Top TEN – Flamethrowers

Originally written 3/14/2011

Top TEN Flamethrowers

Number 10: Mechwarrior 2 – Flame Unit

It takes a special kind of crazy to equip a flamethrower onto a mech in Mechwarrior. Battles are usually set up in such a way that you and your crew of hundred foot tall battle robots are squaring off in a giant field, with minimal terrain cover. You could fire off dozens of missiles and lasers while the two of you side step and circle strafe around each other, closing the distance. But a fast mech, small and low to the ground, with light armor, armed with flamethrowers, that makes a zig-zag path to the enemy has a chance to use the flamethrowers to generate heat and overheat the enemy mech, shutting it down. Then you can finish it off at your leisure with machine guns, aiming for it’s cockpit or literally it’s Achilles heel.

Number 9: Starcraft/Starcraft 2 – Firebat, Hellion, Flame Turret

I love the Firebats from Starcraft 1. I admit, they were pretty lousy in late game unless the opponent decided to mass early units. I just liked them. Maybe it’s because I read Fahrenheit 451 in high school? In Starcraft 2, the Firebats exist in the single player campaign, probably due to popular demand or people at Blizzard just love flamethrowers as much as I do. In the final mission, I must have replayed it a dozen times, losing with about 15 minutes to spare each time. When I finally beat it, I changed my strategy to extensively use the Flame Turrets. They effectively won the game for me. Rock on! How cool would it have been to play Starcraft: Ghost and get to play as a personal Firebat? Deep in the dark corners of the internet, there are some old gameplay videos that show just that, Nova running around with a flamethrower.

Number 8: Diablo II – The Sorceress’s Inferno

The spell wasn’t all that useful, even at higher levels, maxed out, with synergy skills. You could easily increase your total area of affect and damage output by specializing in other spells like Meteor or Fire Wall. But neither of those skills gives you the ability to spin around in as a whirling dervish of flame. At high enough levels you could wave it back and forth in a wave. It was flashy, it looked cool, and that’s the primary reason for putting points into it.

TIE Number 7: Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse – Sypha’s Fire Spell

One of the better magical flamethrowers. Out of the Sypha character’s three sub-weapons, I find Fire to be my favorite. The other two make up for the damage by providing more area coverage above and behind her. But the fire was direct, forward, offensive, pure, satisfying, face-melting, damage.

Castlevania X: Rondo of Blood – Flame Whip

A questionable addition. The long warm up time, the low probability of not having a weapon, and relatively weak damage compared to the other sub-weapon “item crash” moves like holy water, axes, etc, make it not as desirable as it could be. I wish it were stronger. But from the time you start to the time you finish, your target is likely to have run right by you. And if you end up at a boss with no sub-weapon, you probably don’t have enough hearts to use it much.

TIE Number 6: Alien Shooter 2 Reloaded

This game had dozens of different types of pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, all the FPS classics, put into a top down arcade style shooter. When the room fills up with tiny creepy critters with a taste for human flesh, the different types of flamethrowers make short work of them. They’re a bit expensive, but the sooner you purchase one, the better. Use it in short bursts. No other gun puts out that amount of damage, that quickly, that early in the game. If you like flamethrowers, it will be your staple for a long time to come. Nothing will stand in your way!

Alien Swarm – Flamethrower

I played this free top-down arcade-style shooter Steam game with my Uncle and a few other friends. After so many alien kills, you unlock the next tier of weapons for your character. You can repeatedly run through level 1 to level up. It’s a game that requires cooperation like Left 4 Dead. So when one character unlocks the flamethrower, stay behind him(or her, the little miss Ellen Ripley wannabe)!

TIE Number 5: Return to Castle Wolfenstein

I get excited to hear old properties that get revivals in the modern age, especially when they’re free. I played the original first episode. But they could have stripped the entire Wolfenstein connection away and I would still have checked it out. This game was, not the first, but it was the best rendering of a flamethrower in a 3d graphics engine at the time. Many developers had tried and it just never ended up looking right. This one was the first to get it right. It awed everybody. Yeah, it doesn’t do much on the wide open spaces, I lost a lot. But I always loved using it when I could.

