FBC: Firebreak Review - Fun in Co-Op, Dull in Solo

CNET

4 hours ago

I'm hours into my second night of matches before FBC: Firebreak starts to make sense. I've got two other players in my squad, each with a different kit of equipment and weapons, as we fight off hordes of enemies while doing odd jobs around our haunted office building. After several missions, we've finally learned the game's atypical approach to team combat and how to back each other up. But one thing is clear: If you don't want to cooperate, this game isn't for you.
The newest game from Alan Wake II studio Remedy Entertainment, FBC: Firebreak is a co-op spinoff of the lauded 2019 single-player game Control. It's set in the same X-Files-like federal bureau, with players taking on the role of office workers cleaning up their building -- and dying to otherworldly invaders. As the studio's debut multiplayer game, it comes with the expected warts and wonders of a first effort. But it's how Remedy was able to blend the game's unique experiences with the unpredictability of online co-op play that makes FBC: Firebreak the weird one-of-a-kind game it is.
Remedy has been clear about what FBC: Firebreak is -- a AA-scope game that isn't as big or flashy as its flagship AAA titles, like 2023's Alan Wake II. FBC: Firebreak is only $40, half the price of Mario Kart World, Outer Worlds 2 and other upcoming AAA games. The studio has at least a year of free content planned for all FBC: Firebreak owners, including future playable additions. Cosmetic extras like outfits and gun skins will be available for purchase.
FBC: Firebreak offers solid value -- a multiplayer game you can dive into with two friends for anything from a relaxed 10-minute mission to a 30-minute, multi-phase expedition into the game's darker corners. There's a good amount of extra perks and weapons to unlock, giving players progression to work toward in the weeks after launch. And players will keep getting new content, including added missions, enemies and equipment, for at least a year.
Set six years after Control, players take the role of Federal Bureau of Control office grunts and field rangers who survived the original game's extra-dimensional Hiss invasion. While the FBC's director, Jesse Faden (protagonist of Control), is off doing important work, it falls to gamers to finish off the work she started and make the bureau's mysterious and vast office building, the Oldest House, safe again.
Firebreak walks a fine line, reusing many familiar elements from Control while intentionally stripping out much of the preamble to get players from the title screen into a match as quickly as possible. When I chatted with the game's director, Mike Kayatta, at Summer Game Fest shortly before release, he confirmed that the game won't include essential story content that fans need to play ahead of Control 2. The result is a streamlined experience co-op shooter fans will enjoy, especially if they like weird settings and active collaboration.
Remedy Entertainment
The best Firebreak advice: Coordinate or die
After multiple previews, my take of Firebreak's gameplay remains the same: a first-person co-op shooter that blends Left 4 Dead and Ghostbusters, with just enough Remedy flair to feel unique. Hordes of enemies periodically plague your squad of bedraggled mechanics, who must venture into the dim nethers of an office building to make essential repairs -- mixing frantic combat with escalating tasks.
What's changed in this review -- after the brief four days media had to play the final version before launch -- is seeing how it all fits together with squads of players across mission after mission.
What Firebreak does well is give trios of friends on voice chat a solid background activity for chatting and hanging out -- one that can scale in difficulty to satisfy players who like a challenge. Its collaboration mechanics are entertainingly idiosyncratic -- few other shooters have you soak enemies with a water cannon so a squadmate can follow up with an electric shock to zap them all at once. The gunplay is tight, and the bevy of unlockable perks dangles enough reasons to keep replaying matches.
But multiplayer requires a lot of coordination, which can be tricky when relying on strangers and the random skill levels and cooperation that online play brings. Player common sense is the surest path to success in Firebreak, but things are a lot easier when you can communicate with your squadmates.
Remedy Entertainment
That makes it hard to recommend playing without voice chat -- and the lack of built-in voice support when partying up will noticeably hinder the teamwork needed for solid runs. The pinging system just isn't enough, and matches without squadmate chatter are achingly quiet.
There's a wry humor in aligning this lack of communication with the game's premise -- that you and every Firebreak member filling your squad are rank-and-file office drones suiting up in makeshift armor to clear out cubicles of otherworldly invaders. As I jump in matches with folks who don't have voice chat or rarely use the game's ping mechanics to communicate, I imagine that I've gotten paired up with Bob from Accounting who I've only ever exchanged emails with. (Or, because we're in the tech-restricted world of Control, inter-office memos.)
