I Played FBC: Firebreak and It’s No Fun Going on the Game’s Dark Missions Alone

I am on my second night of games before FBC: Firebreak is starting to make sense. I have two other players in my team, each with a different kit of equipment and weapons, while we were fighting hordes of enemies while doing small work around our haunted office building. After several missions, we finally learned the atypical approach to team fighting game and how to support each other. But one thing is clear: if you don’t want to cooperate, this game is not for you.

The last game of Lake Studio Remedy Entertainment, FBC: Firebreak is a cooperative spin-off of solo game control in 2019. It takes place in the same X-Files type federal office, players playing the role of office workers cleaning their building-and dying of invaders from another world. As a first multiplayer game of the studio, it is delivered with the warts and the wonders expected of a first effort. But this is how Remedy was able to mix the unique experiences of the game with the unpredictability of the online cooperative game that makes FBC: Firebreak the unique foreign game.

Remedy was clear on what FBC is: Firebreak – An AA -Scope game which is not as large or flashy as its AAA flagship titles, like Alan Wake II of 2023. FBC: Firebreak is only $ 40, half of the price of Mario Kart WorldExterior Worlds 2 and other AAA games to come. The studio has at least one year of free content provided for all FBC owners: Firebreak, including future playable additions. Cosmetic extras such as outfits and firearms will be available for purchase.

FBC: Firebreak offers a solid value – a multiplayer game in which you can plunge with two friends for everything, from a relaxed 10 -minute mission to a multi -shade expedition in the darker corners of the game. There are a good amount of advantages and additional weapons to unlock, giving players the progression to work in the weeks following the launch. And the players will continue to obtain new content, including missions, enemies and additional equipment, for at least a year.

Located six years after checking, players play the role of crackers and rangers from the office of the Federal Office and the Field Rangers who survived the extra-dimensional whistling invasion of the original game. While the director of the FBC, Jesse Faden (control protagonist), is doing an important job, he fell to the players to finish the work she started and to make sure that the mysterious and vast office building, the oldest house, in complete safety.

Firebreak walks a fine line, reusing many familiar elements of control while intentionally deleting a large part of the preamble to bring players from the title screen in a match as quickly as possible. When I discussed with the game director, Mike Kayatta, at the Summer Game Fest shortly before the release, he confirmed that the game would not include the content of the essential history that fans need to play before control. The result is an experience rationalized by fans of cooperatives, especially if they like strange parameters and active collaboration.

The best fire advice: contact details or die

After several previewMy Firebreak game match remains the same: a first -person cooperative shooter who mixes 4 dead and ghostbusters, with just enough recourse to feel unique. Hordes of enemies periodically afflict your squad of scour mechanisms, which must venture into the dark nodes of an office building to make essential repairs – mixing a frantic fight with increasing tasks.

What changed in this review – after the four days, the media had to play the final version before launch – is to see how it all adapts with squads of players through Mission after Mission.

What Firebreak does well is to give trios of friends on the vocal chat a solid background activity to discuss and spend time – which can evolve in difficulty to satisfy players who like a challenge. Its collaboration mechanisms are idiosyncratic entertainment – few other shooters soak you enemies with a water cannon so that a squad comrade can follow up with an electric shock to zap them all at the same time. The shooting game is tight, and the multitude of unlockable advantages hangs enough reasons to continue to replay the matches.

But multiplayer requires a lot of coordination, which can be delicate when you rely on foreigners and the levels of random competence and the cooperation that online gaming brings. The common sense of players is the safest path to success in Firebreak, but things are much easier when you can communicate with your squad comrades.

This makes it difficult to recommend playing without voice chat – and the lack of integrated vocal support when you party will significantly hinder the teamwork necessary for solid races. The pinging system is not enough, and Squad’s without chatter games are painfully silent.

There is an ironic humor to align this lack of communication with the premise of the game – that you and each member of Firebreak filling your team are basic desktop drones that suit you in a makeshift armor to eliminate the invading cabins from another world. While I jump in matches with people who do not have vocal chat or who rarely use the game mechanics of the game to communicate, I imagine that I have associated myself with Bob of the accounting with whom I only exchanged emails. (Or, because we are in the world of restricted control of technology, inter-off memos.)