Team Fortress 1 & 2 – The Pyro

I’m absolutely rubbish with the Pyro. I usually get antsy, sitting around defensively and I have to go out and do something. The Pyro isn’t the best character at long ranges or open fields, and I die. But I have fun! The flamethrower is a weapon of complete chaos. Whenever people play with strategy, have their team organized, and get a handle on things, expecting a certain chain of events, one crazy Pyro can run in and set everyone on fire! It’s not much more than a nuisance, but it does create a ticking clock for the other team. They have to start moving before the damage-over-time effect of being lit on fire deals enough damage that their attack will fail. If you can’t beat them, just ruin their day.

Number 4: John Carpenter’s The Thing

Wow! A game that was wholly designed around the repeated use of flamethrowers! You can bust up, beat up, bludgeon or shoot the monstrous alien creatures as much as you want, but you always have to finish them off with flame. Blow torches, incendiary devices, lighters, Molotov’s, whatever you can improvise. I think I’m cheating myself by not having seen the original movie. I played part of the game, I never got very far. It was really hard for me. As the new remake of the movie gets further along, nearing completion, I will probably find another copy and go another few rounds with it, just like I did with TRON 2.0 when I heard about TRON: Legacy in development. Maybe the game will get a remake?

TIE Number 3: Contra III The Alien Wars

Note, I’m mentioning a specific Contra game with this one. The Flamethrower appears in just about every incarnation, and it’s always hit or miss with players. It really shone in Contra III. Instead of spitting out little spinning fireballs, this was a constant stream of flame that you could wave around and incinerate irritating insects and infantry. I was never more depressed about losing a Contra weapon than with the flamethrower. I would always pass up the homing or crusher missiles, even the overpowered spread gun, for it. And when you get dual flamethrowers, woo-hoo! I’m not usually a vocal player, but you could expect to hear a few aggressive curses from me, telling them to, “Eat it!”

Halloween Harry

I think this is what started my love of flamethrowers. Long ago in the Shareware-era of computer gaming, there was a zombie killing, jetpack wearing hero called Halloween Harry. His primary weapon was a flame thrower. Sure, you could buy other weapons like grenades, photon guns, mini-nukes, and more. But I loved that flamethrower!

Number 2: Hellgate London

What’s better than a flamethrower? A flamethrower with unlimited fuel! Hellgate: London didn’t look as nice as the Wolfenstein flamethrowers, but they were fun. You burst into a room full of monsters, backtrack down the hallway, hosing the floor, walls, and ceiling, all the way and let them cook themselves trying to reach you. Or, just hose the floor, walls, the creature itself. It’s an Action RPG that plays like a shooter. Your weapons have a % chance to ignite the creatures, draining 5% of their health every second. So you can theoretically kill anything in 20 seconds. And they come in several types from pistol sized to two handed. And yes, you can hold one in each hand and spray the entire room. I miss those weapons. I want to fire up the game again right now. There are also flare guns, but those aren’t really flame throwers, even though they do light demons on fire.

Number 1: One Must Fall:2097 & One Must Fall: Battlegrounds

Out of anything on this list, nothing gives me a more satisfying use of fire and flame than the Pyro from One Must Fall: Battlegrounds! The Pyro dances with fire. It is a giant humanoid robot with flamethrowers where its wrists and hands should be, and boosters by its calves. The Pyro can’t even move without firing boosters and thrusters. It incorporates fire into its every move. All of its special moves take advantage of this. The Pyro aims one arm forward and one backward, spinning in a circle, damaging anyone around it. It can fly forward, fly to the side, hover in mid-air. It can spray flame from either hand independently, to the front or to the sides, and both simultaneously in front. And even though I don’t count it, it can throw fireballs from each hand, or gather up enough flame to throw a massive fireball 10x as big as itself and send it rolling across the arena floor. The flamethrowers alone are enough to earn it the top spot, the molten ball is icing on the cake.

