Stick with me, here. Mere hours after first playing FBC: Firebreak, I found myself mouth-to-dough with a delicious cream cake. Unfortunately, because I’m a clumsy bastard who can’t be trusted with anything nice, a dollop of that cream landed directly into my blood orange cocktail and melted into it. I stared at the swirling momentarily and found myself transported back into the halls of the Federal Bureau of Control as I fired white hot bursts of liquid into the glowing red enemies that stalk its hallways. It’s this sort of twisted leap of logic that a trip to Remedy’s headquarters does to a brain.
Remedy is a studio with an eclectic library of games – some are horror, others sci-fi or neo-noir detective fiction. But what I've always loved about the Alan Wake and Max Payne developer is that it's unafraid to be silly. Firebreak, the studio’s latest project and its first foray into both first-person shooting and co-op multiplayer action, is very silly. Over the course of a two-hour play session, I found time to both obliterate everyone around me with a murderous garden gnome and wage war against a 30-foot-high sticky note behemoth. All this was enough for me to be convinced that if anyone can stand out in the crowded, often very serious online shooter space, it's Remedy and its unique desire to inject the weird into everything it makes.
Set six years after the events of Remedy’s 2019 single-player hit, Control, Firebreak’s setting of The Oldest House will be familiar to those who played through Jesse Faden’s story. Both the broad strokes and little touches remain, whether it be the severity of its brutalist pillars and walls or the Finnish folk music spilling out of its bathroom speakers, making for a comforting, if slightly uneasy, return. Firebreak tasks squads with reentering this X-Files-like government building to deal with localised outbreaks of the Hiss, Control’s inter-dimensional threat that embodies living and non-living entities alike. You, and up to two teammates, are essentially this universe's Ghostbusters, just armed with double-barreled shotguns instead of proton packs. The twist, though, is that here, crossing the streams is heavily encouraged.
Let me explain. Outside of your standard arsenal of pistols and rifles, you can pick from three different “kits”. Essentially Firebreak’s classes, each kit aids the team in different ways, both offensively and defensively. The Fix Kit, for example, allows you to quickly mend machines such as ammo stations and healing showers (FBC employees top up their HP by getting drenched with water – I did say this was all very silly). The Splash Kit, meanwhile, arms you with a hydro cannon that can both restore teammates’ health bars and douse enemies in water. And finally, the Jump Kit comes with a short-range Electro-Kinetic Charge Impactor that can shock foes and stop them in their tracks. Each kit has its individual uses, but when combined, they conjure up devastating results – you can likely already imagine what sending a high-voltage bolt of electricity into a soaking wet mob might achieve.
Teamwork and communication are key in Firebreak, then, because although the whole game is playable solo, it’s clear that the intention is for three players to come together, especially when things really start to get hectic. All of FBC: Firebreak’s missions (known as jobs) ultimately use the same structure: get in, achieve your objectives, and then return to the elevator you entered the level in. My first assignment was simple: my team had to fix three faulty heat fans in the building’s furnace while dealing with waves of enemies before swiftly retreating back to the safety of the elevator.
But as I said earlier, things get hectic. Up next was “Paper Chase”, a mission involving the destruction of thousands of scattered sticky notes, and it was an entirely different experience from our breezy fan maintenance job. Only once the target number of notes had been removed from the office floors and walls could we exit the area and claim victory. The problem was that hordes of Hiss would turn up at regular intervals to halt our progress, and the notes themselves could attach themselves to us and inflict damage. Never has the phrase “a death by a thousand paper cuts” been more appropriate. The evil notes could be destroyed by a simple melee attack, but they were much more efficiently disintegrated with a quick soak and spark – another smart use of Firebreak’s elemental kit systems. That kind of multiplayer synergy is supported by solid gunplay, so there’s always something you can do without relying on another player. I quickly honed in on the machine gun as my tool of destruction – I enjoyed mowing down glowing red ghouls, which satisfyingly burst into the oily haze synonymous with Control.
The third mission took place in The Oldest House’s Black Rock Quarry and required the most teamwork of the bunch. Shooting squelchy leeches from the cavernous walls grants you lethal radioactive pearls that need to be contained in a shuttle. Safely locked up, these can then be moved along a track to deeper areas of the quarry. It was the most challenging mission of the set, and really did stress the need for good communication. The need to take regular shower breaks to rinse off the radiation, droves of enemies, and instakill astral spike entities all hindered our progress. I did still manage to have fun, even if it got incredibly hectic at times.
