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FBC: Firebreak is one game that I had been waiting for quite a while. In my opinion, Remedy Entertainment has done no wrong, ever, and each game from the Finnish studio has been banger after banger (after banger). I'm all for major game studios taking risks and trying new, weird things, and FBC: Firebreak falls into exactly that category, being Remedy's first-ever FPS game, and that too a co-op, online-only multiplayer experience.
Firebreak clearly has potential for goofiness like Helldivers, mechanics and hordes like GTFO, atmosphere and a core gameplay mechanic like Deep Rock Galactic, and the environment is the ever-mysterious Oldest House from Control, which I've never been able to wrap my head around. In that department, Firebreak hasn't helped me understand anymore, either. Now, I wasn't going to sit around waiting for my friends to get the game, and the moment it landed on Game Pass on day one, I went in solo. Consider this a debrief of my findings.
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FBC Firebreak is built around a three-person team running cleanup
It's fun to be back in The Oldest House
In FBC: Firebreak, you are part of a three-person cleanup crew at The Oldest House from Control, acting as first responders for the Federal Bureau of Control. The Oldest House is still taken over by the Hiss, and you need to get in at different levels, completing varied objectives like fixing lights, boilers, generators, and containing anomalies while you pick off hordes of Hiss-infested foes. You're going to be running errands until you progress through tiers and reach a point where a boss battle ensues.
If you're going at it solo, FBC: Firebreak is going to be a rather tough game to stick with. Having played the game for about 10 hours by myself, I must add that a huge part of my enjoyment came from my love of the overall Remedy universe, where I was just happy to be there the entire time.
I can't help but worry about how the Max Payne remakes will perform.
On a side note, the Northlight engine isn't known for its optimization, but FBC: Firebreak is clearly the best optimized game from Remedy I've seen in a very long while. While Alan Wake 2 gave me barely over 60 fps running on Max settings with no RT at 1440p native, Firebreak runs at a smooth 75–78 fps at the same settings with my RTX 4070 Ti. The game frankly doesn't require RT, as the Northlight engine and The Oldest House are both breathtakingly gorgeous as they are, without the RT tax impeding on the smooth gameplay. Still, if this is the game being optimized, I can't help but worry about how the Max Payne remakes could alienate a lot of users on 20-series cards or older.
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FBC Firebreak's gameplay loop is nearly faultless
Everything from start to finish is enjoyable and impressively polished
For my two cents, there is no faulting the gameplay of FBC: Firebreak. Everything runs perfectly, the core gameplay loop is solid and stellar, every bullet leaving your weapon has weight to it, and the thumping of your feet against the polished floors (thanks, Ahti) lends to the atmosphere. As you start, you've got one of three kits to pick from, which decide your initial loadout before you can unlock more weapons. I really do hate that I haven't been able to play with a friend, dousing a horde of enemies in water and then asking my friend to electrocute them, but hey, that's the life of a first responder — you gotta go it alone sometimes.
The game throws in modifiers (if you let it, by ramping up difficulty) to add corrupted items in your runs. These affect the environment in certain ways, such as giving enemies a buff or messing around with the environment in strange ways. These effects won't go away until you take care of the corrupted items first, keeping you on your toes and giving your team one extra problem to contend with.
To be completely honest — I know I'm having a decent amount of fun, but it isn't as fun as I know it can be with even a single other friend, let alone a full trio of us running around The Oldest House.
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Solo play in FBC Firebreak is really tough to like
The solid gameplay can't do much in a game designed for teaming
My first couple of hours with FBC: Firebreak were spent hopping into jobs and expeditions alone, before another Firebreaker joined up. Now, whether you'll find a competent teammate is up to fate, but the first couple of jobs are rather easy to get through alone. You get in, work through some objectives, and fight hordes of Hiss-infested zombies along the way. Once you're done, you go all the way back to your spawn point, survive against a final horde, and book it. It's the same gameplay loop as Helldivers, but even more closely aligned with something like The Outlast Trials or GTFO — two horror co-op games I'm in love with.
However, the problem lies in the game's lack of missions. At the moment, Firebreak only has five jobs, and the game's replayability comes from ramping up the combat difficulty and the length of your jobs, which, playing solo, is a really tough sell when it comes to anything over twenty minutes. I could easily see myself doing hour-long expeditions with friends, but only with those I know, because the game doesn't have in-game voice or text chat — a major omission that Elden Ring Nightreign is also guilty of.
