Latest news with #RemedyEntertainment
Time of India
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
5 best horror games to play on PC (August 2025 edition)
(Image via Ebb Software/Bloober/Remedy Entertainment) Horror hits different when you're playing it alone, late at night, with nothing but the glow of your PC screen. From remakes of cult classics to brand-new nightmare fuel, 2025 has plenty of terrifying gems that'll keep you sweating through your headset. Here are 5 of the best horror games you should absolutely dive into this August. 1. Silent Hill 2 Remake Silent Hill 2 Remake The cult classic finally got the justice it deserved. Bloober Team nailed the eerie fog, disturbing atmosphere, and psychological dread of James Sunderland's story. The SH2 remake feels modern, haunting, and deeply unsettling in all the right ways. Perfect for anyone who wants a slow-burn psychological horror that sticks with you long after you shut down your PC. 2. Alan Wake 2 Alan Wake 2 Gameplay and Impressions... Remedy nailed the blend of storytelling and survival horror here. Alan Wake 2 takes you deep into a world where fiction and reality blur, swapping between FBI agent Saga Anderson and the tortured writer himself. The atmosphere? Terrifying. The combat? Relentless. The story? Straight-up mind-bending. If you like your horror layered with mystery and surreal twists, this one's an absolute must-play. 3. Scorn Scorn Is A Gorgeous Nightmare If HR Giger designed your nightmares, this is what they'd look like. Scorn drops you into a grotesque biomechanical world where every corridor feels alive, and not in a good way. It's part puzzle-solving, part survival, and entirely disgusting in the best possible way. Uncomfortable? Yes. Beautiful? Weirdly, also yes. 4. Alien: Isolation ALIEN: ISOLATION Is Great Because It's Unfair Nothing beats the raw terror of hiding in a locker while a Xenomorph sniffs around for you. Alien: Isolation is still the ultimate 'survive or die quietly' horror game. Instead of guns blazing, it's all about strategy, stealth, and not making a single wrong move. If you've ever wanted to feel the suspense of Ridley Scott's original Alien movie, this game is the closest you'll get. 5. Dead Island 2 10 Reasons Why You NEED to Play Dead Island 2 in 2025! Okay, this one's less about creeping dread and more about chaotic, bloody fun. Zombies? Check. Creative weapon crafting? Check. A tropical paradise gone absolutely insane? Double check. Dead Island 2 is full of gory action and has immersive graphics with a super-realistic sound engine. The sounds from the zombies are heart-racing and will keep you on the edge. PC horror is thriving, and these five titles prove there's something for every kind of scare-seeker, from mind-bending psychological terror to all-out zombie-smashing mayhem. So grab your headset, dim the lights, and maybe keep a blanket nearby… because these games don't just play with you. They haunt you. Catch Rani Rampal's inspiring story on Game On, Episode 4. Watch Here!
