Firewatch: Review & Recommend | PS4 Games

After thinking about it, I think Media Mondays probably fits this feature better than Culture Mondays! I was hoping to do posts about galleries and museums, hence the culture, but at the moment I’m not really doing any of that, so I’m going to go with Media Mondays and have the occasional more cultural post thrown in! Today I’m going to be talking about Firewatch, a game that actually isn’t very well known, shock horror! I have to admit I felt a bit silly talking about Skyrim and TLOU because both are such old and popular games, but I wanted to work my way through all the games I’ve completed (or in the case of non-linear games like Skyrim, played enough to feel like I’ve seen the majority of the game!). Today we’re jumping from PS3 to PS4 as I’ve only ever completed 2 PS3 games, despite playing a lot of Dark Souls 2 and having about 8 PS3 games… oops. I’ll go back to them one day I promise!

Firewatch is an adventure game developed by a studio called Campo Santo, and published in partnership with Panic. It’s a fairly cheap game to get hold of, but be warned it is also quite a short game. I ended up completing it in a single night, but I really enjoyed it. It wasn’t my first PS4 game, but it was the first PS4 game I completed, which is why I’m covering this before Bloodborne, which was the first game I played on my PS4. The premise of this game seems quite simple. It’s set in 1989, and you play as a man named Henry who has taken on the role of Fire Lookout at a National Park type location. Your base/home is a little cabin on stilts, designed so you can spot any smoke rising across the wilderness. Seems pretty chill, right? Who’d start a fire in a gorgeous park?

Well, naturally, things do not go as smoothly as anticipated. The one thing I would say about this game is it is incredibly linear. There’s not much exploration at all. Well, you can explore if you want, but there isn’t much to find until the game wants you to find it. I “explored” (read: got horribly lost) fairly early on in the game because I was awful at using the map. Once I got more used to the environment I started to learn the paths, and did a lot better at not getting wildly lost, which really sped up the pace of the game, surprise surprise. The controls are also pretty basic — there’s not any fighting, per se, mostly just running about, picking things up and piecing together the mysteries of the park and its past.

Despite being really linear and fairly restricted in what can be done in Firewatch, I didn’t have a problem staying engaged. The environment is really pretty, so there’s always something to look out to keep you engaged, and I was getting properly invested in the mystery surrounding the game. It was also nice to have a change of pace and play a more casual game. It also doesn’t take up too much space on the harddrive, and I’m a fan of having plenty of games installed so I can pick and choose. I wasn’t intending to play the entire game, but I got to a point where I was on the final day and figured well… I’ve come this far! That I played through the whole game in one sitting is testament to the quality of the plot. While the setting is really pretty, that alone wouldn’t have been enough to keep me engaged for more than an hour or so. There are a few plot twists through the course of the game, and mysteries to unravel, which was what kept me playing!

I would definitely recommend Firewatch for anyone looking for a more laid back adventure game without the survival pressure that comes along with action games! What this game lacks in action it makes up for in plot and setting, and despite the low level of threat the player faces (I don’t think it’s possible to die, and apparently the choices you make don’t affect the outcome of the game), the game still does a really good job of raising the stakes and creating a sense of urgency, especially at the end of the game! It’s a lovely little game, and it’s always good to look outside of the AAA games and find little gems like this!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.