Latest news with #Firebreak
CNET
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CNET
GTA 6, Nintendo's California Opening, FBC: Firebreak First Look
GTA 6, Nintendo's California Opening, FBC: Firebreak First Look | Obvious Skill Issue 4 GTA 6, Nintendo's California Opening, FBC: Firebreak First Look | Obvious Skill Issue 4 Click to unmute Video Player is loading. Play Video Pause Skip Backward Skip Forward Next playlist item Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 28:02 Loaded : 0.36% 00:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 28:02 Share Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Text Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Caption Area Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Drop shadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Close Modal Dialog This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button. Close Modal Dialog This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button. GTA 6, Nintendo's California Opening, FBC: Firebreak First Look | Obvious Skill Issue 4 GTA 6, Nintendo's California Opening, FBC: Firebreak First Look | Obvious Skill Issue 4 May 17, 2025 Tech Show Transcript Today on Obvious Skill Issue, David is joined by social producer Faith Chihil to chat about GTA6's latest delay announcement, what it was like visiting Nintendo's second U.S. store, and whether Remedy's FBC: Firebreak, a multiplayer shooter, can live up to the creepypasta search action vibes of Control.
Forbes
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
As A Parent, I'm Excited To Play Remedy's FBC: Firebreak This Week
Father sits in home office with his six-month-old Photo by Jens Büttner/picture alliance via Getty ... More Images) This week, Remedy is hosting a closed technical test for FBC: Firebreak—their next release slated to come out on June 17th. Remedy has been upfront about the fact that Firebreak was made for parents, by parents, and is designed to respect your time. Firebreak is a three-player co-op, first-person-shooter set in the Control universe. In the game, you and two teammates work your way through sections of the Oldest House (essentially the headquarters for the paranormal branch of the federal government) and have to eliminate Hiss (essentially zombies) who have overrun the place. While there have been some early complaints about the way the game's guns handle, overall, the buzz has been extremely positive. Online multiplayer is not a genre I typically play. Part of this is just personal preference. I love the solitary quiet of walking through a beautiful RPG world. I also love playing local multiplayer with my partner. But part of my hesitation about online multiplayer is also practical: my friend group is rarely online at the same time, and I appreciate the ability to dip in and out of a game quickly. If my toddler wakes up unexpectedly, or something at work has to be dealt with right away, I need games that allow me to walk away, without ruining someone else's good time. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder However, my love for the Remedy extended universe—the quirky sense of humor, powerful storytelling, and clever world and level designs—have pulled me into the Firebreak hype. That said, it sounds like Remedy intentionally designed Firebreak to appeal to players who are wary of certain coop conventions, including never ending cycles of season passes, loot crates, and long play sessions. It also sounds like Remedy intentionally designed Firebreak for parents. In an interview with VGC's Jordan Middler, Firebreak's lead designer Anssi Hyytiäinen, emphasized that the game was made 'by middle-aged dads for middle-aged dads.' Hyytiäinen explains that this shaped the game's design, 'we wanted to make the game easy to pick up.' I'm not a middle-aged dad, I'm a middle-aged mom, but I am excited to see games that take seriously the ways that the real-world shapes play and are respectful of the different needs and lifestyles of players out there. This attention to multiple play styles and player experiences, is one of the reasons I fell in love with both Alan Wake 2 and Control. Remedy's focus on short, meaningful play sessions is in line with what many parents are looking for—including the 87% percent of moms who game and represent a growing slice of the gaming marketplace. The decision to allow short play sessions is also wise in light of shifting age demographics. The video game market has been diversifying rapidly over the last several years. In 2024, the biggest age demographic of gamers in the US were people aged 30 to 39 years. Remedy's decision to make a coop FPS game that respects your time is good news for everyone. The fact that you can play short missions is a bonus not just for moms, but for anyone who has commitments that might interrupt play sessions: e.g., being an on-call nurse, caregiving for an elderly parent, working multiple jobs, etc. I'm looking forward to seeing how Remedy's design focus translates into my play experience this week and I am excited to provide a deeper dive into Firebreak after it comes out on June 17th.
