Usually, in games, where there’s a fire it tends to be of my doing… Just ask fellow Tavern members who’ve had the fortune to play Left 4 Dead, Far Cry 6, or basically any other game that allows me to unleash my inner pyromaniac. Not since the excellent Sega Saturn title Burning Rangers have I embraced to extinguishing of fire, at least until Nuclear Blaze. I’m happy to report then, that this latest title from Dead Cells creator Sébastien Bénard not only had me on the flame-quenching side of things but also is one of my favourite games of the year so far.
While not a long game – my first playthrough ran about 2 ½ hours – Sébastien and studio Deepnight Games have tightly paced this firefighting adventure, giving us just the right amount of tools at just the right time. We initially begin only able to fire our jet of water forwards, but soon enough we’re granted more abilities such as being able to arc to water or create a kind of wet umbrella. Each new ability allows the levels to be that bit more devious – the umbrella is used to deflect flash burst as we open doors with a blaze on the other side for example – as well as let our platforming ability expand to clear rooms in rapid time.
Said rooms are often just bigger than a single screen’s worth of real estate, but laid out in such a manner that it becomes tricky to navigate while avoiding the fire that will kill us in a split second. The fire won’t go easy on us either, spreading back over previously cleared sections if allowed to. On the default difficulty this isn’t all that fast but it’s not hard to get caught out, especially on the later areas that have slightly larger layouts or extra objectives to contend with.
Some of these are as simple as unlocking a series of doors, while others have explosive material that counts down the longer it is on fire; let this get to zero and the whole room explodes, killing us no matter where we are. A pretty generous checkpoint system helps us out mind you, and even on the trickier sections we only required a few tries thanks to this.
Even repeated tries never got tiresome though as the gameplay is pitched just right throughout, and paired with some excellent audio/visual feedback we didn’t get bored even on the fourth or fifth attempt. The rooms will be coated in an orange/red glow while there are fires in present within our view, but this gradually gives way to a blue/metallic hue as we cleanse the flames. No matter the colour scheme, the pixel art look stunning at all times, with chunky characters, wonderfully retro transparencies and what feels like frame perfect controls to enjoy it all with. I’ll take any excuse to mention Burning Rangers I can get, but I really did get the same feeling of joy playing Nuclear Blaze as I remember when playing that title 25 years ago.
Clearing the main game may only take a couple of hours, but there’s much more to Nuclear Blaze than that. Beating the game once unlocks Hold My Beer mode; this offers not only a harder challenge with faster spreading flames and the like, but also makes use of alternate pathways and abilities not found in the regular game. It certainly is noticeably harder – I’ve not quite reached the end of this run yet – but I’m enjoying it just as much for sure.
If it all gets a bit much, we can always head to Kid Mode instead. This, as Sébastien explains in a placard at the end, is a mode literally designed so his kids could enjoy playing his latest game. In Kid Mode we can’t die, never run out of water, don’t need to aim, and jump automatically. The only aim is to rescue the various cats across the handful of stages. It’s another smartly executed addition that sets our hearts ablaze with joy such is the sweet nature of its inception and inclusion. These cats can also be found in the main game modes though they are much harder to rescue, of course.
In between to two modes we can also toggle difficulty to our liking, with various options for health, water usage, fire speed and more. These inclusive options only increase our admiration for Deepnight’s efforts here, making what was already an easy recommendation even easier knowing more people can potentially enjoy it.
My only real gripe with Nuclear Blaze is regarding the finale, where – without spoiling the story – we have a confrontation that is tricky to overcome, mainly thanks to the previously excellent looking effects working against us, covering up elements of the scenery that will kill us all too easily. It’s hardly game-ruining, but it was the only time where we found ourselves having anything less than an excellent time.
Conclusion
Nuclear Blaze is an absolute joy to play, be it taking it easy on Kid Mode or working through the 2 hour campaign on one of the multiple difficulty modes. The action and level progression is almost perfectly paced, it looks stunning, and only very, very rarely did we encounter a moment where we had anything less than great fun extinguishing flames.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
