Control was a heavily stylized, cinematic, third-person action game that very successfully blended the paranormal, supernatural, and a story that expanded and encompassed the Remedy Connected Universe. As Jesse Faden, you worked towards restoring order within The Oldest House, the ever-shifting home for the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC). FBC: Firebreak feels almost like the polar opposite of Control with only a few light threads linking the two together. That isn't to say that FBC: Firebreak is a bad game per se, but it does feel like an oddball spin-off title and a bit of a wasted opportunity.
Set six years after the events of Control, FBC brings players back to The Oldest House. In FBC, it's you and up to two friends playing as a trio of extremely underprepared first responders. These three are tasked with taking on very dangerous paranatural events within Control's Oldest House, be it feeding an angry furnace or taking on an extreme outbreak of sticky notes. Unfortunately, Control's main protagonist Jesse Faden is nowhere to be found. I can only assume she's buried under mountains of metaphorical and literal paperwork as the newest Director of the FBC.
Beyond the primary objectives, you'll confront successive waves of Control's paranatural adversaries, The Hiss. After overcoming The Hiss and completing your main objectives, your team must swiftly retreat to the elevator you initially arrived on and hold out until it reaches your floor. FBC is a game best played with a full team, with each player utilizing one of the three main Crisis Kits, this game's name for classes.
Each Kit offers unique abilities and gear that are optimal for various tasks in the missions. For example, the Splash Kit is great on the Paper Chase mission that is full of sticky notes. The globs of water that the Splash Kit hurls out is able to soak patches of sticky notes, making them more vulnerable to standard gunfire from weapons. They were also great for cooling off teammates when needed and putting out fires that popped up pretty much everywhere. My go-to, the Fix Kit, is good for stunning enemies with his big wrench swing as well as placing and repairing defensive turrets, fixing broken panels, and sometimes even getting the always valuable healing shower stations up and running. Meanwhile, the Jump Kit is great for both quickly fixing electrical circuits and using their secondary rocket ability to quickly fly around the map for scouting or offensive purposes.
Even if you go into a mission without a well-balanced team, it is still possible to fill the void left by the missing Kits, though it becomes a bit more challenging. Instead of just swinging a wrench a couple of times at a panel or shooting a glob of water to douse fires, you will instead have to complete a simple, rhythmic QTE event. The same is true for refilling your ammo at a resupply station. The QTE is just a random sequence of Q and E presses (on PC at least) to fill up a progress meter. If you mess up, you take a bit of additional damage. In the heat of battle, these QTE events can be extremely hectic, dangerous, and even frustrating. This is why it's best to try to have everyone using a unique kit for each mission.
When just starting out in FBC, each Kit is limited to just a few basic, and weak, weapons. As you play through each mission, you will find and recover Lost Assets and Research Samples, which allow you to purchase new and better upgrades such as a powerful revolver, stronger submachine guns, stronger shotguns, and so on. Eventually, you will unlock additional tools, such as grenades and Kit specific gear such as the Fix Kit's buildable turret. These help to expand upon the fairly basic but serviceable gunplay, while also making each combat encounter feel more enjoyable and dynamic.
Right now, there are just five missions, or Jobs as the game calls them, present in FBC. Each of these Jobs are further split into three Clearance Levels which modifies the length of each mission, main objectives, and difficulty. Each Jobsite tends to feature wholly unique objectives or variations on similar objectives found in other Jobs. Each site also at least feels and looks vastly different from any other Jobsite. There is quite a bit of environmental and objective variety, even if the enemy variety is often lacking. Still, it really doesn't take too long before you're just out of new things to see or do. Those rushing through each Jobsite will find FBC to be a bit too light on content, unless you really love unlocking weapon upgrades or a plethora of cosmetic items.
Missions offer adjustable Corruption and selectable Difficulty levels, which do improve the game's replayability. Corruptions, a set of roughly a dozen mission modifiers, introduce chaotic and often amusing challenges. For instance, a flying, evil stapler Corruption can buff enemy health, while the Gas Cylinder Corruption causes all corpses to explode, harming both players and enemies. These Corruptions can modify missions in enjoyable, humorous, and occasionally frustrating ways.
FBC features only the smallest bit of the classic Remedy worldbuilding we have come to know and love from games such as Control and Alan Wake. There is a small bit of lore trickled to the player through a voice that pipes up sometimes while waiting in the lobby. There are a few hints of Remedy's writing and humor found in some of the posters scattered around the Old House's environments. There are also some informational documents that pop up during loading screens, but good luck reading them with how fast the load times are. I eventually just took a screenshot of one just to read what it said because I could never read them fast enough. There are no fun nods or references to other Remedy works tucked away in side rooms or bathrooms, which makes exploration quite pointless. I eventually stopped exploring because there just wasn't anything worth finding.
A couple of additional complaints I was about to talk about here were actually addressed in an early post-launch update from Remedy: Mission unlocks and the in-game economy for upgrades. As of patch 1.2 for FBC: Firebreak, Remedy has reduced upgrade costs, making it easier to unlock new and better gear in addition to new perks. They have also made it much easier to spot the upgrade currencies in the environment. The studio also made it a bit easier to access the highest level of Clearance for each Job, which is where I think the real meat and potatoes of the game lie. Previously, you had to play through Clearance Level 1, then do Clearance Level 2, in order to access the all encompassing Clearance Level 3. Now, you can jump straight into Clearance Level 3 for a new job, so long as you completed the previous Job at Clearance Level 3. The lesser Clearance Levels are still there, but are now optional instead of being mandatory. They're nice to have if you don't have a lot of time to play or don't feel like taking on a greater challenge.
Gathering a few friends is highly recommended over playing with random online players in FBC. The game heavily emphasizes teamwork for survival and mission completion, yet it lacks in-game voice communication, offering only a basic ping system. This makes effective coordination with random players challenging. Furthermore, when playing with friends, it's significantly easier to strategize and coordinate individual Kits, gear, and team perks for each mission. While playing with randoms isn't impossible, it's far from the ideal experience and, in my opinion, less enjoyable.
Performance, at least on my system, felt stellar even in the thick of battle. There were no perceptible framerate issues at any point. I had no issues cranking up all of the game's settings to High, including enabling the highest level of ray tracing and Ray Reconstruction. Running with DLSS on Quality, the game had no issue running well above 60 FPS without Frame Generation. Still, I typically played with Frame Generation enabled just to keep the framerate right near the 144 Hz refresh rate on my monitor.
FBC: Firebreak enters a crowded co-op shooter market as a budget-friendly option. While nothing is inherently "bad" about it, the game struggles to differentiate itself. Its connections to Control and the broader Remedy Connected Universe feel underdeveloped. Replayability is limited by only five launch missions (with two more planned), unless players are highly motivated by unlocking upgrades and cosmetics. The Corruption modifiers offer only a minor boost to replayability. I commend Remedy for avoiding the Games as a Service (GaaS) model and for their continued willingness to experiment. However, FBC: Firebreak feels like a step too far from the studio's core strengths.
Score
Additional Information
- FBC: Firebreak
- Developed by: Remedy Entertainment
- Published by: Remedy Entertainment
- Price: Starting at $39.99 (USD)
- Platform reviewed on: PC (Also available on: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation Plus, and Game Pass)
- PC Specs: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, Nvidia RTX 4080, 32GB DDR4 3600 RAM, 1440p resolution
- ESRB: Rated T for Teen (Blood, violence)
- This game was provided to Total Gaming Network for review purposes.