Engadget
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
'FBC: Firebreak' preview: Controlled chaos
A successful co-op shooter feels like a bottomless tub of popcorn, hot and smothered in golden butter, built for bite-sized consumption and impossible to resist. Smooth mechanics and a satisfying, repeatable loop should draw you in for one more bite, one more round, over and over again. FBC: Firebreak , Remedy Entertainment's co-op shooter set in the universe of Control , almost hits these marks. It just needs a little more salt. Remedy is a AA studio best known for crafting single-player games like Alan Wake and Control , which feature Lynchian mysteries and hellish twists, and Firebreak is the studio's first attempt at crafting an online, cooperative, first-person shooter. Firebreak supports up to three players at a time, and it pits your team against hordes of otherworldly Hiss monsters in the bowels of The Oldest House, the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control. The building was locked up with a bunch of Hiss inside at the end of Control , and Firebreak takes place six years later. You're a government employee who's volunteered to eradicate the Hiss in The Oldest House — or try to, at least — and you're sent inside with some improvised weapons, no extra training and a hearty pat on the back. We broke down the specifics of Firebreak 's gameplay loop and upgrade cycles after the developer walkthrough in March, but here are the basics: Before the match begins, each player gets to select one of three Crisis Kits, loadouts designed with specific playstyles in mind. Crisis Kits come with a tool and an item each. The Jump Kit is based around electricity and it has the Electro-Kinectic Charge Impactor, a portable jackhammer kind of device with a conductive metal plate on the end, capable of slamming into enemies or propelling yourself into the air. It also has the BOOMbox, which plays music to attract enemies before exploding. The Fix Kit gives you a big wrench that's able to repair machinery and stagger Hiss, and it also includes a turret that you have to smack with the wrench to assemble. The Splash Kit is for all the water signs out there — it features the Crank-Operated Fluidic Injector, an industrial water cannon that can extinguish fires and soak enemies so they're primed for extra damage, plus a Humidifier, which sprays healing water in a wide area. The game is broken down by Jobs, which are essentially custom-built missions in specific regions of The Oldest House. All Jobs have three zones, but otherwise each one has a unique objective, crisis, and environment. After selecting a Job, you get to customize your run by setting the Threat Level and Clearance Level — Threat Level determines combat difficulty and the number of rewards up for grabs, while Clearance Level sets the number of zones you have to clear and the type of rewards. I spent roughly two and a half hours playing Firebreak with two strangers who quickly became the best Hiss-fighting friends I've ever had, and we messed around with three different Jobs, and various combinations of Threat and Clearance levels. I stuck with one loadout, the Fix Kit with the big wrench, and was able to purchase upgrades to add the turret, grenades, upgraded guns and an exploding piggy bank accessory to my loadout. The piggy bank slots into the wrench and creates a thunderous AOE tornado when you hit Hiss with it. While I don't fully understand the science at play with the pig, I immensely enjoy slamming it into monsters. We ran through three Jobs — Hot Fix, Ground Control and Paper Chase. Hot fix is an industrial level where you have to repair giant fans and eventually fill up barrels with fuel before sending them down a zipline. In Ground Control, you shoot these nasty, wriggling pustules that look like giant botfly larvae to retrieve radioactive leech pearls and throw them in a mining cart. Paper Chase features an office filled with sentient sticky notes, and you have to shoot them off the walls and floors before they consume you or turn into big yellow monsters. Throughout all of these tasks, waves of Hiss appear, demanding your attention and gunfire. There are ammo refill stations and healing showers positioned around the maps, though their positions change with each tweak to the Threat and Clearance levels. You'll also have to repair some of the environmental features in order to fully take advantage of them — for instance, the shower initially spews out cold water, which can freeze players while they're trying to heal, but you can send in someone with the Fix Kit (me!) to quickly mend the hot water. This, and fixing the ammo station, were generally the first two things my teammates and I did in each run. And then, chaos. While each Job has its own goal, there's a shared cadence to the missions, with moments of calm preparation and exploration violently interrupted by hordes of Hiss. Out of the pistol, shotgun and submachine gun, the SMG was my weapon of choice, and it tore through groups of enemies, spurred along by my teammates' fire and, every now and then, a grenade. Ammo and health were constant considerations, but it was easy enough to note the locations of refill stations and showers, and or to ask my Splash Kit teammate to throw some healing water my way. Firebreak does a great job of rewarding teams that stick together — you get an extra shield when you're near your friends, and a bright visual cue accompanies this bonus, consistently reminding you to stay as a group. Of course, friendly fire is also a thing in this game, and errant explosions and bullets brought down everyone on my team a few times. We laughed and revived our way through it, but this highlighted my main issue with