FBC: Firebreak hands-on preview - An extraction shooter in need of adjustments

FBC: Firebreak looks exactly like Remedy Entertainment's (developers of Max Payne, Alan Wake, and more) Control, in the best way possible. 2019’s Control was a unique action shooter that allowed players to utilise paranatural abilities while exploring a complicated and mysterious building known as The Oldest House.

The Oldest House quickly became one of video games’ all-time iconic locations, with its distinctive brutalist architecture and absurd events. Control allowed you to smash through these bland office hallways with a complicated physics system that saw you throwing tables and office furniture until the entire building looked like an anime battle had passed through. 

Control was exciting and memorable for a laundry list of reasons, and returning to The Oldest House in FBC: Firebreak is an exciting prospect. Only, your player character in Firebreak isn’t a flashy, power-wielding hero. You’re a normal person with a bog standard selection of guns, along with a unique tool. You won’t be clearing out a room full of foes with a big attack, for in Firebreak each foe can be a pretty substantial roadblock in trying to achieve the goal.

While it’s set in The Oldest House and looks just like the action-packed Control, Firebreak is a far more familiar first-person extraction shooter where you’re simply an average Joe battling through The Oldest House to find resources and complete objectives. It’s an uphill battle. Each wave of foes is a massive threat, and each objective comes with its own challenges. The only thing that can get you through each game is teamwork, but that’s the bare minimum for a co-op game. It hits that benchmark.

The developers stressed ahead of our hands-on playtest that this is the kind of live service that you can easily keep up with in five minute bursts, if that’s all you have time for. Lower level missions are exactly that, in fairness, with simple objectives you can complete as quickly as you can put a team together. Later objectives, though, will be a bit more of a time commitment. 

Despite the unique setting, there’s little unique about the gameplay in FBC: Firebreak. The objectives we got to test out were Hot Fix, where you repair a series of machines, Paper Chase, where you fight against yellow sticky notes, and Ground Control, where you gather radioactive leech pearls from the depths of The Oldest House.

Hot Fix is a standard series of button prompts to “repair” machines, but the tasks in this mission type can be sped up quite nicely by the Crisis Kits you get to choose from. We were able to select between the Splash Kit, the Jump Kit, and the Fix Kit. The Jump Kit can provide a burst of electrical current to anything – machine or enemy – and the Fix Kit comes with a big wrench that can repair machines quickly, and without button prompt inputs. These two were really able to shine in this objective type, while the Splash Kit’s ability to douse flames is “useful” in pretty much every game mode, it just feels distinctly optional.

My team got furthest in Paper Chase, finally coming face-to-face with Threshold Entity 14-N, the boss of this mission type. Instead of just shooting the beast with our weapons, the goal was to sprint around the room connecting water pipes and finally flipping an electrical switch to do damage to the creature. Instead of being a big, unique fight, it was another series of objectives to interact with, just with a bit more pressure. Make no mistake, it was a visual spectacle, but actually engaging with it didn’t feel very exciting. If you’ve ever beaten up Sandman in a Spider-Man game, you know the drill.

With the right team, loadouts, and strategy, I can see FBC: Firebreak being a rip-roaring experience, but in the short playtest, I wasn’t able to see the vision the game put forward. I’m still eager to go hands-on with the full game and the right people, but as of right now, I’m still wondering who exactly FBC: Firebreak is for in a post-Helldivers 2 world. We’ll find out when it releases on June 17, 2025.