Nuclear Blaze Review (Nintendo Switch)
Nuclear Blaze Review (Nintendo Switch)
Nuclear Blaze is likely the best firefighting game of all time with the only possible competition being the Ignition Factor on the SNES. If you’re wondering why the gorgeous pixel art looks familiar, that’s because it was created by Deepnight Games, a studio that was founded in 2020 by the Sebastien Benard, who was the lead developer and game designer of Dead Cells, but don’t worry this isn’t a metroidvania or roguelite.
The premise is simple: you are a firefighter who is airdropped into a secret facility and your job is to extinguish the blaze while unravelling the redacted story using your firehose and some skillful platforming. There also feels to be plenty of Celeste inspiration here too with ultra fast restarts upon death, the punishing but rewarding difficulty and some ominous 16 bit tunes.
The levels are short and sweet with simple controls and perfect progression that starts simple enough with basic situations about spraying basic flames. Pushing deeper into the inferno, the levels become more complex with timer based challenges, locked doors, sprinkler systems, backdrafts, crumbling ceilings, electricity, and of course rescuing cats. The complex situations are matched with your evolving skillset from directional spray, bigger tanks, ladder spraying and of course a dead cells inspired dodge roll.
Nuclear Blaze originally began as a game jam inspired by creating a game for his three old and his love of firefighters, which would explain the optional kid mode that includes no death, unlimited water, and easier controls along with plenty of trucks and helicopters.
The is no difficulty mode on Nuclear Blaze, but there are plenty of accessibility options on the game that allow you to tweak many different sliders that affect many different facets of the game. If you’re looking for something beyond the shorter campaign, there is hold my beer mode which adds a lot of different variables including fire that spreads much faster and security turrets along with new areas to explore which does make this feel like more than just a simple new game plus mode with higher difficulty only.
The only downside with Nuclear Blaze is that it’s fairly short at around a few hours to finish the campaign, which doesn’t make a lot of sense as the game was still incorporating new mechanics right up until the end and was far from wearing out its welcome. As Neil Young said “it's better to burn out than to fade away” as the Nuclear Blaze ride is an absolute blast while it lasts.