In the year 2010 video games have evolved from consoles to virtual reality
playing machines. The only problem is computer viruses still exist and can
wreak havoc on your mind. This is the premise of Firestarter, a first person
shooter named after the virtual reality machine. The virus infected game has
trapped your consciousness and you must complete your virtual reality game
within 48 virtual hours to free yourself.

You can choose from six different characters to play as with some being an
Agent – a female with excellent acrobatic skills, a Gunslinger – a male with
good reaction and great accuracy, a Cyborg – a heavily armored player with the
skill to restore his armor and a Mutant – a four armed humanoid with the
ability to fire with all four arms. Each character can improve his/her skills
(27 total) by gaining experience points on completion of objectives in
missions. Skills range from learning – increased experience points to vampire
– conversion of monster damage to player health. A unique skill is vandalism
in which the player receives extra experience points for brutally killing a
monster or desecrating dead bodies.

Gameplay consists of 16 levels broken down into several episodes with each
episode objective being different as in killing a certain amount of enemies or
surviving for a limited time before the door to the next episode opens. There
are 19 different types of weapons from your typical assault rifle to the
mighty mortar firing 7 types of shells in which to slay the 20 different
enemies from demons to symbiont’s. In each episode you must (or game over)
find and pick up artifacts within a certain amount of time. Artifacts range
from invisibility to terminator where the monster targeted by this artifact
will become the #1 enemy and all other enemies will attack it until death.

Choose from single player campaign (from one level to the next) or instant
game where you can select a single map to play with your character from the
campaign mode. Multiplayer modes include classic deathmatch and cooperative
play to hunting – several players on one map with one monster to kill, first
one to kill it wins and slaughter – players fight non-aggressive re-spawning
stealth mimer’s to see who can kill the most.

Included in the game is software to benchmark the game on your computer.