FBC: Firebreak Review — Containment? Breached.

FBC: Firebreak is an interesting game, but one that I feel will undoubtedly be polarizing. My experience with the game was also, for lack of a better word, polarizing. Many areas of the game feel unique and incredibly well-designed, while other features feel poorly implemented or just completely unfinished. I was left feeling that FBC: Firebreak was a series of really cool ideas first and a game second in the minds of its developers, and as though the final, live product felt more like an Early Access demo of what the game could be rather than a finished product.

FBC: Firebreak is a three-player cooperative first-person shooter set in the same universe as the game Control. Portraying the last days of the game’s titular government agency, players team up and fight to clear anomalies and otherworldly threats as they break out within the halls of The Oldest House, unlocking better gear and new skills with each successful mission.

Something fans of Control are going to notice immediately is that the tone in FBC: Firebreak has shifted. The setting and its enemies remain serious and deadly, but the game’s protagonists all have rather high-energy and humorous voice acting and often deliver some very corny, quippy dialogue, often satirizing office life in an almost Dilbert-esque send-up of work life and bureaucracy, just with the added bonus of extra-dimensional monstrosities that defy the laws of physics constantly trying to put you on sick leave.

This change in tone seems to be highly controversial among fans of Control. Personally, I don’t mind it. I think with the game’s setting and events, a little bit of humor from our protagonists helps make the setting more bearable as a player. If, after surviving a massive wave of enemies, I had to listen to my character prose dramatically about the tension of the situation, I’d have a lot less fun.

Missions or levels in FBC: Firebreak are uniquely tackled with an increasing level of “access,” with each successful completion of a mission unlocking a longer, more intricately detailed version of that same mission.

Where the game shines is with the final stage of each of these missions. Once the entire level is unlocked, you begin to experience the game’s most interesting ideas and anomalies. The earlier versions of these levels, however, go way too quickly in my opinion, with matches in some of the first versions of each mission taking five to ten minutes to complete.

If you ask me, the best parts of FBC: Firebreak are the setting and the unique ideas you experience within, with players needing to unlock full access in each level to really experience them. Its failings, however, fall into the more gameplay-focused aspects of the game.

Unfortunately, I feel as though this first-person shooter lacks good gunplay. Each weapon just feels rather boring and robotic to use, with little recoil or hit feedback to feel like you’re actually doing more than subtracting numbers from the health bars of the entities on screen.

All progression in the game, including both new weapons as well as “modified” versions of the ones you already have (modified, in this sense, meaning weapons with different stats), is locked behind a battle pass system very similar to the one in Helldivers 2. While requisition, the resource needed to unlock items in this battle pass, is pretty easy to get your hands on, I quickly found myself feeling as though the game’s current free battle pass wasn’t worth my time grinding out. There are only a handful of weapons in the game, and all of the cosmetics present in this battle pass were just reskins of the game’s starting gear. For anything new, you’d have to buy the ten-dollar, day-one premium battle pass, something that unfortunately did not appeal to me.

The gunplay does not excite, and the progression fails to grip me. While there are cool ideas present in the later versions of each level (the sticky note monsters being my favorite), the in-between can quickly become repetitive. The enemies, though they fit with the game’s unique setting and are really cool to look at, quickly become repetitive. Even the so-called elite enemies, the named foes that jump at you throughout your games, are just regular enemy models with an increased health bar. The best parts of the game begin to feel like sideshow attractions, special, unique moments that you will see for the first time, and then go, “Awesome! No need to play that level again.”

On top of the repetition fatigue that quickly began to set in for me and my group of friends, our playthrough was haunted by some rather bad desync issues that severely impacted my ability to enjoy the game. Everyone but the host would experience invulnerable enemies or shots that simply were not counted, or enemies outright locking up and then teleporting, as our game versions were desynced from the host.

FBC: Firebreak has the potential to be incredibly fun. However, its best moments are held back by its worst design flaws. Gunplay, the most basic thing needed for an FPS to feel good, simply does not feel good, at least to this reviewer. The game’s progression system lacked anything worth working towards. There is a lack of variety in guns and classes throughout the game, and the levels quickly become repetitive despite the little changes present in each access level. Overall, the game feels incomplete, and if you told me this was an Early Access title, I’d say: great! Show me it again in about six months.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of FBC: Firebreak. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! FBC: Firebreak is available on Steam, Epic Games, Xbox, and PlayStation.