Emergency Fire Response puts you in tactical control of a team of firefighters as they save their fair city from random fires, industrial accidents and outright arson. The game plays like your run-of-the-mill RTS, except your troops come equipped with water hoses and arrive in tanker trucks. There are about a half-dozen different types of firefighters available, from the standard smoke-eater to the advanced Technical Officer and the High Risk Environment Specialist. Each round starts you out with a specific number of units, and if they die, you’re just plain out of luck. This lack of production capability intensifies the gameplay, as you’ll constantly juggle the need for an extra firefighting hand with the danger of losing a needed specialist.

Control in EFR borrows directly from most other RTS games; you just click on a troop and then click where you want him to go. Actions, such as chopping through a door, are performed just as simply. Once you’ve moved your troops within range of a fire, you select who you want to fight it and right-click on the flames, and they’ll immediately set about putting out that flare-up as well as any others within range. During the fight, you’ll need to keep track of how much water each unit is carrying, along with the unit’s health. Should a unit run out of water, his firefighting days are over until you can get him back out to a tanker truck for a refill. If his health bar drops too low, he’ll pass out, and if left untreated, he’ll die. Lose too many firefighters, and the mission is considered a failure. Fortunately, you can assign another firefighter to pick up the wounded and ferry them back to the waiting ambulance, which then restores them to fighting form.

Rescues, property protection and arson investigation are just a few tasks you’ll be expected to perform throughout the game’s 34 missions spread over 10 environments. Each mission requires you use at least one specialist, so it’s up to you to keep him safe, or the mission will be over all too quickly. Later missions allow you to call in vehicular support, such as the pumper and tanker trucks, for a little extra firefighting power. Although the vehicles are quite powerful, the developers made sure to keep the game balanced by maintaining as much realism as possible. For example, while the pumper can blast powerful streams over long distances, it needs frequent refills, which means you have to keep a tanker truck nearby. Lose the tanker support, and your pumper truck will quickly be rendered useless. It’s a lot like the supply and logistics systems of the military-themed RTS titles out there.

Each mission can last anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour depending on how you play it. If you’re overly cautious, you might come out with your firefighters unscathed, though there’ll be so much property damage, you might fail in your mission objectives. Try to rush headlong into a fire, and you might finish the job quickly but lose good old Fitzpatrick and friends.

The gameplay as a whole is good, but not great. While it’s amazingly realistic, it plays out a little too slowly, and it’s pretty tough to screw up a mission, which means you’ll find you’re not as concerned as you should be about the safety of your men. After several hours with EFR, I found myself wishing they had done the game as more of an FPS and styled it after other squad-based tactical games, such as Rainbow Six, where there was more in-your-face action. As it stands, this game is enjoyable, but more as a deliberately paced sim and less as the tactical squad-action title it’s being billed as.

As you might imagine, the fire in EFR is the graphical star of the show. There are plenty of great-looking smoke and particle effects, which boost the realistic feel of the fires. The fires typically start out small and shallow, rapidly deepening to a roaringly realistic look as they tear across anything flammable. The indoor environments show off nice little details such as file cabinets, desks and potted plants, all of which get nicely charred should you fail to protect them from the fire.

The firefighter models could have used a little more detail work, though, especially when you’re zoomed out and find it impossible to tell one man from another. And the evening missions can be frustrating due to the overwhelming darkness throughout the levels. I can’t count the number of open entryways I’ve missed as they were concealed in dark shadows. Don’t buildings have emergency fire lighting?

The airwaves are filled with radio chatter during your bouts of firefighting, which significantly boosts the realism. You’ll hear the 911 dispatchers calling for ambulances, the police chatting back and forth and your crew calling on one another for support. Whenever you move a unit or task it to perform an action, you’ll get a well-voiced, though often repetitive, vocal confirmation. The fire, which crackles and pops with a scary intensity, sounds about as true-to-life as a game’s audio effects can get.

Due to the lack of flexibility in the gameplay, there’s not a whole lot of replay value in Emergency Fire Response. Once you’re done with the game, which should take you about 10 hours, there’s no reason to try it again from the start. However, thanks to the variety of missions, you can be sure that you will play through the game once.

Emergency Fire Response is an interesting take on the RTS genre. While I think the subject matter would have been better served in an FPS format, there’s still a good bit of fun to be had with the game as it stands. The fire effects are some of the best around, and there’s a very short learning curve, which means you’ll be fighting fires within 20 minutes of loading this onto your hard drive. If you want to relive your childhood dreams of being a firefighter, EFR is a perfect purchase, especially with its budget $20 price tag.