I think its best used in rts games

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean exactly, but I liked the way how fire was used in Tomb Raider 2013 to solve puzzles.

I'm totally lost myself. Am I missing some basic terminology?

Same here!

maybe its a reference to the best reproduced "life like" usage of fire in games?
or maybe which genera uses it best?
:s

If I'm understanding this correctly then Far Cry 2 would have the best I've seen.

The old game called The Firemen for the super famicom everything is fire in that game even the bosses all kinds of different types of fire

GTA SA had a cool fire mission.

Anyone remember the old dos game "Pyro" (I think it was called). Your character was just a block and you moved from one end of a room to another (entrance to exit) trailing a lit fuse trying to destroy as much of the room as possible without the flame catching up to you. I was addicted to it.