Time of India
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Rockstar Games and Remedy confirm long-awaited Max Payne remakes are still coming; fans say ‘We already have reached that limit'
Rockstar Games and Remedy Entertainment have reaffirmed that the long-awaited remakes of Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne are still in development. According to Gaming Bible, the announcement was first made in April 2022; the news excited both long-time fans and newcomers. Remedy, the original developer behind the iconic titles and known for Alan Wake and Control, is leading the project, making the remakes especially promising. The collaboration with Rockstar ensures a faithful yet modern revival of the noir-action classics, keeping hopes high for a stylish, story-driven return. In an interview with Kiwi TalkZ, David O'Reilly confirmed the same; he said, "I worked on GTA 6 from 2018 to 2023. Went onto it after we wrapped up on RDR2. It's fascinating having a look at all this stuff." Max Payne's iconic debut Max Payne originally launched on the PlayStation 2 back in 2001, and its blend of gritty, noir-style storytelling, comic book-style cutscenes, and intense gunplay quickly made it a fan favourite. One of its most iconic contributions to gaming was the introduction of 'bullet time', a slow-motion mechanic inspired by John Woo action films, which let players dive through the air in cinematic fashion while taking down enemies. Sequels and development Following the original, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne arrived in 2003, continuing the story with the same developer, Remedy Entertainment. The series was later expanded with Max Payne 3 in 2012, available on PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Unlike the first two games, this instalment was developed by Rockstar Studios. Though both Max Payne and Max Payne 2 are set to be fully remade and released together, updates on the project have been sparse. It's been over three years since the remakes were announced, leaving fans eagerly anticipating new information. Rockstar Games has been working closely with Max Payne 2 Naturally, some fans worried that the Max Payne 1 & 2 remakes might be stuck in development limbo. Fortunately, there's good news. According to The Vice, Remedy Entertainment recently confirmed in an investor report that they have been collaborating closely with Rockstar Games on the project. Amid this, a Reddit post has garnered attention where one said, 'Love David's channel; his videos offer a lot of great insight into game development. Hope he gets mentioned in the credits for his work on GTA 6.' 'He did explore GTA 5 and mountains he worked on, there's an easter egg by some dev where they put a persons face in the terrain and it spotted after launch and removed and replaced by a cock (chicken), he says he can't talk about that story since he's under NDA. That part always sticked out to me, he even sorta references that easter egg but tries to brush it off and be vague,' another added. 'These games are so massive that I don't think anything less than 8 years is a reasonable expectation.'
The Verge
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Remedy is in control
In the quiet suburb of Espoo, a short drive west from Helsinki in Finland, is an unassuming building that's home to one of the most confounding studios in games. Remedy Entertainment is known for getting weird. It started with the meta horror of Alan Wake, and has since expanded with Control, a game that turns a bureaucratic government office into a sinister and unsettling battleground. Their worlds merge the surreal and the mundane — which is not a bad description of Remedy itself. On the day I visited, the studio's energy was relaxed and subdued — in true Finnish style, there are even multiple onsite saunas — and frankly a little boring, especially for a creative team known for the likes of the mind-bending Ashtray Maze or 'Old Gods of Asgard' musical. But that contrast is also one of the keys to Remedy's recent success. In the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, the video game industry has experienced studio closures, persistent layoffs, corporate meddling, and ill-fated games that were canceled soon after launch. Exceptions like Remedy have been rare. Over the past decade, the studio has been implementing a plan to help it compete with bigger, better-funded developers and publishers, steadily inching its way from a work-for-hire studio to one in charge of its own destiny. As the industry has shifted toward live-service hits like Fortnite and blockbusters like Grand Theft Auto, Remedy has taken big swings with ambitious and delightfully strange narrative titles. Now it's trying to expand even further with its first multiplayer — and self-published — game in FBC: Firebreak. The stakes are high: it's the perfect example of Remedy's new way of working and a proof of concept for its larger, more expansive future. It's also a strange experience, marrying the surreal tone of Control with co-op play that bucks the latest online gaming trends. But to hear it from the Finnish developer, it only gets to take swings like Firebreak because it nailed all of the boring stuff first. 'We are this building,' explains creative director Mikael Kasurinen. 