I Let it Burn, My Time With Firefighting Simulator Ignite

My video Impressions

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It BEGINS!

You roll out of the bay, blip the siren (because you can), and the game immediately asks the same question every sim secretly does: would you do this job versus play the digital version of it? Firefighting Simulator: Ignite is shockingly enjoyable even if you answered no to either. It’s PowerWash if the muck could flashover and eat your eyebrows, a co-op toybox where fires opinion of every structure is what a hurricane thinks of Florida. It’s also the kind of sim where “solid… sometimes” is a compliment and “competent… occasionally” reads like a love letter.

What does it look like?

Visually, it’s that utilitarian, steel-toed look—the one where glossy next-gen screenshots would actually make it worse. Buildings light like tinderboxes but without the Michael Bay glitter. Texture work won’t win a prom crown, but the star here is fire that crawls, breathes, and then sprints if you feed it air like an idiot opening a door at the wrong time. Embers spin up into little devil dervishes and the smoke has layers—dark, angry blankets that mean “don’t go in there unless your will’s up to date.” Performance though still has some wonkiness while the FPS was great, even on the 4090 there was some pop-in especially when going home from a big fire.

WAudio stays in pocket. On the truck it’s oddly EV-ish—more hum than hell—but once you’re inside the structure it clicks: rafters complaining, drywall crackling as fire eats away at its supports, a hiss from a propane tank that makes you say nope and re-route. It’s less “memorable bangers” and more “honest situational sound,” and in a game where air movement is life or death, that pays its rent. When it comes to Audio, would it kill the crew to say something on the ride home, though? A stray “nice save” between “we almost died” and “we almost died again” wouldn’t hurt. Right now the drive back is a morgue with seatbelts.

Gameplay is good!

The loop is pure firefighter homework dressed as chaos. You’re picking missions off the station board (career laddering you from greaser stove tops to multi-alarm lunacy), rolling out, sizing up, placing the rig, grabbing the right tool, then deciding which mistake you want to make first. Locate the hydrant, lay supply, run two attack lines, get ventilation going, then juggle victims, breakers, gas, and “oh fun, the garage is a liquid bomb.” The station hub is roomy—half training hall, half museum—clearly built with future DLC and mod space in mind; right now it’s a staging area with personality but not much pulse. No emergent alarms on the drive, no surprise calls popping off mid-mission. You pick, you go, you clean up. It works, but it’s very “board game night,” not “shift from hell.”

Time for Axes

Your tools feel right, and by “right” I mean occasionally explained but always useful somewhere. Water streams have weight, pattern actually matters, and foam isn’t just “white water” cosplay—it’s the difference between clearing a grease fire or turning a deli into a pipe bomb when you hit the wrong fire type with the wrong fire retardent. The best toy is information: a sensible “fire sense” read that highlights breakers, valves, trapped civilians, and suspect doors without turning the whole map into XRAY Vision Man. It tells you just enough to stop you being stupid while still letting you be stupid if that’s your brand.

Then there’s your crew: three AI firefighters who, on their best days, behave like overachieving rookies and on their worst, stand in a hallway contemplating the metaphysics of flame. The command wheel is fast and readable—break that door, pull an attack line, search and rescue there, follow me—and the game lands the tactile bits: spinning hydrants, slamming irons, shouldering through stubborn frames. But AI tempo isn’t consistent. For example I saw one of my guys just blasting a random stack of what looked like CD’s for 5 minutes while the rest of us fought the real fires.. They can nail a ladder throw or pop a panel one minute and the next they’ll proclaim a room “clear” while the upstairs is inventing new colors of orange. Soloing with them works if you accept that “go here” often needs the follow-me chaperone and that you’re the foam/water brain of the outfit. With humans? Suddenly the whole thing sings. Four-man coordination is where Ignite proves the sim bones aren’t a marketing memo.

The Other Stuff

Driving is… fine. You’re shepherding big red rectangles with expensive bits hanging off the sides, threading traffic without turning sedans into modern art.

Bugs and grit exist. Pop-ins at scene load, the occasional hitch when a neighborhood wakes up, some “are you kidding me” AI pathing around tight geometry, and a UI that hides a couple crucial toggles one menu deeper than you want—especially when swapping truck systems mid-panic. Nothing breaks the fantasy, but it does scuff the helmet a bit. Especially if say you want to get your AI to grab something then fight the fire right next to them without them resetting their position and possibly running downstairs because a small fire is burning up a bush.

Two design calls hit hard. First, consequences make sense in a way games often fake. Open a door wrong, you earn a backdraft lesson you won’t forget. Vent too late, you choke. Bring water to a chemical fire, you escalate. It’s a rare sim where “right tool, right tactic, right timing” isn’t a poster on a wall; it’s carved into your eyebrows. Second, mission construction is a legit puzzle box. Ladder to cut off spread here, alternate entry there, cool the ceiling for two beats then drive the seat—every blaze is a little math problem with victims in the parentheses.

What’s missing is that end-of-shift soul. The station feels like it wants chatter, little post-mortems, maybe a chalkboard of greatest hits and dumbest mistakes. As is, you dock, click, and you’re back on the board. No ones doing much and it just feels lifeless there.

What I think about it.

That being said, bottom line: in the early hours, there’s a sturdy, sometimes-surly sim under the turnout gear. It’s not a tech showpiece and it’s not pretending to be. It’s about reading fire like weather, making smart calls under stupid pressure, and laughing when your buddy hoses down a sandwich shop while the grease fire throws him a wedding ring made of napalm. With mods and more missions, this could be the firefighter sandbox folks have been waiting for. Right now, it’s already fun—sometimes surprisingly so—and when it catches fire, or something else does, it really catches.