Review: FBC: Firebreak

Developed and published by Remedy Entertainment, FBC: Firebreak is an online co-op survival shooter in which you step into Remedy’s iconic world and experience it from a brand-new perspective. Remedy is known for interconnecting its titles within the same universe, one way or another, and FBC: Firebreak is no different. Even if you only played Control, you are in for a surprise because these two titles share a lot of lore and elements. Bringing a brand-new twist, even for Remedy, which is normally known for delivering highly engaging narrative experiences, FBC: Firebreak is a completely new direction for the studio, but this has not swayed the quality in any way. While it may not bring the highly immersive narrative experience to the table that their previous releases did, FBC: Firebreak still excels in game design, gameplay, and everything else. This is our review of FBC: Firebreak on PC via Steam, in which we destroy a floating hat and put out a burning furnace with barrels.

FBC: Firebreak takes place inside the Oldest House. This is a well-known location for anyone who has played Control, Remedy’s previous title. The federal agency is currently under attack by supernatural forces, and you step into the game as the agency’s most versatile unit, known as Firebreak. As a member of Firebreak, you will enter special Jobsites and complete different objectives to contain the chaos and reclaim control over the situation. After joining hands with two other players, whether friends or strangers, you will jump into missions and face anomalies and monstrosities and work together to survive using a variety of tools and weapons. The game puts strong emphasis on co-op gameplay as the classes offer specific tools and perks that not only benefit you but also your teammates.

While there is no visible progression in the game, there is actually a progression system in the game that allows you to settle into the game gradually and then start to experience harder levels when you start feeling comfortable with the game. At launch, the game offers five different levels, each featuring a different theme of challenges and missions. When you first jump into a Jobsite, you will only get Clearance to its first zone, which is relatively easier, and the enemy level is low as well, giving you a good look at the level and the different types of enemies that you can expect at that level. Once you complete this level, you will gain access to Zone 2. Zone 2 will kick off from the start of the level, and you must complete both zones simultaneously before completing the mission and gaining access to its third and final zone. The last zone is a boss battle that you have to complete before escaping back to safety.

Zone 3 is the ultimate challenge, and it brings with it the complete level. It also increases the enemy level and allows you to turn on Corruption, and if you increase the difficulty level, you will experience much tougher enemies during the run. As you complete one Corruption level, you will unlock additional Corruption levels as well. This way, the game allows you to progress further at each level. The Clearance Level unlocks additional Zones; the Threat Level defines what sort of enemies you will encounter in a level, and Corruption adds another level of difficulty for the level. This gives you a good start in learning game mechanics and getting better at the game. This also ensures that you are pushing beyond your level of comfort with the game instead of just throwing you in the middle of explosions and hordes of enemies.

Once you jump into the game, you will get some in-game objectives that you will need to complete by using any means available to you in the game. You will go in with your weapons and tools, and apart from your loadout, the map will offer some elements to help you out on your journey. Each zone has a shower that allows you to heal yourself and remove elemental effects like fire, radiation, and anything else. The ammo station allows you to restock your ammo. For interacting with machinery, you need to complete some mini games which involve pressing the ‘Q’ and ‘E’ keys (on PC). Pressing these keys are quickly as possible according to the sequence shown on the screen will allow you to repair electronics, solve puzzles, collect ammo, and everything else.

Each zone in the game has a multitude of enemies that you will need to kill in order to proceed in the game. If you have played Remedy’s Control, you will find a lot of similar enemies because both games share the same universe, and The Oldest House, which you are exploring in FBC: Firebreak, is a critical location in the franchise. This is also one of the reasons why weaponry is not relatively modern, as you cannot take modern weapons inside The Oldest House. This is part of the franchise’s lore, and we won’t be diving too deep into that here. The enemies will range from normal zombies to heavies wielding chainsaws or miniguns. There are some named enemies at key points as well, which will be familiar to you if you played Control.

Since FBC: Firebreak might look like a regular shooter by looking at it, it is a firefighting and tactical game as well, because each kit is not only designed for shooting but also for firefighting and other tactical jobs in different ways. You do not get classes like Assault, Support, or Scout here, but rather you have a Jump Kit, a Fix Kit, and a Splash Kit. Their names give you an idea of what that specific kit offers you in the game. The Splash Kit is the most basic firefighting kit in the game, as evident from its name. Apart from traditional weapons like pistols, shotguns, and rifles, this class comes equipped with a Crank-Operated Fluidic Ejector, which serves as its main primary tool. Using this tool, you can lob around water blobs, which not only extinguish fires but also remove different environmental effects like radiation, fire, or red goop stuck to your body.

Next, you have the Fix Kit, which is all about fixing stuff. It comes with a Wrench as its main tool and is able to serve as a tool and a weapon at the same time. You can use it to quickly fix broken machinery around the map and use its powerful Rush attack to not just dive head-first into combat but also stagger everyone who comes your way, setting them up for a swift kill by your teammates. Finally, the Jump Kit allows the player to handle the faulty electronics with each. Equipped with an Electro-Kinetic Charge Impactor, the Fix Kit can stun enemies using its electrical power and use some environmental elements to its advantage by charging them up.

Each class also comes equipped with additional devices and alternate options as well like the Jump Kit’s Boombox, which attracts enemies with music and then explodes, or the Splash Kit’s Humidifier, which allows the class to power randomly placed Humidifiers on the map, allowing it to release healing-infused water around it. But that is not all, thanks to a powerful customization system, you can change a class completely depending on your playstyle. Each class offers nine Perk slots where you can purchase and equip different perks that provide new abilities, buffs, or skills to use during the missions. You can also unlock new weapons and explosives, which allow you to mix and match your tools and weapons together and unleash hell on enemies.

For acquiring new weapons and gear, you have separate merchants in the game. The weapons and upgrades are acquired from the Requisitions menu by spending Lost Assets. It is one of the main currencies of the game. Apart from Lost Assets, there are multiple resources in the game as well, which are unique to each level. You can grind these resources for different items. You can purchase upgrades for your primary tools, alternates, weapons, and items by spending Lost Assets. The visual customizations provide eye candy only, but as you purchase upgraded weapons, items, and tools, you will see a significant improvement in your combat efficiency, and only with these upgrades can you tackle the higher difficulty levels of the title. Some of the rare resources can only be found in areas with Corruption, so if you want these resources, you need to step out of your comfort zone and increase the difficulty of the levels.

The Corruption serves as a bonus boost for the Hiss. If you enter an area that has Corruption, you will be notified about it, and you will be given an Optional Mission to eliminate it. These Corruption items are floating around the map in the air, and they will follow you everywhere, which makes it easier for you to destroy them, but they also boost enemies in multiple ways, and you need special weapons found in the Safe Houses. Once you destroy these Corrupted Items, you will gain a bonus resource based on the jobsite, and the enemies will also lose their buff for that mission. The corruption items depend on your chosen setting, and they are only available when you have Clearance Level 3 unlocked for a particular Jobsite. The Threat Level does not affect the Corruption, as both are separate parameters of gameplay adjustment for a jobsite.

These benefits are not limited to just your own build as well. If you have a squad of three players, each player’s build can complement the others by using perks and bonuses that boost specific elements of the whole team. For example, some perks offer buffs to the entire team’s health regen. Some co-op elements are directly built into the game, like the shield regenerates faster when all three players are closer to each other. However, this does not mean that if you choose one kit, you cannot perform certain tasks in the game. Each class is able to handle every task in a mission, but it will take one additional kit time to complete a task that is another class’s specialty, so this is where co-op comes into play. You will need to juggle the objectives, which could range from putting out fires, eliminating ice anomalies, and removing gunk from turbines with the enemy waves. At the end, you will need to make a break towards the elevator back to the top and survive a final wave before escaping with your life.

As of now, the game offers five different maps. Each map has three zones, and you can customize the gameplay by increasing or decreasing difficulty levels and adding in Corruption. The maps are particularly not huge, with single-zone levels taking around 7 minutes to complete, and an entire three-zone level could take anywhere from 20 minutes to 35 minutes, depending on how quickly you can complete the objectives. Objectives are not particularly hard, but the mini games get interrupted if you get attacked by an enemy, making them harder to complete between enemy waves. Remedy is promising future updates, which will add new Jobsites to the game with new weapons and enemies, but they are stretched far from each other. The next major update is due to arrive in Fall, so it would mean that completing the five base game Jobsites may become a little repetitive after some time.

FBC: Firebreak is much better in co-op than 2021’s Back 4 Blood in a lot of ways. Primarily, this is because FBC: Firebreak does not just directly copy-paste the zombie horde idea of gameplay. It already uses a strong base for its own foundation, and on top of that, the idea of combining firefighting with supernatural gives it a fresh vibe. Each kit also has a more prominent role in gameplay, and playing as an effective team member is evident in gameplay straight away. The enemy design and the mission variety may not be too much at this point, but it still sits higher in the tier list than a lot of co-op survival extraction titles.

Visually, FBC: Firebreak is a haunting game with impressive visuals and animations. The levels are atmospheric and while it is not a horror game, you will definitely feel an eerie tension across the zones. The anomalies breaking the time in the middle of the area, to massive towers infested with moving tentacles, there is something to look forward to at every level. No level feels boring, and there are some fun elements to play around with, such as ziplines to move around and jump pads to launch yourself in the air. You can also fix some random items to make things easy for you, such as fixing broken Humidifiers to convert them into a healing area or fixing circuit boards to fix lights to illuminate the map. The character animations and the weapon animations are decent as well. Our favorite is easily the Crank-Operated Fluidic Ejector, which fires water globs as the player uses a crank to fire it.

We also tested FBC: Firebreak on Steam Deck OLED. During some of our matches, one player jumped on Steam Deck and ran the game natively. We went with the default handheld graphic options and quickly dropped into the game to test out the performance. We noticed the FPS in the high 40s and max low 50s in normal scenes. To keep the FPS stable, we set the Steam Deck’s FPS slider at 45. We were kind of impressed with the visuals, even on handheld settings for the Steam Deck. However, the game isn’t always locked at 45 fps; when there’s too many enemies on the screen, it frequently dropped frequently to 30s. Overall, it is very playable on Steam Deck, and it got the official Valve seal for being Steam Deck Verified. One thing we want to mention here is that this review playthrough was conducted with the game running on three PCs running in-house, so we did not encounter any server issues. We will be jumping back into the game post-launch to test out public servers and update here with any issues if we encounter them.

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Final Verdict:

FBC: Firebreak is a solid co-op title, and it is evident not only from its classes but also from the missions that you undertake. The Oldest House will throw some of the most intense situations at you, where only the most cooperative team will survive and make it out alive, whether it is wiping out hordes of enemies or handling ice anomalies with heaters. Each level brings something unique to the table, and with different level modifiers, you are able to tailor the experience according to your skill level and gameplay style. If you have played Remedy’s Control, you will find a lot of references and similarities in different elements, so it is also a fun new take on an already established franchise. If you have been waiting for a solid co-op shooter akin to Left 4 Dead, FBC: Firebreak will certainly offer a lot to you in terms of world design, gameplay, and shooting mechanics.

Final Score: 8.5/10

A PC Steam review copy of FBC: Firebreak was provided by the publisher for this review. Read our Review Policy.