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Things get tremendously boring if you're alone in Firebreak
If there's nobody to talk to, the jobs get boring quickly
The first job you are tasked with in FBC Firebreak is a fairly simple one, since it's more of a tutorial. However, you can very well do it alone, as I did — there are three phases, and as you move forward while completing them, the hordes are easy to manage because you get all the ammo to yourself. On the other hand, there's something like the mission Paper Chase, which tasks you with destroying tens of thousands of sticky notes.
Two minutes in, I was bored out of my mind, shooting at sticky notes or washing them off of myself by making over fifty round trips to the nearest shower before the mission ended. If I had a friend playing alongside me with a specialized water kit, or another with an electrocutioner's loadout, I'd have had way more fun, and that's clearly a given.
At the end, I finally faced off against Sticky Ricky, a humongous giant made of sticky notes. It took me (and trust me, I counted) 17 trips to the nearest health station 11 to the ammo station just to take down the boss, all while extinguishing multiple fires alone and tackling hordes that drove me back to the very start of the level not once, but twice.
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The only way to play FBC Firebreak is with a team
Even if you don't know them, it's better to have teammates
Look, it is absolutely clear that the game is designed with three-player teams in mind, so if I was bored and exhausted playing alone, that's on me, not on the game or its design. However, if you want to, the game doesn't stop you from playing solo. In fact, all by yourself, it's still easy to get jobs done on normal and hard difficulties — you're just going to be spending hours doing jobs that could be done in a fraction of the time with friends.
I couldn't possibly recommend playing FBC: Firebreak solo — even if you have nobody to play with, just make sure that you have public matchmaking turned on. Even if you drop in alone and get things going, the game is at least going to drop someone random into the match with you, who, if nothing else, will be there to revive you or get a couple of objectives done. You won't even have to talk to them, but the job itself will take less time. There's no scaling in the game, which means that the difficulty or enemy numbers won't scale up or down according to the party size. As such, playing it completely solo is something best left to the madlads on YouTube who just want to prove that they can.
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My complaints from FBC Firebeak
This feels like The Outlast Trials, all over again
My friends and I purchased The Outlast Trials all the way back in May 2023, back when the game was still in early access. We thoroughly enjoyed every second of the gameplay, and couldn't get enough — until the three levels it had at the time ended, and we had nothing to do but run things back with modifiers. This is exactly what FBC: Firebreak feels like right now — it needs so much more content immediately, before exhaustion, fatigue, and plain boredom settles in for its players.
Not only that, but the game needs more features and a deeper gameplay system that goes beyond just the shallow grind of it all. The Oldest House is one of the most creative fictional places ever written, and FBC: Firebreak barely utilizes it in a meaningful, lore-driven way. It's tough to remember today, but when Left 4 Dead came out, which, by the way, is still the standard for games like these, it was pretty barebones before its DLC and other mods got it to where it is today.
The game's progression is ultimately insignificant right now.
Furthermore, in its current state, the game's progression is ultimately just... insignificant. There's barely any semblance of a story outside a couple of Easter eggs peppered here and there, and while the game forced me to repeatedly beat the same levels over and over again, it doesn't reward me for it at all in any meaningful way. All I can unlock are incremental stat boosts that help me with my loadout, but when I've already seen all the levels in the game, what good is a fresh loadout going to do when nothing else changes?
FBC: Firebreak
Released June 17, 2025
ESRB T For Teen // Violence, Blood
Developer(s) Remedy Entertainment
Publisher(s) Remedy Entertainment
Engine Northlight Engine
Multiplayer Online Co-Op
Number of Players 1-3
PC Release Date June 17, 2025
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Remedy has built a solid foundation — now to built the house around it.
Firebreak isn't a bad game by any means — far from it, actually. It is well-made, smooth, crunchy, and satisfying. It even has one of the coolest fictional settings in gaming. Sadly, it needs a lot more to it, because the one thing it isn't right now is rewarding. I could even make a strong case for getting the game to play alone if it had more levels, but when you run out of new things to do within the first few hours of buying a $40 game, something needs to change, and quickly.
I'll probably log in now and then, but unless I have friends joining me for the ride, I can't possibly see myself playing this game for hours at a stretch. Remedy has certainly built a solid foundation — all that's left now is to build the rest of the house around it.
English (US) ·