'This is it; this is us. We aren't owned by anybody else, and I think that realization brings that culture of taking more responsibility. There is nothing above us that will save the day if things go wrong. It's all on us.' This wasn't the case for much of the studio's existence. Founded in 1995, Remedy's first release was a combat racing game called Death Rally. A few years later, the studio garnered widespread acclaim with 2001's Max Payne, a hard-boiled noir with action ripped out of a John Woo movie. After a sequel, Remedy expanded in new directions with the survival horror game Alan Wake and sci-fi game / TV show hybrid Quantum Break. Despite its modest success, though, the studio found itself stuck in a cycle of working from game to game. It didn't own any of its creations — instead, they were the property of publishers like Rockstar and Microsoft — and, with the exception of the rapid 18-month development of Max Payne 2, Remedy was only putting out new games every five years or so. That half-decade cycle meant that if any game failed, so did the company. This put Remedy in a precarious position, and it's something Tero Virtala realized right away when he took over as CEO in 2016. 'At that point Remedy had been around for 20 years, and succeeded in relation to many criteria,' Virtala says. That included releasing several hit games and steadily growing in headcount. But Virtala says that 'it didn't feel like enough' to have such a talented team and only release one game every four or five years. While it's typical for games to take years to build, only having one project at a time left the studio vulnerable in case any of them flopped. Virtala helped spearhead a new path for Remedy's future built on two pillars: One was becoming a multi-project studio, so that it was less dependent on any single game. Second, Remedy also wanted ownership of its original creations and to eventually become its own publisher. 'It's important to understand enough of the business, even though I don't love it.' A major part of making this work was ensuring that everyone in the studio bought in and understood the plan, not just management. It sounds like a controversial idea and runs counter to the way the industry typically works: whereas most studios operate with clear lines dividing creative and business, Virtala believed that empowering developers to understand the business side meant they'd be better able to make the right decisions on the creative end. 'People are smart,' Virtala says of his employees, 'and they are mature enough to understand that if you want to make creative, ambitious games, it's not possible unless you have the financial basis, unless you are aligned with the technology, unless you have the people and the production plans are in order. We try to provide the teams with as much information as possible. And then the teams are in the best place to try to figure out what is the best creative path within these constraints.' And it seems that the creative side has bought in. Sam Lake has been with Remedy for nearly its entire 30-year existence, starting out as a writer on Death Rally. (He's also the face of the original Max Payne — literally.) He now serves as creative director and is the lead writer behind all of Remedy's major franchises. 'It's important to understand enough of the business, even though I don't love it,' Lake says. 'When you're creating a game concept, there are a lot of decisions being made, and the more you understand about what these decisions affect, the better you are prepared to choose wisely.' The real turning point came with the launch of Control in 2019, the first game released under Virtala's leadership. While the idea for the story and world had been kicking around in Lake's head for some time, the actual development happened as Virtala was implementing broader studio changes. He pushed for more efficient processes and timelines, hoping to make games faster without sacrificing the quality level Remedy had become known for. 'Those three years were transformative for Remedy,' Kasurinen says. He notes that this new development style meant planning much more in advance on Control, and viewing limitations around budgets and timelines as creative challenges 'that forced us to reinvent many things in a good way.' When it came out, Control exemplified exactly what the studio wanted to be: it was developed in a comparatively brisk three years, was a brand-new property that the studio would (eventually) own outright, and was in development alongside another project in collaboration with Korean publisher Smilegate. Creatively, it also allowed the team to attempt a new kind of open-ended action game and it opened up new directions for the future. Control's success allowed this plan to continue. Since then, Remedy has steadily expanded. Control was followed by a long-awaited sequel to Alan Wake, and the studio has grown to 380 people. It currently has four projects in development: a sequel to Control, remakes of the Max Payne games, an unannounced title, and its first multiplayer game, the recently launched Control spinoff FBC: Firebreak. With the exception of Max Payne, which is being published by Rockstar, all of its in-development games are self-published. Remedy now also holds the publishing rights for Alan Wake (the sequel was originally published by Epic Games), and has created its own connected universe, which unites the worlds of Alan Wake and Control. In 2024 it partnered with Annapurna Pictures to potentially expand this even further through film and TV adaptations. Branching out into new genres and mediums is a further attempt to grow Remedy's capabilities — and to better insulate itself from the volatile whims of the games industry. Getting to this moment required some structural changes. Remedy now has multiple development teams, with staff shifting between them as needed, and it also has a unique setup with two creative directors in Lake and Kasurinen. Lake says that both of them want to be hands-on when they're leading a new game, and so having two people in the role allows the creative side to always be involved in larger studio decisions, even in the midst of an intense development process. 