But headcanons aside, it's still frustrating when there's no way to communicate (not even text chat) with your squadmates to give them tips if they're new or clue them in on complex mechanics. The first few weeks of FBC: Firebreak's release might be as chaotic as that of Elden Ring Nightreign's, with players learning on the fly and figuring out unclear best practices as they play.
Remedy Entertainment
Firebreak is a novel but limited first multiplayer attempt
There are a few tells that this is Remedy's first multiplayer game. The most noticeable is the lack of in-game communication. There are also uneven difficulty spikes and some odd jank -- like getting stuck in a fan you're trying to fix, which can also trap teammates coming to revive you -- amid mostly smooth matches. The bones of the experience are there, with fun a flow from one objective to the next, and clever ways that ramp up the tempo.
It's Remedy's humor and style that make this game stand out from the crowd, though it's not nearly as quirky as the studio's other games and you won't get a lot of depth in the lore -- at most, there are passing references to elements from Control or a throwaway dialogue mention of legendary janitor Ahti. Just like with Elden Ring Nightreign, Firebreak is set in a world players are used to exploring at their own pace, but with a blazingly-fast game tempo that leaves no time (and truthfully, little to unearth) for those seeking greater connections to the Remedyverse.
The gameplay playstyles are also limited. There are three kits, each with its own playstyle-defining equipment, to choose from, as well as six different weapons (you can only take one into the field) and three types of grenades. At launch, there are five missions (called "Jobs") to choose from. But Remedy has confirmed that fall and winter 2025 updates will each add one more, bringing the total to seven by year's end.
Compared to a game with similar co-op appeal like Helldivers 2, FBC: Firebreak has less variety, and its lack of procedurally generated areas means players will get to learn its handful of missions very quickly. Likewise, there aren't the randomized events and bosses of Elden Ring Nightreign that make every playthrough somewhat unpredictable; you'll need to play Jobs multiple times to be able to turn on Corruptions (which drop in Altered Items that shake up gameplay) to get similarly randomized elements in Firebreak.
But each of those three games differs greatly in tone and gameplay. FBC: Firebreak fulfills the fantasy of playing an office secretary or middle manager press-ganged into scrubbing the supernatural out of your workplace using cobbled-together experimental tools and whatever guns you can find. It's also worth pointing out that Firebreak has full cross-play, while Xbox owners have continued to be shut out of Helldivers 2.
The equipment kits, called Crisis Kits, come in three varieties (left to right): Jump Kit with shock area attacks, Fix Kit with a wrench and deployable turret and Splash Kit with water cannon and healing humidifier.
Remedy Entertainment
A new frontier for Remedy
As Remedy's first multiplayer game, there's some curious alchemy at work, but I can't deny some disappointment that iconic moments from the studio's games -- things like Control's Ashtray Maze or Alan Wake II's We Sing sequence -- aren't present. While I love these moments and the heights they reach, I also cherish them for the unique weirdness that makes me feel like I'm playing something only Remedy could create. These just aren't suitable for a multiplayer experience, Kayatta told me back in March, and that's understandable. Instead, the game is designed to organically produce emergent and unplanned moments for players.
And yes, I've definitely run into those in my short preview period. After ramping up the difficulty to Hard -- which I recommend as the baseline for full squads of Remedy game veterans -- squadmates went down (and were revived), and the final sections of Jobs felt properly climactic. In one mission, Hot Fix, we venture down to the sentient furnace -- recognizable to Control fans -- to fill barrels of pacifying goo that we hook up to ziplines.
One teammate filled barrels and sent them to the staging area, another fended off occasional hordes of Hiss, while I fed the barrels into the furnace's fiery maw from across the room. We found a rhythm that got the job done. After shuttering the furnace and taking down a powerful mini-boss, the heavy guitar kicks in. We get orders over the radio to hustle back to the elevator. Watching each other's backs as we leapfrog toward the stage's exit, music blasting, I get what Remedy is going for -- these dark missions aren't meant to be played alone. Crank up the difficulty, grab a couple buddies and ride out the waves together.
FBC: Firebreak comes out for PS5, Xbox Series X, Series S and PC on Steam and in the Epic Games Store on June 17 for $40.