One of the most enjoyable games I know that can be played in less than an hour, Flash Point Fire Rescue is a superior, more detailed variation of a dire situation game like Pandemic. Instead of dealing with abstractions in a distant global setting, FPFR puts the players (or player) in a burning house where collapsing walls, exploding hazmats, and imperiled victims compete for every precious action point while the second hand of destruction moves forward.
A good combination of luck and skill, this game is a fun and exciting losing battle in which players must make life saving and life ending decisions every turn and hope that the courses chosen and the courses neglected result in the most saved people.
The character skills also mix things up nicely, though maybe the Imaging Technician's special skill of identifying Points of Interest is too powerful (choosing that character really improved my success rate right away), but the game is smart, exciting, and the deployment of the vehicles is an especially fun variable. Behold the deck guns!
Unlike Agricola (which is clever but has far too much piece relocation/counting for my taste), Pandemic (which is fairly decent but kind of annoying and very abstract), and Catan (which I thought was quite dull), Flash Point Fire Rescue is a good gateway game that fires my gamer imagination and can show off the merits of modern board games to curious non-gamers as well. A simple but instantly engrossing struggle against ever worsening odds with depth and a bunch of nice details.