the game: It's often difficult to discern where any attack is coming from, making it tricky to reposition or avoid damage. Overall, I craved a bit more feedback. Firing the SMG was effective, but it also felt imprecise, and this vibe extended to the rest of the gameplay. Gathering ammo, collecting currency, healing, repairing things, using special abilities, taking damage and identifying objectives — all of these actions could be clarified and made more tactile. Remedy isn't exactly known for its gunplay , but some small tweaks could make the core experience in Firebreak far more coherent. While we played the most rounds of Paper Chase, Ground Control was my favorite level, featuring wide-open spaces for fighting Hiss and a clear objective in shooting all those gross pustules. The clarity in Ground Control was refreshing, especially when compared with the slight but constant confusion hovering over the rest of the experience. Once we all unlocked our special abilities, Firebreak really started to flow. Even when we weren't exactly sure where to go or what to do, my teammates and I grouped up and stood against the Hiss, healing each other, laying down crowd control and, in my case, smashing piggy banks in enemies' faces. We laughed, we strategized, we accidentally shot each other and we screamed, 'Where the hell is the safe room?' into our headsets. We had a fabulous time. And this is the highest praise I can lay at Firebreak 's feet: I spent nearly three hours playing Firebreak with two strangers and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. When our session ended, I wanted to keep playing. Though there's room to clarify some mechanics and add feedback to some functions, Firebreak lays a solid foundation for the modern Left 4 Dead of our collective dreams. I know that's an outdated reference, but I'm also confident I'm not the only one who's still chasing the high of the Left 4 Dead series — it was a running point of comparison among my Firebreak crew. All of the issues I have with Firebreak can be fine-tuned before the game launches this summer, and I have faith in Remedy to do so. Firebreak is poised to be a thoughtful and focused entry in the co-op shooter genre, and it's already an inviting extension of Remedy's darkest and silliest sensibilities. FBC: Firebreak is due to hit the Epic Games Store, Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on June 17 for $50. It's coming to the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and Xbox Game Pass day-one.
The Verge
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
With FBC: Firebreak, Remedy wants to tell a different kind of story
Finnish studio Remedy is best known for its single-player action games, like the survival horror of Alan Wake and the supernatural thriller Control. With FBC: Firebreak, the developer is going in a different direction. It's the studio's first multiplayer release: a three-player co-op shooter set in the universe of Control. But while it won't have the more traditional cinematic storytelling the studio has become known for, that doesn't mean Remedy is abandoning its narrative roots. Instead, it is trying to explore them in a new genre. 'This game actually has quite a bit of narrative design thinking in it, especially because there is not a lot of room for direct storytelling,' says game director Mike Kayatta. Firebreak is set a few years after the events of Control, after which a building known as the Oldest House — the NYC headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, a government organization that investigates the supernatural — was sealed off to prevent a deadly force called the Hiss from getting out. But there were still people inside. While many of them were FBC bureaucrats and office workers, Firebreak follows members of the titular emergency unit, who serve as the first responders keeping everyone else (relatively) safe. That means venturing out into the Oldest House to fix machinery, eradicate the Hiss, and investigate other paranormal situations. Also, there are a lot of sticky notes, and you have to shower quite a bit. I was able to play through a few missions of Firebreak at Remedy's offices, and the game feels very different from the studio's previous work. It's a first-person shooter that relies heavily on cooperation. In each mission, you and two other players are let loose in the Oldest House to complete specific goals; in one of them, we had to repair the machinery that controlled the building's ventilation, and in another we had to clear away a growing wave of sticky notes that covered every surface. In some cases, the missions had multiple layers to them. After clearing out the sticky notes, for instance, we eventually fought our way to a gigantic boss monster made of even more stickies. In some ways, Firebreak seems like a traditional multiplayer shooter. You can equip different types of guns, toss grenades, and you're often up against hordes of the Hiss, which behave a lot like swarming zombies. As you progress, you earn currency to put toward upgrading your gear, and you can purchase new skins and sprays like in Fortnite. Each player also has to select a 'crisis kit,' which includes both special abilities — like letting you jump high in the air — as well as specific tools. One has a wrench for repairing machines, while another has a hose for putting out fires. In my brief experience, the game's structure necessitated coordination. You can't just run into the Oldest House, guns blazing, and expect to survive. Over voice chat, my team was constantly yelling directions and warnings at each other, giving a heads up that a fresh wave of Hiss was coming or sending the person with the right tool to repair something. Often, these repairs