Honorable Mentions

X-COM – Incendiary Rocket Launcher / Incendiary Grenades

You’re not shooting, spraying, or hosing a stream of flame. But it does light stuff on fire. I’ve lit wheat fields on fire trying to smoke out a pesky little gray alien Sectiod. During missions that take place in darkness, instead of throwing chemical flares, I light up the night with phosphorous rockets that set anything and everything on fire in a radius, and then the fire spreads. But for those long hallways in alien colonies, I wish we had a real flamethrower.

The Ship – Flare Gun

Setting people on fire with the flare gun in The Ship. It must be magnesium or phosphorous based because jumping in the swimming pool or jacuzzi will not put you out. And jumping overboard, well, there are sharks(every creature deserves a hot meal). It’s a nice and satisfying one-hit kill if you can nail your target with the flare gun, which is great since you only get one shot(unless you’re like me and carry around 4 just so you can go bananas). It doesn’t get on this list because you’re not controlling a stream of flame. Maybe the sequel Hollywood Murder Party has them?

Blood – Flare Gun

While the flare guns light zombies on fire, you now have a ticked off flaming zombie charging you. It’s the first gun you get, so the game gives you plenty of opportunities to do that, and then fend them off with a pitchfork before they give you the standard shotgun and machine guns. Akimbo flare guns are a nice touch, but it just doesn’t match the idea of turning a room into an oven like a long steady stream of flame.

Chrono Trigger – Flame Toss Dual Tech

Coating a sword in fire, and then waving that sword around to catch other things on fire near you is wicked fun. ‘Nuff said.

Kirby – Flame

Kirby is cute. Even when he has a sharp pointy sword, he waves it cheerfully through the air like a kid playing pretend pirates. But when he swallows the fire breathing enemy, his face gets angry, like the American box art. He breathes fire a short distance. You don’t get very much control over it, there are other, better weapons. It’s too short to really be super satisfying. But it gets a mention just for the transformative power is has over the pink puff.

Mega Man X – Flame Mammoth’s Weapon

This one only ranks slightly higher than Kirby. At least Megaman X can run while torching. It’s amazing that after Fire Man, Heat Man, Pharaoh Man, Napalm Man, Flame Man, and Turbo Man, Megaman never got a flame thrower, but X did on his first time out, and not really a very good one. At least he could charge it up with the X Buster arm cannon attachment and send a rolling ball of fire down a hallway. But that’s a fireball, not a flamethrower. If I were to include fireballs, this list may never end. It only gets an honorable mention because it’s such a short range.

Natural Selection

After the movie Aliens, what space marine would attack an alien hive without one?

Mortal Kombat – Scorpion’s “Toasty” Fatality

As iconic as this is, it’s not very high on the list. In the original game, you didn’t have much control over it. Scorpion’s fire powers were only used in the fatalities. In later games you could use Scorpion’s fire powers in the middle of the match, so that’s better. But it’s not quite the same amount of control as some of these other contenders.

Command & Conquer – Flame Thrower Troop

I liked using them, despite how useless they really were. They were great against infantry units, except that every other infantry unit had superior range over them. And if one blew up, it damaged the surrounding area. So if you rushed with mass flamethrowers, they had the potential to cause a chain reaction and blow up every single flamethrower troop nearby(learned from experience, that one). In C&C Generals, the heavily armored Chinese Flame Tanks and Flame Turrets, those worked better.

End

Hopefully after reading this, you have learned 2 things. The first being, you will now automatically start critiquing other games for their lack of flamethrowers, and instantly identifying swarming situations where you wish you had one. And the second: you now know what to get me for Christmas.

What are your favorite flamethrowers?