'When I was deep into Alan Wake 2, I wasn't a part of attending weekly management meetings,' Lake says. 'I just needed to focus on [the game]. But it's really important that we have the creative side represented on the company level. So this arrangement gives us flexibility. We can represent each other.' Even still, the transition wasn't always smooth. As Remedy attempted to grow into a multi-project studio, not all of its expansion attempts worked out. First, the studio partnered with Smilegate on a new iteration of the popular military shooter Crossfire. The idea was that Smilegate would make the multiplayer portion of the game, while Remedy would craft a single-player story mode, giving the studio a chance to make its first first-person shooter. But CrossfireX was poorly received upon release in 2022 — campaign mode included — and shut down a year later. Remedy also attempted to get into the world of free-to-play games through a partnership with Tencent, but the title — known as Project Vanguard — eventually shifted to a premium release, before finally being canceled before it was ever shown to the public. Virtala says that these setbacks were largely a result of pushing too far too fast. And in the case of Vanguard, the failure helped the studio realize that four games at a time was the sweet spot for what the company could manage. 'We started to feel that we had a bit too many projects for our size of organization,' he explains. 'We saw that if we had a bit more focus, it would help our other projects to succeed.' But those failures don't mean Remedy is done trying new things. In fact, the studio's first fully self-published game, FBC: Firebreak, is also one of its most surprising releases. It's a multiplayer shooter, which might sound like an odd release from a studio known for single-player narratives. But as the studio looked to expand, multiplayer was one of the key areas the team wanted to explore. 'We want to explore ways of building new types of experiences.' Firebreak is a relative baby step in that direction. It's connected to a popular game the studio owns, and it was built by a small internal team. While regular updates are planned — including 'major' releases in the fall and winter — Firebreak isn't a live-service game on par with Fortnite or Call of Duty, designed to keep players coming back with ongoing events and daily activities. It's a paid game meant explicitly to 'respect the player's time.' It's also a way for the studio to expand its capabilities without stretching the team too far. 'We want to explore ways of building new types of experiences,' says Mike Kayatta, game director on Firebreak. 'I like to think that we know what we're doing when it comes to these large, single-player story-driven games. This is how the studio built its reputation and what it's good at. When you're faced with saying, 'Hey, we need to diversify the types of experiences we're making,' do you really just want to just make five more of these linear, story-driven games?' So far, Firebreak's release hasn't gone exactly to plan. It was greeted with mixed reviews from critics and players, many of whom complained that, while it maintains some of the weird and unsettling tone as Control, it's held back by repetitive gameplay and a lack of Remedy-style narrative flourishes. But the studio seems intent on fixing things, recently posting an extensive list of patch notes and other upcoming changes that cover everything from the onboarding experience to the UI. 'Several things have gone well,' the studio wrote. 'Clearly, not everything has.' The success of a game like Firebreak is still critical for Remedy even under its multi-project structure. It's a complex plan that has kept Virtala very busy over the last 10 years. In fact, when I spoke to him in an empty conference room at Remedy's office, he was delayed because he had to prepare for the studio's most recent financial report the next day. 'Every single game is highly important for us,' Virtala says. 'There is no question that we are not fully insulated. But we are less dependent on any single game than we used to be.' This feeling is only strengthened by the current realities of the gaming industry. It's a space where even a well-funded EA studio can't get a Black Panther game made, a Sony-backed multiplayer shooter in development for eight years, Concord, is quickly shuttered, and the likes of Netflix and Amazon are struggling to make headway despite huge investments. Remedy is currently in a good place, with a growing back catalog and multiple games in development, and while it has grown, it's still a fraction of the size of most other studios making big-budget games, which often have headcounts in the thousands. While the last decade has been a big shift at Remedy, Lake describes his time at the studio as being filled with constant change, as the company steadily grew in terms of both staff and the scale of its projects. Even still, he believes that the current incarnation of the studio might be ideal for this multi-project structure, and says that he 'would be surprised' if Remedy continued to grow significantly over the next few years. While many large studios are seemingly focused on perpetual growth, the team at Remedy is happy to be sustainable. 'There were a couple of false starts trying to get there, but now it feels very much like we're settled,' says Lake. 'This is what Remedy is now.'
