Arsonist Heaven Review

Arsonist “Heaven.” I wouldn’t call it that, you’re an arsonist, yes, but it’s certainly not heaven. You play as the Purifier, an employee of the “Shazbot Association of Thermodynamical Armory Research.”

You have been tasked with purifying each level after a bad accident at one of the company’s secret research facilities. You’ll face environmental hazard along the way in your mission to clean up the accident.

This could have been called “Achievement Hunter Heaven” as it’s developed by Ratalaika Games, who are known for releasing games with a very easily obtainable completion (1000 Gamerscore). You might come for the game, but you’ll be staying for the easy Gamerscore.

Gameplay

At the forefront, Arsonist “Heaven.” has a pretty cool pixel art style within a classic approach at a 2D action platformer. Essentially, each level boils down to picking up gas tanks to refill your flamethrower and holding down the A button whilst near an enemy to kill them.

You can also find upgraded weapons during certain levels throughout the game, including a shotgun, a machine gun and even a grenade launcher, which definitely make easier and quicker work of clearing out the monsters, than the basic flamethrower does.

Trying to avoid being hit is a pain, so you’re left each level with a line of “rinse and repeat” feeling when you do get killed.

In Arsonist Heaven, It really does boil down to, trying to kill an enemy before they manage to land too many hits on you, whilst being smart as to how and when you pickup the health packs scattered around the levels, because there really doesn’t seem to be an effective way to dodge an attack. In the game you also have a jet pack in your arsenal to help you get to out of reach places or dodge enemies, but, as I mentioned in previous sentences, it’s not all too effective.

There are 4 different biomes within the game, all showcasing 5 levels – each giving you 20 levels to work your way through in total. (There are only 12 achievements for this game and they are all limited to simply completing the first 12 levels of the game).

Boss Levels

The fifth level of each biome contains a boss, giving you a full 3 tanks of gas and a special weapon pickup before you drop down to the fight. These levels are easily the most boring and tedious parts of the game.

The only way I found these boss levels beatable, is to stand on one (of only two available)  higher up platforms, wait for your jet pack to charge then drop down,  whilst quickly getting a shot or two in and then jet packing back up to the higher platform before the boss can deal a damage attack on you.

This becomes very boring, as it’s just five minutes of: drop, shoot, jump, wait to recharge, repeat until you manage to deplete the bosses health enough to clear the level, there really isn’t anything special about these levels at all.

Verdict

Whilst it’s a nice attempt at a 2D side scrolling action game, you can tell it doesn’t try to serve much more of a purpose than being just serviceable enough to warrant a small purchase (£4.19 on the Xbox Store) so that people can justify getting an easy 1000G.

Of which, I didn’t find myself continuing after unlocking that final achievement because once you played one level, you’ve practically played them all aside from a different weapon pickup here and there. Once you’ve played one boss level however, you’ll just want to put the game down unless you’re hungry for that Gamerscore.

I wasn’t enjoying it on a basic gameplay level and I only continued on enough to see if much else changes (it doesn’t), and once I realised the achievements were so easy, I thought I might as well mop up the next couple levels for the 1000G whilst I’m here, beyond that I couldn’t wait to put it down.

Unless you’re itching for a cheap 1000G to boost those numbers, I wouldn’t bother with this one personally.