Fireburst Review

Exdream have turned the heat up on racing games with the release of Fireburst on Xbox live Arcade. Fireburst brings together high octane racing over various terrain with everyone's favourite element: fire. On bringing the two together you will be left with a frantic racer that all the family can enjoy.

Upon loading up the game you are greeted with a simple menu where you can access the different game modes. Quick race allows you to go on any track with any of the characters that are unlocked and set the world on fire without limitations. The career mode consists of you choosing one of the characters that are already unlocked and doing various challenges. I would recommend starting from the first character then working through even though you can choose any one of them from the beginning.

By working through them in order you will get to know all the controls and techniques; from the simple handling, to finding out the limits of your heat meter. The heat meter is like the meter that you find on Motorstorm, the more you use your boost or flaming tyres/car the higher the gauge will go. Let it get too high and you will blow yourself up.

Sadly, if you're a fan of competitive online multiplayers this game might not be for you because to say that the online community is small is an understatement. I tried multiple times to find people to play online but was unsuccessful every time.
Fireburst has multiple characters to choose from as well as an assortment of deadly vehicles to drive, all with the ability to shoot fire from the sides or leave a massive tyre mark of flames to overheat your rivals. Each vehicle has different characteristics, from the fast acceleration of the buggy to the overly strong bus. Every character also has their own status that will affect the vehicle, like having a rather chubby character in the buggy will reduce the acceleration but increase the strength.

Fireburst is set on various tracks consisting of everything from dense jungle to oil rigs, with a destruction bowl chucked in for when you just want to destroy the competition without having to cross any finish line. Along all of the tracks there are things to look out for and avoid such as barrels of gas, flaming cars and fire. All of these will increase your heat meter if you hit them. To counteract the overheating problems that you will encounter in the game you should look out for barrels or pools of water that that, upon hitting, will cool your vehicle down quite a lot.

As with most games, there are a couple of drawbacks. Now, I know this is 'just' an arcade game but the graphics didn't seem as good as the screenshots that I had seen before release. Not that the graphics are bad; just a bit disappointing and below expectations. Secondly, the braking of all the vehicles seems it's either fully on or nothing at all.

Apart from the problems above, Fireburst is a decent game for the little price tag that it carries. Even if the online community is not really buzzing with activity, the different direction that the game takes over normal off-road titles is a quite refreshing change and the addition of fire gives a sense of fear when driving.