Daily Mirror
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
PS Plus Essential July 2025 games revealed – Diablo 4 comes to the service
The PS Plus free games for July 2025 have been announced, with the likes of Diablo 4 and Jusant arriving on PS5 and PS4 in the next few weeks for Essential subscribers. PS Plus has prematurely unveiled its new Essential games, announcing the addition of titles such as Diablo 4 and Jusant. PS Plus has had a somewhat inconsistent year, despite recently surprising fans with a major drop during Days of Play and revealing that Remedy Entertainment's FBC: Firebreak would be part of its Extra and Premium June 2025 drop. However, there have been enough disappointments to make players slightly wary. It can be frustrating for players to pay for online services, so the free games certainly help to sweeten the deal, particularly for Essential subscribers. This month, however, those subscribers are in for a pleasant surprise. Our PS Plus Essential July 2025 predictions suggested we might see some exciting new indie titles, and we weren't far off. But it was unexpected that Sony would deliver a AAA title with dark themes this month. The latest games have been announced, and they're a real treat for players. Here's what you need to know about the PS Plus Essential July 2025 games. PS Plus Essential July 2025 games The PS Plus Essential July 2025 games have been unveiled a tad early today, marking the 15th anniversary of PlayStation Plus. Sony has announced in a blog post that the new titles will be available to players from Tuesday, 1st July. Those games are: Diablo 4 This means that the previous line-up of games is set to vanish. So, make sure you download Destiny 2: The Final Shape, NBA 2K25, Alone in the Dark 2024 and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk before they leave the service permanently and become paid titles. It's an impressive array of games, particularly with Diablo 4 nearing its Season 8 end date, and Jusant offering a fantastic climbing experience that fully immerses players in its world. It's a lot of fun and will keep players thoroughly engaged. Dive in, and we'll see you at the summit.
Digital Trends
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
FBC: Firebreak review: co-op Control spinoff is a a lot of work for little payoff
FBC: Firebreak MSRP $40.00 Score Details 'FBC: Firebreak hides a fine co-op shooter behind a tedious grind.' Pros Clever premise Creative mission structure Good use of Control universe Cons Matchmaking woes Thin teamwork Demanding grind 'Why you can trust Digital Trends – We have a 20-year history of testing, reviewing, and rating products, services and apps to help you make a sound buying decision. Find out more about how we test and score products.' You start a new job. It's nothing special; you're just a low rung paper pusher. The starting pay is meager, but it's enough to pay the bills. Your boss says that he sees a bright future for you in this company. Work hard and you'll get a promotion. More money. More perks. More power. You bust your butt to hit every milestone you can, occasionally getting a small holiday bonus or a few extra vacation days. Your day to day only improves in small increments, but you keep reaching for the next rung of the corporate ladder in hopes that the view from the top will be worth it one day. Recommended Videos That experience isn't so dissimilar to how I've felt playing FBC: Firebreak, a shooter that feels like a second job. Remedy Entertainment's foray into co-op action, a spinoff of its 2019 hit Control, brings a playful pitch to the board room. It imagined what the average Joes of its interconnected universe do while Jesse Fayden is living out a superhero fantasy. It's a celebration of the mundane that hands out Employee of the Week plaques to any player willing to clock in for a dead end job with a smile on their face. Though the idea of FBC: Firebreak has some potential that may reveal itself with later updates, shallow teamwork and repetitive missions fail to impress in its probationary period. It's a gig built on incentives, promising players that things will get better the harder they work. Maybe they will for the most dedicated company men, but I imagine many workers will hand in their two weeks before getting to that point. A job's a job FBC: Firebreak makes a strong case for itself on day one. The idea is that players embody the Federal Bureau of Control's most underappreciated workers. These are the cleaners who are tasked with keeping the office in order and cleaning the fans. Of course, mundane is a relative term in The Oldest House. The halls are filled with Hiss monsters that need to be exterminated – even the sticky notes are evil. It's a supernatural send up of The Office where squads of three work together to tackle odd jobs while fighting back waves of Hiss and snatching bonuses that will unlock more upgrades later on. To execute that clever idea, Remedy invents a clever gameplay loop rather than copying its multiplayer peers. Rather than dropping players into a singular playlist, there are a smattering of jobs to complete (with five available