were life-or-death necessities. Scattered around each level were facilities to refill your ammo or shower (which removes status ailments and also replenishes your health), but they often lacked power, meaning you couldn't get bullets or health until you got them up and running. It was a chaotic mess (in a good way), but as with Control, what struck me most about Firebreak was the world itself. It's just so delightfully weird, infusing a bland office space with a sinister tone. Office cubicles become cover in shootouts, while those sticky notes are like an invasive species, smothering everything — including you, if you can't make it to a shower in time. Unlike Control, however, Firebreak is reliant almost entirely on its world to tell the story. There are no cutscenes to watch or audio logs to uncover. Instead, you sort out what's happening by being in this place, and both listening to the little bits of chatter between characters and observing the state of the Oldest House. Or you can try to suss it out anyways, but I'm still not sure why a giant rubber duck started following me in one level. Kayatta likens this storytelling technique to hearing stories from firefighters in the field. 'We're not telling a beginning to end story,' he explains. 'A lot of that is because the people inside the game are talking to themselves, and they're filling that narrative space for us.' The decision was made in part so as not to interrupt a bunch of friends playing together, letting you and your co-op partners fill in the space with your own chatter. But the structure is also designed to help Firebreak work for two audiences simultaneously: Control fans and newcomers. 'The important thing for us is that if you played Control, you signed up for a single-player, exploration, character- and story-focused experience,' Kayatta says. 'It was super important that we didn't say, 'Ha ha, curve ball, now you need to go find two friends and play a cooperative game that is a totally different genre from a different perspective.' That feels terrible. Those people need to be protected so that they can go from Control 1 to Control 2 and experience the journey that we promised them. And we are absolutely going to make that happen. On the other hand, we also want this to be rewarding and fulfilling for them [if they do play Firebreak ].' Meanwhile, he says that 'then you have what we hope is a large audience who actually has never played Control … we wanted to make sure that they could understand the world and didn't feel the constant pressure to go back and play Control.' That means a balancing act between having enough narrative to be interesting to new players and feel distinctly Remedy, but without so much direct storytelling that Firebreak becomes required reading for anyone waiting to jump into Control 's sequel. And if you do want to dig further into things like the Hiss or what an Altered Item is, you can always play the original Control or dig into a Wiki (or maybe one day watch a movie or show). When it comes to how much you want to dig into Firebreak 's narrative, Kayatta says that they 'want it to be up to you.' No matter which way you look at it, Firebreak is a big departure for Remedy. It's a new genre, an expansion into multiplayer, and the studio's first self-published game as it attempts to take more ownership of its own franchises. It's an opportunity to expand in a new direction while still attempting to stay true to what a Remedy game is. 'Forever we have had these very controlled single-player experiences, and we will continue to do that,' Kayatta says. 'But we ask the question with Firebreak: what is it like to share one of those spaces with your friends?'
BBC News
10-02-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Cyber firm expands at University of Wolverhampton base
A global tech firm has expanded its manufacturing and testing site at the University of Wolverhampton Science Park after doubling its workforce to meet a rise in demand for its said its anti-hacking work has led to it work with Nato, the Ministry of Defence and other organisations responsible for "critical national infrastructure".The firm said it expected to increase its team to 32 employees by the end of 2025 and create 44 new jobs by 2027."We warmly welcome Goldilock's commitment to growing its pioneering cyber security business in the West Midlands," said Sharon Thompson, deputy mayor of the West Midlands. The firm said it had chosen to invest in the Wolverhampton site as it was "scaling up" from research and development (R&D) of its Firebreak programme to large-scale manufacturing. Firebreak is designed to ringfence networks away from the internet to make them inaccessible to hackers, the firm Kines, co-founder and chief operating officer of Goldilock said he was thrilled to be expanding."With sophisticated ransomware and AI-powered attacks on a continuous rise, paired with the increasing interconnectedness of systems, Goldilock's technology provides a critical, foundational layer of defence. "The West Midlands offers us an invaluable hub for innovation, providing access to a diverse pool of talented tech professionals and a supportive business environment from which we can continue to grow the business and get our critical product to where it's needed most, as quickly as possible."City of Wolverhampton Council leader, Stephen Simkins, said: "Goldilock's expansion is a testament to the city of Wolverhampton's growing appeal as a destination of choice for ambitious tech firms, with an extensive R&D network, deep pool of specialist talent and proximity to the region's end-to-end manufacturing supply chain." Follow BBC Wolverhampton & Black Country on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
