(PSP) Fired Up review

Sony try their hand at car combat once again, this time with a London Studio-developed effort that has plenty of neat ideas, but lacks in content and polish to make it a must-play.

Developer	SCE London Studio
Publisher	Sony Computer Entertainment
Franchise	N/A
Genre	Action; Racing
PSTV	Yes
PSN	EU only

 

World-building & Story

In an unnamed Eastern European country, the native people are fighting back against an invasion by a neighbouring land under the control of the Republic and their fearless leader nicknamed ‘The Iron Lady’.

Their resistance takes the form of numerous rebellions led by a team of six operatives each with their own backstories, including African immigrant Addo whose skills mysteriously exceed everyone’s expectations and gun expert Erik, whose gruff demeanor makes him an unlikely hero. You’ll learn little bits of backstory about each of the characters as you progress through the campaign but generally this development is kept to a minimum as you focus more on undertaking generic missions to disrupt the Republic’s occupation.

I have to commend Fired Up for taking the framework of the PS2 online title Hardware and adapting it for a single player experience on the PSP, but despite some decent framing there is little to latch into with this game. The world is interesting but under developed, the characters never break beyond stereotypes and not a great deal happens albeit there is a plot thread between the levels. It reminds me of London Studio’s other PSP effort Gangs of London in that it’s a good idea but ultimately lacking.

 

Presentation & Sound

A game from back when PSP titles were often slightly touched up versions of things that could have run on the PS1, Fired Up is graphically unspectacular but its big environments and solid performance kept it above my expectations.

Each of the four maps on offer here have a great scope especially for an early in the generation title, with sprawling cities and oil fields filling out the bulk of your time. I loved that they add verticality allowing you to explore inside buildings, but every location feels rather desolate with no traffic, pedestrians or anything else going on other than enemy vehicles and the coloured, floating weapon icons reminiscent of Twisted Metal. It gives the game somewhat of an unfinished feel, like there would have been more added if they were given more time.

This is echoed by the fact that things like textures in levels are incredibly stretched and there’s a general dull grey/brown vibe at times, although this does fit with the oppressed Eastern European state vibe. Vehicle designs are somewhat better albeit you’ll see the same buggies and tanks repeatedly, with armoured choppers and the explosions you get from unleashing your salvo livening things up a little. This isn’t a pretty game, but at least it runs well pretty much all the time.

No voice acting is present and music goes for orchestral but is mostly absent which means it really lacks impact when you’re playing.

 

Gameplay & Content

As an entry in the long extinct vehicular combat genre, I have a certain appreciation for Fired Up and while it is run of the mill in so many ways, there’s an enjoyable if fleeting time to be had here once you dig in.

Gameplay takes place across four open hubs where you drive around and unleash destruction as you see fit (two are unlocked from the beginning, the other two become available as you progress). Within the hubs you can take on missions, drive around to explore or pick up scavenge tokens, which award upgraded power ups the more you collect (power ups are floating icons you grab, but you can’t carry more than one unlike Sony’s other series Twisted Metal).

Weapons are mostly uninspired missile salvos and chainguns, but I did enjoy that there’s an EMP cannon and stealth generator here, both of which were buckets of fun to mess around with. You can also get new vehicles by driving into garages hidden around levels and while there’s only a handful of these, it does feel different driving a tank than a HUM-V so they’re worth seeking out. Since its all based on Hardware: Online Arena there’s little variety beyond this, but at least it’s there.

The maps themselves are well designed with multiple routes through and more verticality than I expected thanks to oil pipes, ramps and buildings you can drive up and through. Generally the vehicles in Fired Up are responsive and control well which helps too, although forced inverted controls during annoying turret missions did frustrate me alongside occasional physics mishaps where the machine I was driving just did not move the way I hoped.

Missions themselves were always what I was expecting such as escort x vehicle, blow up y target or pick up z package, but there were a few neat twists such as one where you had to take photographs of crates and another where you clear the path for a monorail train to go through. The title of Fired Up refers to the start of each level where you blow up tankers to start rampages where you get swarmed on by multiple bad guys and subsequently incapacitating enough enemies will award you health upgrades, which is a fun distraction but over far too quickly.

Overall there’s a decent package here, but it’s short, clocking in at just a few hours to see everything. You can try the multiplayer, but this is ad hoc and I wasn’t able to test it for this review.

 

Conclusion

While other vehicular combat games do it better on both PSP and Vita, there is a certain simplistic charm to Fired Up that makes it fun enough to play through the few hours of content here, even though you’ll likely come away wanting more both in terms of length and polish of the final package.

6.5/10