at launch and two coming by the end of 2025). In one mission, my team and I need to clean pink goop off of some machinery. In another, we need to fix some broken fans to keep The Oldest House from overheating. It's a funny idea, though there's only one mission currently that really feels like it fully nails the joke. The standout job has my team cleaning millions of sticky notes up, by shooting at thick patches of them scattered around an office. They can get stuck to my character's body, obscuring their first-person vision and eventually swallowing them whole. It's a zany workplace premise that simply isn't matched by blander missions that simply have me collecting orbs and dropping them in a minecart. Discovering the punchline of each job is the real draw early on. Missions always start with a simple janitorial joke, but build out in complexity the more players dial up the difficulty. Each job has three phases, each of which is more involved than the last and the final one culminating in some final test. In Hot Fix, the first phase simply tasks me with fixing up broken fans by pressing my controller's bumpers in the pattern shown on screen. The second phase opens up a second zone, where I need to watch out as fans occasionally blast out heat rays that can set me on fire while I'm working. The third phase does all of that, but then culminates with my squad having to fill up barrels of water and zipline them into a giant furnace that's about to blow. Discovering the punchline of each job – especially the excellent end gag of Paper Chase – is the real draw early on. That mission structure does wear thin fast, though, even with four difficulty levels and optional Corruption modifiers that raise the danger and rewards. Each job is a one-trick pony that loses its luster after the first full go around. It feels a bit like playing one interstitial puzzle in a Destiny raid blown out into a full mission. It would be a little easier to swallow if there was some exploration to be done during missions, but there's very little potential for that. The small maps only contain a smattering of upgrade materials to find, whether hidden in locked safe rooms or just lying around on tables, but any side areas are largely empty. The customizable mission structure doesn't shake things up enough to make it feel worthwhile, but it does come with one side effect: a matchmaking headache. When you jump into a multiplayer game, you usually have a few playlists to choose from. Those focused options make sure players can easily get into a round because there are only so many places for players to queue up. Consider how much more complicated that becomes when each mission has three possible phases, four difficulties, and multiple corruption options. You're talking hundreds of playlist permeations that not even the world's most popular games could hope to fill consistently. I'm not sure how Remedy is accounting for that, but judging by the fact that I have never successfully matched into a specific job setting yet, the situation is a bit dire. I've mostly had to spend my time in Quick Play, where I wind up just doing the basic first phase of jobs over and over again. That issue has been worsened by some unreliable connectivity at launch. I have been booted from jobs mid-game several times so far. That included one time while playing with a friend, after which I had to struggle to get back in with a room code that didn't appear to work for a few minutes. I imagine that these issues will be smoothed out over time (Remedy has already pushed some matchmaking improvements post-launch), but all of it leaves a bad first impression out the gate. Thin teamwork While jobs can be tackled solo, FBC: Firebreak is meant to be played with a squad of three coordinated friends. That's because the selectable character classes all have abilities that are meant to synergize with others, or cover their weaknesses. There are three selectable 'kits' at launch, each of which can be customized with different perks, weapons, and throwable grenades. The Fix kit's deal is that they have a wrench, which means that they can repair electronics by smacking them rather than carrying out a button pressing minigame. The Splash kit has a water cannon that can put out fires and soak enemies. The Jump kit (the total dud of the three) has an electric tool, the best application of which is firing it at wet enemies to electrocute them. There's some clever interplay born from that trio, as each class has a specific role to fill in a mission. Being 'better with friends' is such a low bar that I hesitate to give FBC: Firebreak credit for limboing under it. The problem, though, is that Remedy still wants the entire experience to work for solo players. That design philosophy means that every class' specific skill isn't actually necessary at all. If I see a fire on the ground, I can simply pat it out with that same bumper pressing minigame that I use to repair objects. If I don't want to do that, there might be a sprinkler above it that I can shoot to put it out. More often than not, I can just walk around it since fires rarely block my path. I don't need