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- Laughing Jackal
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- Laughing Jackal
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- Laughing Jackal
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- Laughing Jackal
Flame Over
PlayStation Vita
Released On: Mar 10, 2015
69
6.0
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 16 Critic Reviews
69
44% Positive
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
44% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
13% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 16 Critic Reviews
69
44% Positive
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
44% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
13% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
A fine entry into the Roguelike genre, just don’t be fooled by its cutesy visuals, this game is brutal.
It really is a pretty straight forward and rewarding game. While it's in no way perfect, it's a completely serviceable roguelike for its price and for the Vita. If you can't get enough of this genre, then by all means consider Flame Over.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 22 User Ratings
6.0
45% Positive
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
23% Mixed
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
32% Negative
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 22 User Ratings
6.0
45% Positive
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
23% Mixed
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
32% Negative
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
Bloody hell, if they put this in front of prospective fire fighters as part of the job interview, most of them would go home and become yoghurt farmers, or something a little less challenging! Flame Over is a seriously tough slab of game, cut from the unforgiving cloth of the roguelikes, but with its own distinctive, and slightly singed, aroma to it.
When you're playing it right, Flame Over is a deadly ballet, dancing in and out of rooms to preserve your life, pirouetting around to fight each devilish tongue of fire with water or foam, and striding purposefully with metronomic cadence to find the recharge points and bonuses around the randomly generated levels.
To add to the chaos, there are people to rescue (which add to your time) and cats (extra lives). Finding the feisty Miss Ion and keeping her alive is an essential part of most levels. She gives you simple tasks, if you ignore the massive fire raging around you, to perform with upgrade tokens as a reward.
The isometric perspective means you can't see every bit of the out-of-control BBQ. You are constantly juggling perspective and hose direction to keep the conflagration under control, before you get too toasted - shown by a red ring encircling you as the heat grows.
Even the first level is a serious challenge. And, once you make it out alive, avoiding death - literally - if the timer happens to run out, things only get tougher.
Annoyingly, when you make it out, you can have loads of cash, but often no token, which means you can't gain any benefit from the power-up screen at the start. A slightly more friendly bit of design here would have helped, but apparently Mr. Grumpy was in charge during development. Also, don't say "spend money now" when you can't actually spend any! Still, when you get a token or two, the upgrade process soon becomes another cunning part of your strategy, lots of water bombs, or a hardier fire fighter? You decide.
As it is, you race into the next level with little time and more backdrafts to battle, making rescues the priority over the fire, it becomes a vicious juggling act. Play Flame Over a few times and you learn the strategies for saving and earning time as a priority. There are tips on the loading screen, but there's plenty you can learn yourself through clever play.
Learning the properties of the different materials is another key to success, as is finding the big circuit switch that will kill the electrical fires, making your task a little simpler. Using the map, you can find reload points and other essentials, but Flame Over is essentially about time management, and is remorseless in its punishment when you **** things up.
Spread across four areas, offices, the lavish executive suites, nasty chemical labs and the factory (which add their own challenges in the form of toxic spills, gas, exploding barrels and other nasties), the various power ups become essential. There's a defibrillator kit to revive collapsed victims, holy water to prevent recurring fires and several fire fighter performance improvements to help you battle the flambe more effectively.
There are some brilliant touches in Flame Over, from the green glow that reminds you where the exit it, to the clever upgrade strategy and the pernicious nature of the fires. Mastering a major room fire brings a great sense of achievement, dicing with your health, water supply and the surging flames, but there's little direct reward from the game, just plenty more similar battles to fight.
My complaints about the game are mostly minor. It feels a bit unbalanced, with lots of money wasted in the early going and lots of unspent tokens stacking up in the second half. A few cosmetic touches also really, really annoy me, The music is quirky, but they could have done a little more with it. The intro is skippable, but is poor and there should be an option to turn it off to save time. There's no quick replay button (for those many times when you don't get a token or enough cash). Also, it needs more than a little "bloop" to notify that you lost a life, and, as you may have noticed, the difficulty is definitely set at sadist level with no way to dial it down.
While it has some character of its own, and the Caretaker and other guests to liven things up later on, it could also do with some better use of its characters. Flame Over just feels a little lacking in the British humour department that a game like this is crying out for, but that's a minor moan.
As a pure game, Flame Over burns about as bright as a Bunsen burner with magnesium tape held in the flame. It is a rock of a challenge that only Herculean gamers will complete, with some right bastard trophies! If you're up for the challenge, jump right in, if not best go play Pokemon with the kids
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PlayStation Vita
Having had access to Flame Over for a good week or so now, I really can’t recommend this awesome twin-stick, roguelike highly enough!
Yes, it’s a pretty (erm, okay…’really’) tough game, but it’s also more than fair, with no cheap deaths to be had whatsoever. As ever, practice really does help, and with that being borne in mind, Flame Over really isn’t any tougher than say, Rogue Legacy, The Binding of Isaac, or even Spelunky.
Personally, I think Laughing Jackal’s biggest (and best!) project to date, looks utterly gorgeous on Vita too, but I’ve gotta say, some kind of patch bringing in a Luigi’s Mansion 2-esque multiplayer mode at some point in the future would be truly awesome! And perhaps — dare I say it — even an ‘easy’ and/or ‘tutorial’ mode for otherwise daunted novices?!
