Kill it With Fire

by Camrin Santchi
reviewed on PC
Creepy Crawlies
Video game spiders tend to be oversized menaces, beyond the natural scale of the world. Many gamers, myself included, are not fond of these arachnid menaces, and feel a good dose of revenge is in order. Enter Kill It With Fire, a new game from TinyBuild, where the entire point is an excessive rampage against the eight-legged menaces.
Gamers play as a member of the ‘Kill It With Fire” extermination company, whose responsibility is to go to several locations to clear out of the arachnid pests. There is no sign of other humans in any of the areas – maybe they’ve been too frightened by the spiders. It could also be due to the beautiful terror that comes from members of 'Kill It With Fire' in action. The job gets done, but they may be more known for property damage than their destruction of spiders.
The spiders in Kill It With Fire are actually normal sized… and by that, I mean normal sized anywhere but Australia, so they actually seem harmless, but they’re menaces all the same. Some are translucent and hard to see, others jump around, others release ‘spiderlings’ when killed (Gross), some are… radioactive or explode? While these spiders don’t seem much of a threat (except the explosive ones perhaps), they are particularly shifty in their numbers and peculiar abilities, so it’s probably safer to just burn them all.
Kill them however you can
Burning is just one of the many ways that gamers can take out the arachno-menace, There are several types of weaponry in the player’s arsenal, such as the clipboard which is the first weapon gamers are armed with, a bludgeon that is surprisingly effective against eight-legged beasties. The clipboard also doubles as the keeper of the list of mission objectives that can be completed. These goals can include killing a certain number of spiders, or completing specific actions within an area such as ‘doing the dishes’ in a house, or fixing electrical problems at a gas station. Other weapons include several types of firearms, the age old lighter and hairspray trick, a more legitimate flamethrower, and even shuriken and C4 explosives. These all becomes available as the gamer progresses. The diversity of the weapons available is impressive, and each one uses different ammo and ways of interacting with the environment to make for hilariously catastrophic results.
Alongside mission objectives, each level has a radio which contains a special timed challenge which becomes unlocked once all the regular objectives have been completed for that level. These aptly named ‘Arachno-Gauntlets’ offer interesting challenges that require good timing and may be best suited to a return to levels. While fun, these Arachno-Gauntlets also serve the added purpose of helping players get used to strategy, making use of certain weapons that may not be part of their main kit or learning more effective ways to lure and track spiders. Along with being a ‘competitive’ addition (Gamers’ best times are saved to try and beat at a later time), they can also function as a practice mode of sorts since so long as the Gauntlet is running many spiders will spawn.
Throughout the game, particularly in hidden areas, gamers may spot folders marked with the Greek ‘Omega’ symbol. This is excellent and subtle foreshadowing in a game that doesn’t have any dialogue to speak of for an event in the final portions of the game, showing quite a bit of connective tissue in a game that appears on the surface to be nothing more than a simple destructive romp against spiders.
One flaw I came across within Kill It With Fire is that ammunition for specific weapons can be often be hard to find, especially in a level where gamers didn’t originally unlock that weapon. When the weapons are first discovered, there’s often copious ammo offered to allow them to get used to it. As a result, any weapon that needs ammo of some kind may need to be used sparingly. Another flaw would be that the lack of dialogue works well for the game, but gamers may have issues figuring out what is going on, it wouldn’t even be particularly surprising if players don’t realize they’re playing as an employee of an extermination company until after the story, which provides context for the levels as jobs you’ve been hired to complete.
Roasted Arachnids
In all, Kill It With Fire is shockingly fun for its simplicity. A game that wields excessive violence against the spider menace as many have wanted to do for so long, or perhaps at least joked about doing. The environments are very quaint and nice, which makes the surprising amount of destruction gamers can pull off all the more entertaining and appreciated, and the spiders that fill them are smart and sneaky little buggers since they can and will hide behind objects… including debris if gamers are a bit too eager to blow everything sky high. Definitely a worthwhile title if you want to kill some spiders.
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8.7
fun score
Pros
Creative Levels, Fun Destruction, Over the Top Humor...and you get to kill spiders
Cons
Weapons have level specific replenishments, Very Little is Explained