a Splash kit to deal with that, nor do I need a Fix kit to power up healing showers and ammo-giving workbenches. I can do that job with any character, and almost as fast. I understand the instinct here, but there's some missed potential here to make players solve for missing kits in more creative, puzzling ways. When I'm not cleaning turbines or putting out fires, I'm shooting waves of frequently spawning Hiss monsters. They're essentially zombies, but Remedy's inventive worldbuilding pays off here with an array of bizarre creatures, from flying chair demons to illusory orbs. It's a perfectly fine way to add some action between the run-of-the-mill tasks, but the shooting is as thin as the kit powers. Each player can only equip one gun, more or less just choosing between a handgun, machine gun, or shotgun. None of those feel like they have much impact when they fire, nor do grenades that hardly do damage to even the weakest degs. All of this is a little more fun with friends, of course. There are a few systems that encourage coordination, such as the fact that players' shields will only regenerate when they stick by one another. But frankly, being 'better with friends' is such a low bar that I hesitate to give FBC: Firebreak credit for limboing under it. Everything is better with friends! I would have a nice time painting over the Sistine Chapel if I was chatting with two close pals during the process. The most fun I've had so far is when I logged in to play with another reviewer. The mission itself was just background noise as we chatted about our issues with the game. As is the case with even the most boring desk job, it's the people gathered around the water cooler that can make it all worthwhile. But nothing's stopping you from hanging out with those coworkers outside of the office. Incentive structure FBC: Firebreak does get better the more time you put into it, but that's my biggest issue with it currently. It's almost a game that's designed to be boring from mission one. I don't have a grenade, my starting weapons feel weak, and my kits have no depth. Those issues change as I play and pick up upgrade currencies during jobs. Gradually, I'm able to unlock better weapons and new utilities for each kit's primary tool. The big hook is a long-tailed perk unlock system, which allows me to stack up more buffs as I level up characters and totally change how they feel. Put enough hours in and the early hour woes will clear up. That design decision is one built on hubris. Remedy seems to be banking on the idea that players will simply grind their way through a boring game by dangling the promise of a fun one in front of them. Play long enough and the Fix kit will a turret and an ultimate ability that involves a piggy bank. To get there, though, you'll have to play the same few missions over and over again to grab more upgrade materials. And when you finally get the tools you want, you'll be returning to those exact same missions again. It's an arbitrary grind, one that Remedy has already toned down in post-launch updates. As I wasted testing FBC: Firebreak, I was juggling two other online multiplayer games, Mario Kart World and Rematch. Both games have something in common that FBC: Firebreak lacks: They hooked me from the very first round. Mario Kart's racing is fast and fun from the jump and I never need to be convinced to queue up for another round of Knockout Tour. Rematch is similarly elegant, introducing me to satisfying soccer gameplay that's both casual and leaves a lot of room for personal growth as I pick up its nuances. The extra incentives for playing both are thin. Mario Kart World has some unlockable characters and stickers, but none of those things change the fundamentals of racing. Rematch only rewards me with some cosmetics in typical battle pass fashion, but I'm not thinking about that at all when I go for another round. They're like the surprise Christmas bonuses that you're not expecting. I just can't imagine signing off from my real 9 to 5 to clock into another one. FBC: Firebreak, on the other hand, is all carrot and stick. You're starting a contract job with low pay and no benefits, and then asked to get excited to work for the chance to get health insurance in a year. Sure, everything will feel more worthwhile once you get there, but you're probably not going to stop job hunting while you wait. There are other jobs to apply to out there, just as there are countless co-op games that don't lock the good parts away. In some high concept way, it all makes FBC: Firebreak more thematically functional. It treats players like the lowly employees they control. You have to imagine that their dream isn't to fight demonic sticky notes every day. Surely they hope to run the FBC one day, becoming one of those powerful people that gets to redact documents. That's the dream, but it's one hidden behind a gauntlet of hoops. The grind here feels true to life, perhaps making FBC: Firebreak the most accurate representation of what it's like to climb the corporate ladder. I just can't imagine signing off from my real 9 to 5 to clock into another one. FBC: Firebreak was tested on PS5 Pro.
