘get A and take it to B’ in the alloted time ‘missions’ have been superimposed as something of an afterthought.
Actually, that’s unfair. There is definitely a story, however rudimentary, to try make the missions more cohesive and there are one or two attempts at mixing up the fetch-quests a little: The second map has you burning around taking pictures of suspicious crates as part of an investigation, which is made extra fun by the excellent handling of the buggy you have for this map; it’s a loads of fun to just hoon around in.
As well as the ten or so missions on each map there is some standard open-world filler bulking up the experience. Firstly, there’s your icon-hunt collector-thon. This has the added benefit of increasing the number of health and weapon drops there are around the map. Secondly are the game’s equivalent of GTA’s ‘Frenzys’, these are eponymously referred to as ‘getting Fired Up!’ and involve destroying a set number of vehicles in a set time.
And that’s more or less it. There are four maps in total for the Story Mode but apparently more are/were available as DLC. I played the first two and, in all honesty, I’m not sure I’ll be heading back to finish the other two any time soon.
The best thing I can say about Fired Up! is that it makes me sad I didn’t play it when the multiplayer was active. I mean, yeah, the collision detection seems like it might be frustrating as all hell, and the various weapons are more or less identical but, as I mentioned, the car handling is really fun, and I imagine it would be the best kind of fustercluck with 7 mates.
I was going to end there but there’s just one last thing I want to make a point of: One of the player characters is a Ghanaian called Addo. Throughout the first set of levels his heritage is constantly brought to our attention by the main NPC contact (a white guy) who refers to him as a ‘Crazy African’, ‘my African friend’, or variations thereupon.
I hate to politicise something which is clearly not based in malice, but the fact that he wasn’t just referred to as a ‘crazy man’ or ‘my friend’ made me a little uncomfortable.
Anyway, far be it for me to get offended on anyone else's behalf, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
No comments:
Post a Comment