“This is fine.” – Probably Jesse Faden, watching the servers collapse.
Remedy Entertainment is a studio that thrives in the weird. From the shifting corridors of Control to the mind-bending dualities of Alan Wake, they’ve built a reputation on layered narratives, impossible physics, and dialogue that sometimes sounds like David Lynch doing improv. So, when they announced FBC: Firebreak, a first-person co-op action game set in the same universe as Control, I was intrigued. Remedy’s known for bending minds, not hoses. Turns out, they’re not great at keeping your fire team connected though.
Set in the aftermath of Control, Firebreak sees the Federal Bureau of Control overrun by Hiss some years after Jesse Faden’s promotion to director. For those who may not know FBC: Firebreak is a stark departure from Remedy’s usual norm of single-player, deep narrative type games; it’s a co-op shooter much in the vein of Left 4 Dead or Helldivers. Instead of playing as director Faden who is empowered with magic, players will instead take on the role of a disposable janitor in homemade looking armor who are tasked with fixing all the maintenance issues that have come up since the last game. One of the odd things is that the game doesn’t explain all this directly, players are expected to have some familiarity with the Control universe.
MSRP: $39.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $29.99
Firebreak is broken up into five specific jobs, each taking place in a different location throughout the Oldest House. Players will be tasked with completing specific objectives, like Helldivers 2 all the while having to destroy waves of increasingly more difficult Hiss; much like Left 4 Dead. These jobs are all weird because everything about Control is weird; one job has players tasked with blasting pink ‘bubble-gum’ like goo off turbines while another as players destroying sentient sticky notes which culminates in a boss fight with a giant sticky-note monster known as Sticky Ricky. As fun as all these jobs are, the fact that there are only a handful of them makes the repetitiveness that much worse.
I liked the mission-specific mechanics that Firebreak presents to players, using elements like fire, water and electricity all play a role in combat and even traversing the levels. Each ‘kit’ as the classes are known as, will allow players to contribute in a different way. The splash kit works as the healer of the group, dousing players with water will not only put out flames but also clear them of most of the crazy debuffs that will pop up. As useful as each of the classes are, none of them really feel super unique outside of gameplay, as each of the tasks can be done manually. Meaning I don’t have to have a Fix kit on my team to repair items, I just have to play a mini-game that sees players press LB and RB to the pattern that is displayed.
Another area where Firebreak really misses is the difficult scaling, each job has 3 levels that players need to clear. The first part is just one area and really easy, once finished players must run back to the elevator to leave. Level 2 adds a new area to the first and level 3 adds the ‘boss fight’ as well as the previous two levels. Waves of Hiss will show up to deter players, but the issue is the game doesn’t balance when to put its foot on the gas. Unlike the L4D gams famous ‘Director’ which tracked players progress and provided enemies based on that fact, in Firebreak the game just randomly unleashes enemies to its whim. Sometimes missions are ridiculously easy and others it’s just so hard that we end up escaping by the skin of our teeth…if at all. Even Helldivers 2 with its ‘1-million ways to die’ type gameplay offers players brief respite in between waves. Combined with the repetitive missions the lack of balance with the enemies and the so-so combat just makes this one feel like a bit of a letdown.
Firebreak also has some issues with keeping party members together, at least one time during every single play session I was disconnected from my match. Every time this happened the action in the game froze as if we were lagging and then everything goes black and I am back at the main menu. The reason this becomes so frustrating is that much like Helldivers 2 players will earn currency from their missions that are used to purchase upgrades for their weapons, perks and outfits. So, when the game disconnects players will lose everything that they have collected, pissed me off every. single. time.
I didn’t hate FBC: Firebreak at all, in fact I rather enjoyed my time running through its jobs with my friends; even if we had seen everything the game offers after the first day. But Firebreak isn’t a perfect game, it has a lot of issues, especially with the balance and the constant disconnections which for an online-only game is utterly unacceptable in my opinion. The good news is that all these issues can be fixed, but if I’m honest; I miss the days when players could buy a game, take it home and play it with no issues from start to finish, I know digital is the way but it shouldn’t make these developers dependent on the ‘patch’ crutch. I don’t know, just an ‘old man shouting at clouds’ I guess but FBC: Firebreak is fun to play as long as you have a solid team and temper your expectations.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
