Emergency Rescue Firefighters, from our "friends" at Wizard Works, has a really, really cool box. It shows a brave firefighter ready to tackle a blazing inferno of death. It's multi-layered and embossed with a cutout of the firefighter up front and raging flames in the back, all outlined with shiny, silver foil. Mmm...shiny, silver foil.

The game, for what it's worth, is an isometric view action/strategy. And that means it's like a terrible real-time X-COM with sub-Sims graphics that tries to get you caught up in the heroism and bravery of the firefighter. It fails on every level other than the indisputable fact that it's real-time and has an isometric view.

It does have a good box, but since we've mentioned that, here comes all the reasons to point and laugh at this game if you see it on store shelves. First off is the most glaring problem of them all: the game is stupid. How stupid? Take the AI path-finding (Please! -Ed.). The firefighters run into walls, get stuck on furniture, scamper back and forth down a hallway when you want them to go through a door, and generally make complete asses of themselves. I eventually got stuck on a mission simply because my firefighters were unable to get from one side of a room to the other in order to rescue a trapped child. I sent in axe-men that could destroy obstacles, but there were no obstacles to be destroyed. After ten minutes of trying to get to the boy, I gave up and decided that my time would be better spent watching my fishtank. There are no fish in my fishtank.

Another problem is the interface. Putting out a fire is usually as simple as clicking on it with your cursor, but sometimes only a tiny part of the fire is clickable, and you have to find the one pixel to click on in the middle of a blazing inferno.

Between missions you can watch newscasts, which consist of the exact same line of audio commentary over and over again, accompanied by a picture of the level you just beat. Now, when I say the exact same line of audio commentary, I mean it. Every time you see the newscast, you hear, Earlier there was a fire today, here's footage of the fire earlier today. You can also check poorly written E-mails sent to you from your superiors or civilians who you've just rescued.

On the graphics side, the perspective is the same as The Sims, and all control is handled through the mouse. The fire effects are cheesy, and the water effects are unconvincing. Also, there would be times when my firefighters would be shooting their fire extinguishers through the walls.

So much more could've been done with Emergency Rescue Firefighters. I was hoping that you could watch over a city, research new fire-retardant materials and chemicals, hire and train new firefighters, and have access to an array of tools like the Jaws of Life. I wanted to see translucent water, and smoke, explosions from gas lines, and maybe even some heat distortion effects. Then again, I almost never get what I want. Simply put, this is a terrible game, and only the most fun-retardant casual gamer should even consider trying it.

- Li C. Kuo