Hello, my name is njål and Let's talk game design. Fire & Klawd is a game released on playstation in 1996. It was a game friend of mine had and all I know is that it was difficult experience and that has not changed. The story is about a street running cat that got frisky with some crime lords money and the gorilla cop that he has teamed up with to catch the crock. The rest is some dead ends, silly cutscenes and weird enemies. Everyone is armed and dangerous, even the blind, the infirm and the old.
From a game that can be played it works as intended and is kinda fun, but very flawed. First let us take a close look at the mechanics involved. The camera is always at a fixed angle when the player moves about. In this case everything is painfully isometric, the biggest flaw by far, more on that later. A second player can join in, otherwise the partner is controlled by the AI and sometimes shoot at the enemies, so the bugger is not a hindrance. When alone the two character can be switched in between.
The fat donut chomping cop gorilla Firo, or the blue street cat Klawd
Aiming is done by pointing in the general direction of the enemy and shooting many times, then hope that the auto aim does the rest. Unless the enemy is too close, then an unreliable melee attack is performed. Mechanics like strafing are non-existent, but I can duck under bullets, unless it is a blast from a rocket, or pesky grendes. Yes explosives work well, both for me and the enemy. Which is why I like to hoard grenades and get hurt by them. Surprisingly enough, there are homing missiles to be found as well. Picking up is done the moment I touch a pickup, such as posters and special ammo. Due to the arcade nature of Firo & Klawd, there is a rather arbitrary high score and collecting extra lives. A sorely sought after resource, mostly because it is stupidly easy to get hurt and falling usually lead to instant death. Something often caused by ladders, since no one told me as a kid that pressing X and holding it at the right spot and at the right angle made the protagonist descend. The fixed angle does not make this action any easier.
Jumping is somewhat pointless but possible for better or worse, some secrets and glitches can be exploited by this fact. In theory there are multiple path choices, but they all lead to a dead end. The moment I waltz out of the precinct I can enter the squad car which takes me one direction, or I can enter a pub further down the street, then there is the subway station. These options are poorly marked though. Which means there are two separate endings to unlock. However New York traffic is murder.
The first and most irritating issue is the isometric illusion, an effect that leads to inconsistency when interacting with anything. Especially multiple floors and heights are hurt by this fact. Combine this with the fixed camera angles and off screen enemies for maximum player torment. It is quite clear to me that the developers never considered a lock on function, outside of the shooting gallery sequences. Knowing what I'm shooting at is too much to ask for after all. A couple of places the geometry is designed to kill me, like walking across a plank over instant death mud.
Seeing the early attempts at 3d in action is fun, despite the very flawed animations and the terrifying character models. But it is clear that they did the lest they could. For some very odd reason they insisted on animating the cats ear piercing when he walks, but omitted shadows. Early 90s 3d is very wonky indeed, however the prerendered sprites looks quite okay. I mean they have put a serious effort into details, Easter eggs and making everything look distinct. Clearly the team behind the game had a vision. One marred by self imposed limitations and poor controls, but I digress.
There is also at least one level where I only see the crosshair and random fiends emerges, crawling out of the woodwork like maggots. These sections are helped with the addition of actually having a lock on that is visible.
It is somewhat fun, and fairly forgotten game that is a pain to find, which is most likely why the angry video game nerd has never touched this one. He really should, but I highly doubt he reads the mail.
Njål signing out