While I’m reasonably satisfied by the mission objectives, I do find myself torn when it comes to Firebreak’s approach to map design. In Control, The Oldest House was a devilish labyrinth of morphing corridors and secrets, but the map layouts here are less complicated. This is probably for the better, as tighter, more linear spaces make for a kinder area to navigate in first-person (even if with no minimap me and my teammates still got occasionally lost, despite their small size). But I do feel like the Federal Bureau of Control’s headquarters has lost some of its unpredictable charm as a result. Don’t necessarily go in here expecting something as wondrous as the Ashtray Maze, for example. Instead you’ll find simpler, more grounded surroundings.
These missions may sound straightforward, but after completing them you unlock clearance levels for each, which add further objectives and result in much lengthier excursions. The maps open up on subsequent revisits, adding extra chambers of activity as well as more complex objectives and foes. Just like in Control, bosses gate your progress through certain areas, effectively causing a lockdown. These range from bullet sponges with drastically larger health bars to more interesting beasts like a giant sticky note monstrosity that slammed my team with its giant yellow fists. I found the latter far more exciting, as taking it down required the elements of communication and teamwork that I enjoy in co-op shooters. Part puzzle boss, part damage dealing, it reminded me of the final stretches of some of Space Marine 2's expeditions, where your brawn and shooter skills must occasionally make way for pockets of brainwork.
These monsters made out of everyday objects are some of my favourite elements of Control, so I'm glad to see some of that weirdness make its way over here. This is further explored through randomly spawning corrupted items, none of which I sadly saw during my playtime, but they remain a tantalising prospect (a rubber duck that can redirect all enemies your away so others can focus on objectives did spawn, but due to its small size none of us found it – an unfortunate instance of readability that the development team assured us they're looking into fixing before launch). Another item detailed to me was a large set of traffic lights, where being caught in its red gaze can result in a heavy amount of damage coming your way, which effectively brings a dash of Squid Game colour to the otherwise grey brutalist surroundings.
It's these unreal Remedy flourishes that give Firebreak a chance to stand out from the crowd. They are further explored in your loadouts, too; completing missions grants you unlock tokens that can be used to acquire suitably zany new tools. These include ultimate abilities such as the Splash Kit’s Teapot that burns up any enemy unfortunate enough to collide with its superheated globules. Then there’s the Jump Kit’s erratic garden gnome, which conjures up a destructive electrical storm that strikes anyone in its zone. That ability, in particular, ensured chaos often reigned during my time with Firebreak. Most of the time it's good fun, with swarms of enemies destroyed through chaotic scrambling and juggling of abilities. Sometimes, though, there's just too much going on on screen and it all becomes a bit indecipherable.
There are strong foundations here, but my small number of concerns all boil down to readability. Sometimes it’s unclear where you should be heading on the maps. Other times it’s working out how to avoid hosing your allies down with friendly fire damage, or picking out who exactly the boss is amidst a horde. There’s simply a lot going on here, and with bursts of colour popping off everywhere, it can be a little overwhelming when trying to play tactically and precisely. This is a concern I’m assured that the Firebreak devs are well aware of, though, and they plan to make active improvements to the shooter’s overall readability before its June 17 launch.
Firebreak will feature five jobs at release, with two more promised before the end of 2025. That may not seem like very many, but game director Mike Kayatta tells me that Remedy considers them “more like game modes” than missions. I can see that, with each offering replayability and depth due to their multiple clearance levels and evolving objectives. Combined with the fact that it will cost $39.99 / €39.99 / £32.99 (as well as being included on both Game Pass and PlayStation Plus), I think there’s enough value in here to keep both Control veterans and new fans looking for a fun shooter entertained for many hours.
The always online co-op shooter road is a daunting one for any developer to choose to walk right now. But after playing Firebreak, I’m confident that there’s a strong foundation here, and when combined with injections of Remedy’s unique quirky personality I think it can carve its own niche in the space. Much like that dollop of cream carved its own space in my cocktail. I still drank it all.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