But the canons aside, it is always frustrating when there is no way to communicate (not even the textual cat) with your squad comrades to give them advice if they are new or indicate them in complex mechanics. The first weeks of FBC: the release of Firebreak could be as chaotic as that of Elden Ring Nighterg‘S, the players learning on the fly and determining the best unclear practices by playing.

Firebreak is a first new but limited multiplayer attempt

There are a few breeds that it is the first multiplayer game of Remedy. The most notable is the lack of communication in play. There are also unequal difficulty and a strange jank – like getting stuck in a fan that you are trying to repair, which can also trap your teammates to come to revive you – in the midst of mainly smooth matches. The bones of the experience are there, with a fun flow from one objective to another, and intelligent ways that increase the tempo.

It is the humor and the style of Remedy which make this game stand out from the crowd, although it is not as eccentric as the other games of the studio and that you will not get much depth in tradition – at most, there are temporary references to the elements of control or a mention of a horny dialogue of the legendary concierge Ahti. Just like with Elden Ring Nighterign, Firebreak takes place in a world that players are used to exploring at their own pace, but with a fast play tempo that leaves no time (and sincerely, little to find) for those who are looking for higher ties with Remedyverse.

Gameplay game styles are also limited. There are three kits, each with their own equipment for definition of game games, to choose, as well as six different weapons (you can only take one in the field) and three types of grenades. At the launch, there are five missions (called “Jobs”). But Remedy confirmed that the fall and winter 2025 updates will each add another, bringing the total to seven at the end of the year.

Compared to a game with a similar cooperative call like Helldivers 2, FBC: Firebreak has less variety, and its lack of areas generated by the procedure means that players will be able to learn its handful of missions very quickly. Likewise, there are not randomized events and the Boss of Elden Ring Nightreign which make each game somewhat unpredictable; You will have to play work several times to be able to activate the corruptions (which reduce the modified elements that shake the gameplay) to obtain randomized elements similar to Firebreak.

But each of these three games differs considerably by tone and gameplay. FBC: Firebreak achieves the fantasy of playing an office secretary or a medium press press to clean the supernatural of your workplace using paved experimental tools and everything you can find. It should also be emphasized that Firebreak has a complete cross game, while Xbox owners have continued to be excluded from Helldivers 2.

As the first multiplayer game of Remedy, there is a curious alchemy at work, but I cannot deny a certain disappointment that the emblematic moments of the studio games – things like the labyrinth of Cendrier de Control or the Wen Sing sequence of Alan Wake II – are not present. Although I like these moments and the heights they reach, I also dear them for the unique oddity that gives me the impression of playing that something could only create the remedy. These are simply not adapted to a multiplayer experience, Kayatta said to me in MarchAnd it’s understandable. Instead, the game is designed to produce emerging and unforeseen moments for players.

And yes, I certainly met people in my short preview period. After having increased the difficulty of the hard – which I recommend as a reference base for the complete teams of veterans of the remedy game – the Comrades d’Escouade have dropped (and were relaunched), and the final sections of jobs felt properly cultivating. In a mission, Hot Cax, we advent ourselves to the Four Sentient – recognizable to control fans – to fill barrels of Pacification of GOO that we connect to the zip lines.

A teammate completed barrels and sent them to the staging area, another has pushed hordes of occasional whistles, while I feed the barrels in the mouth of the Fournaise on the other side of the room. We found a rhythm that did the job. After closing the furnace and removed a powerful mini-boss, the heavy guitar comes into play. We get radio orders to return to the elevator. Looking at everyone’s back while we jump towards the release of the scene, the dynamics of the music, I get what the remedy goes – these dark missions are not supposed to be played alone. Increase the difficulty, take some friends and take out the waves together.

FBC: Firebreak goes out for PS5, Xbox Series X, Series S and PC on Steam and in the Epic Games store on June 17 for $ 40.