FBC: Firebreak is a funny kind of game, especially from Remedy Entertainment. In an odd first, Remedy — the team behind single player games like Alan Wake 2 — has pivoted to multiplayer with its latest project.
FBC: Firebreak is a first-person co-op shooter set within the Remedy Verse. And while there’s plenty to like about this big swing from the developer, it really should have just stuck to what it knows.
The title’s set just weeks after the events of Control, where The Oldest House is run rampant with the Hiss. Keeping things from collapsing are team Firebreak, an initiative of FBC agents who must carry out maintenance repairs.
That’s about as much lore as you’re going to get, as the game haphazardly tosses you into a menu and sends you packing for your first “job”. We wouldn’t expect full-on cutscenes from a multiplayer-first co-op shooter like this, but a wee wink or a nod to the series that made this world so appealing in the first place wouldn’t have gone amiss.
That being said, FBC has a serious leg up aesthetically due to that link, with the twisted melding of mundane offices, brutalist structures, and a sticky note or two. Even the white font title cards crop up at the beginning of each run. It’s all pretty stunning to look at.
But what exactly are you doing in The Oldest House? Agents are tasked with playing out various menial jobs such as repairing ventilation systems, storing radiated spheres, or clearing out rooms of sticky note infestations.
To carry out the jobs, players have a choice of three kit classes. The Fix Kit is an engineers class, where you can fix things with a couple of swings of a big old wrench. The Jump Kit is an electrical charge which can power up various stations, and doubles as a way to jump up to higher ledges or evade enemies. Then there’s the Splash Kit, a water-spouting cannon used to put out fires and douse teammates to clean off infections.
A player with a Fix Kit can still put out fires, just as a Splash Kit user can still repair lighting systems. However, to do so you’ll have to work through a series of L1 and R1 inputs, sort of like calling in stratagems in Helldivers 2. Sounds simple, but these things take longer, and can put you at risk as hordes of Hiss rain down upon you. Really, you want a player with the right kit doing the right job.
Those are the fundamentals, and sadly those alone leave Firebreak feeling quite dull. The beginning levels and loadouts lack any form of spice, with missions playing out without much fanfare — even more so if you play the game in solo.
Everything is technically sound, at least. In fact, it all runs brilliantly on both PS5 and PS5 Pro. The frame rate is a stable 60 frames-per-second most of the time, and haptic feedback on the DualSense controller is first-party levels of good. It actually feels surprisingly great from a studio that primarily works on third-person games.
But despite this, those opening levels, which every player must grind through, feel lifeless, and it honestly takes a while before the semblance of a spark is found in Firebreak.
The five missions within the game have three clearance levels, each adding a new room to the run and a boss or boss-like challenge. There are also difficulty tiers to add to the carnage, and then corruptions which are basically modifiers that can make your life hell.
As you come back from each run, you’ll earn XP and Lost Aspects, which are used to unlock new weapons, gear, and perks. Harder runs can earn unique currencies used to upgrade perks even further. With plenty of perks and up to just nine slots per kit, loadouts can really start to evolve.
Once all of these things are thrown into the mix, FBC’s systems and gameplay start to click a lot more. The roles brought on by your kit become key components to success, team coordination is more necessary, and keeping an eye on ammunition, health, and most importantly status effects like fire, frost, or radiation become paramount.
And as you would expect, there’s that Remedy quirkiness in there. Each kit eventually unlocks an ultimate weapon like the lava-spewing teapot gun, or the piggy bank coin storm. What’s more, each level also has some kind of mechanic like a bubblegum-pink gunk that expands and blocks corridors, or sticky-note men that sprint towards you. And all of this is with fairly impressive Hiss numbers on screen, with hordes sprinting towards you with manic speed.
While this is where performance is at its choppiest, that perfect storm of mechanics, enemies, kits, and loadouts brings a bit of the spark that we were hoping for when the developer first announced this game. It has a zany and manic energy about it that we suspect a lot of people will really like.
However, for us, those moments of mania and Remedy seasoning are too few and far between, and honestly, the game doesn’t have enough of a hook to keep us coming back for more.
The team’s been upfront in saying it doesn’t want to go the live service route of demanding your time and continual dedication to the game — although post launch content is coming. It’s a refreshing stance that was also taken with FromSoftware’s Elden Ring Nightreign.
However, where Nightreign is fun from the start and only got better as you got closer to the end of its journey, Firebreak is just okay for the most part, finally starting to get good as you reach the later stuff — and then it just fizzles out. It doesn’t have that one more round energy, and successful extractions always feel like a bit of an anticlimax.
Conclusion
FBC: Firebreak stings a little, because it has so much of what we’re looking for in a co-op shooter. It’s got the killer world and aesthetic, it’s got quirky powers and role based kits, it’s got tight first-person gameplay, and doesn’t require you to grind things out for dozens of hours. However, despite all of that, Firebreak’s just fine, and ironically lacks the fire that we expect from Remedy’s output. It’s a fun, casual time, but you’ll play it, you’ll finish it, and before long you’ll forget about it and wish you had been playing Control 2 instead.