Either way… Binding of Isaac x Spelunky x Luigi's Mansion = FLAME OVER!
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Simon
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PlayStation Vita
We recomend Flame Over to the hardcore fans of its genre because the true potential of the game is not present in the first hours of learning. It requires a lot of patience and perseverance. If we discard some slight problems, we have a really good surprise among the games of the PS Vita; it’s a good, difficult, frustrating and very addictive experience.
A pleasant little surprise. Its twin-stick controls work great on the handheld, there’s no forced touchscreen use, its art style and music work well and its core gameplay is solid for a while. Flame Over isn’t perfect. It is, however, fun.
You'll need real perseverance to get the most out of Flame Over, but once you get to grips with the game, it'll grow on you like an out-of-control inferno. Packing plenty of replay value, this is hard to put down once you straddle its early hurdles – and while we're not convinced that everyone will be willing to put the work in, the few that do will be fighting fires for some time.
The way fire spreads is pretty good, but the rest of the game falls a little short with the real killer being repetition. It’s just not random enough to maintain interest for too long, and that’s a fatal flaw in a roguelike with permadeath.
Glaring flaws aside, Flame Over just isn’t much fun. With just one enemy (poorly modeled fire), effectively one weapon and a whole bucket of poorly explained, poorly chosen gameplay ideas, Flame Over is a real disappointment. Game over.
Roguelikes are known for their brutal difficulty. You lose everything upon death and have to start back at the beginning almost completely from scratch. "Flame Over" is no different. However the sense of progression even in the face of defeat that these games are known for is strangely missing here. Because of that it's hard to recommend Flame Over over the better alternatives out there even though it is a good game.
In essence it's not that different from The Binding of Isaac, one of the best roguelikes out there, as far as the core gameplay goes. It's also a twin-stick shooter. However instead of shooting grotesque and unholy abominations, you're putting out fires and racing the clock. The flames are wild and unruly, but the the time limit is the real threat. Fail to make it out in time and death himself will come after you and he won't even let the walls get in his way.
Putting out fires might not sound too difficult, but apparently these flames have developed a sense of consciousness; they are more than willing to fight back. Much like real fires they spread easily. Projectile fireballs will start to fly across the rooms if you don't put out the sources fast enough. It's not a problem in smaller areas, but the larger ones can become a nightmare as you find yourself running back and forth having to re-put out fires you already extinguished.
Yes, this can be a VERY frustrating game at times. Some gameplay decisions are designed to chip away at your precious time and not every attempt feels fruitful. The heat will most definitely get to you at times.
Now the thing that makes roguelikes so good and keeps you coming back despite the huge difficulty is that fact that each playthrough grants you something upon death that will help you get farther along next time. Flame Over has that as well, but the way it's handled only adds to the frustration instead of relieving it.
Putting out fires gets you coins that you can use to upgrade certain skills, but the real help comes from the people (and cats) that you rescue. Particularly "Miss Ion." Remember those skills I just mentioned? Well in order to actually be able to start buying upgrades for them you must first unlock them with tokens. That's where she comes in. While the other souls in need of rescuing you grant you extra time or health in return, she gives you one of the much desired tokens. Provided you can complete her mission that is. She's both your best and worst friend in this game.
The game randomly screws you over with these survivors from time to time. You might just get unlucky enough to witness them getting shot in the face with a fireball and killed as soon as you open the door. Not even giving you a chance to save them. With Miss Ion being so important early on it is unbearably frustrating to have her snatched away like that. It's bad enough you have to battle time, fire, and death himself to get to them. Cheap moments like that can lead to rage quits.
The mishandling of the upgrade system is the issue here. The hook with roguelikes is that even when you suffer and quick and brutal defeat, you gain a little something to help you out next time. That isn't always the case here as you can walk away from a decent amount of progress with nothing to show for it. There are times when it's all risk and no reward. It's still worth a look for roguelike fanatics, because it is a good game. There are just plenty of times where all the game did was make me feel like I just got burnt.
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PlayStation Vita
Flame Over is deceptively cute, hiding a tough game and a brutal time limit. If you're up for a challenge I'd recommend it, but definitely use a joypad!
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PlayStation Vita
Flame Over is described as a rouge-like fighter fighter game but as a fan of rouge-like games it misses the mark. The upgrade process requires found unlocks and cash to upgrade to things that matter very little. Also a rouge-like has a sense of progression and Flame Over really has none. A rouge-like should have a sense of wanting to see what is next but Flame Over just offers you fire followed by more fire. The game is tedious and often clear areas seem to spontaneously go back on fire resulting in a lot of frustration. The only thing rouge-like is the randomly generated maps, which depending on placement of people rescuing, will determine the difficulty. This game is hard and tedious without any sense of reward. I do not like this game.
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PlayStation Vita
Summary Flame Over is a fire fighting 'squirt 'em-up' game with randomly generated levels, blending twin stick shooter and roguelike design principles. Flame Over features a dynamic fire system that burns and spreads according to the materials found in each randomly generated level. Watch fires spread according to the materials available, attack...
Rated E
for Everyone
Platforms:
- PlayStation Vita
- PlayStation 4
- PC
Initial Release Date: Mar 10, 2015
Developer:
- Laughing Jackal
Publisher: Laughing Jackal
Genres:
