FBC: Firebreak Review

Like many of you, I was confused when Remedy Entertainment’s FBC: Firebreak was announced. How would a first-person multiplayer Control spin-off work?

See whether this genre shift pays off in our review.

FBC: Firebreak Review

Stemming from the Control universe, Firebreak follows a bunch of FBC (Federal Bureau of Control) agents as they go through The Oldest House, cleaning up anomalies.

If you didn’t play Control, this whole game is going to be very weird for you.

Choosing one of three classes, one ventures out to various sections of the house and clean up the mess.

At first, this is a simple 5-10 minute job – in and out with very little issue.

However, as one progresses, levels evolve, enemies improve, and rewards increase.

Think of the anomalies like breaches in reality that can kill you.

For instance, one level has players destroying Sticky Notes – over 15,000 depending on the difficulty.

If you don’t, the Sticky Notes will keep reproducing until they bury and kill everything. Then there is the Hiss, former humans turned into mindless monsters who kill anything not also infected with the Hiss.

To counter this, one can choose from one of three classes that specialize in dealing with these types of threats.

You get the Splash Kit, which lets you put out fires and get enemies wet. Then, once you have an enemy wet, you can use the Jump Kit, which gives you a stun baton basically. Combo the wet and the electric, and you will lock down most enemies. Lastly, you have the Fix Kit, which focuses on building the occasional turret and fixing most objectives.

The Jump Kit was the best in our experience, as the ultimate skill let us launch a lighting storm garden gnome. Shooting the gnome out, a lightning storm would appear as the gnome ran back to me.

Unfortunately, that was really the only skill that truly proved to be useful.

Let’s take the Fix Kit. If one levels it up enough, they will get a turret they can place down. While this sounds cool, every time I’ve used it, it either does one hit and dies or does nothing and dies.

Unfortunately, that’s one of my biggest complaints: everything in FBC: Firebreak feels a little bit too weak. The guns hit hard, but the grenades only do half of an enemy’s HP. That, and recharging skills isn’t easy, making them feel even weaker.

FBC: Firebreak also suffers from slow progression.

As one levels up, they’ll get more points to spend in the shop to unlock gun upgrades, new cosmetics, and some skills. One can also get extra points in levels by killing bosses or searching safe rooms, but players don’t share them – and it’s first come, first served.

For a game focused on teamwork, that’s not a good choice.

Then there is the skill progression, but it moves too slow.

For whatever reason, the development team went the Helldivers 2 route that requires players to spend points on page one to unlock page two. When put into practice, one will need to spend points on items one doesn’t want or need to get to the items they do want to try.

The lack of skills and weapons at the start will likely drive a lot of players away – even if it is on Game Pass and PlayStation Plus.

The weirdest choice has to be FBC: Firebreak’s lack of story and lore updates for the Control universe.

Half the appeal of The Oldest House and Control is finding out what crazy thing happened or how something wound up in the House.

Outside the occasional earpiece objective update, or some guys chirping at the main menu, you get almost nothing on either front.

As a Control fan, we’re disappointed.

While there were no bugs during the review period, we would occasionally get disconnected from matches from time to time.

Even if you’re a fan of Control – or Remedy Games in general – it’s best to avoid FBC: Firebreak. Even at the low price of free on Game Pass and PS Plus, we simply can’t recommend it.

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