With FBC: Firebreak now in its players’ hands, opinions are divided on whether it is a great co-op shooter based on Remedy Entertainment’s Control franchise, or a lackluster game whose thrills wear off after the initial few hours.
While its critical reviews and subsequent scores are not as concerning as other 2025 releases like MindsEye, for example, they should be enough reason to give the Finnish studio pause, and perhaps encourage it to go back to the drawing board to re-evaluate its content roadmap for its latest release.
Based in Control’s Oldest House, a truly bizarre location whose brutalistic environments laugh in the face of reality and the space-time continuum, Firebreak’s premise involves the Federal Bureau of Control’s (FBC) lowliest soldiers teaming up to deal with paranormal threats within its headquarters, ensuring its protection while climbing up the ranks.
It’s a concept that looks very promising on paper while its execution has resulted in an experience that is every bit as fun as the game that inspired it. But somewhere along the way, Firebreak seems to have lost its footing and its grip on the interest of its players. Is Remedy facing the first mediocre release it has had in years? Or is Firebreak just getting started?
Those are questions that elicit a more nuanced look at what makes Firebreak tick – and what doesn’t.
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try Again
Fans of Remedy’s rise to prominence over the years will surely know that this is not its first tryst with a multiplayer title. The studio collaborated with Smilegate Entertainment on CrossfireX, the console version of the original Crossfire, to craft its single-player campaigns back in February 2022.
With Smilegate handling the multiplayer part of things, CrossfireX had a lot of potential to be an incredible addition to Xbox’s then well-performing library of games. However, both Remedy and Smilegate failed to impress audiences, and a little more than a year later, CrossfireX’s terrible showing led to its servers being shut down.
While one would imagine that a studio like Remedy would be able to glean important lessons from the experience it had with a multiplayer title, it seems that Firebreak has fallen prey to some of the issues that several multiplayer shooters suffer from. Despite Remedy Entertainment’s efforts to remedy (pun intended) those trappings, the studio’s expertise in crafting cinematic narratives and surreal, haunting experiences has failed to show itself this time around.
It’s a story that CrossfireX’s critics would find all too familiar. But is Firebreak really that bad?
A Sincere Shot at Greatness
The answer is yes, and no. Firebreak does a lot of things right, with a gameplay loop that even its critics agree is frantic, exciting, and fun to play with the right teammates at your side. Remedy has been smart to bring several callbacks to Control, including Objects of Power that are more fleshed out in the new game than they were in the title that inspired it.
The same environments, quirks and all, bring a sense of familiarity into the mix as do several returning enemies from the original game. Although the world-building and intense narrative present in Control are conspicuously absent in Firebreak, many of the game’s reviews, including our own, highlight how it has made good use of Control’s world to create an entertaining experience.
Furthermore, Remedy must be commended for taking a bold step away from a more traditional live service model and sticking to its guns in presenting an experience that remains free of paywalls and microtransactions – a detail that becomes more significant as we examine its implications in short order.
At its essence, Firebreak is certainly a decent game if its gameplay is anything to go by. However, Remedy’s reputation could be working against it, with players and critics perhaps expecting more from a studio that has achieved the dizzying heights of the Alan Wake and Control franchises.
Why is that the case, though?
Firebreak’s Strengths Are Also Its Weaknesses
When Firebreak falls into its stride, it’s an unstoppable romp through the Oldest House, bringing sinister threats, quirky enemies, unique challenges, and inventive ways to achieve objectives to the table. Any new player diving into the game after completing Jesse Faden’s own adventures through it is sure to appreciate how the Oldest House seems familiar yet fresh.
However, that familiarity soon brings a few issues to the forefront. For starters, Firebreak suffers from the same disappointing enemy variety that Control had on offer, albeit with a few notable exceptions (looking at you, Post-It Note Man). That’s especially disappointing when one considers the fact that there was a crossover with the Alan Wake franchise in Control.
Why didn’t Remedy capitalize on that in Firebreak? There could have been so many delightfully bizarre additions to its rogues gallery, after all. Maybe Remedy is asking itself the same questions and gearing up for exciting additions to the game in future updates.
The lack of variety in its enemy line-up is far less glaring an error than a lack of variety in the weapons that players can use, though. This is the second glaring omission in Firebreak with only a handful of weapons that players can pick from, with each one not living up to their high expectations as is reflected in several criticisms of the game from users and critics alike.
Third, its three distinct classes of players bring interesting wrinkles to the gameplay loop, with mission objectives taking those wrinkles and making meaningful twists to each mission undertaken by players. However, those twists soon run out, and Firebreak’s players are left repeating the same actions over and over again which may not be a bad thing but runs the risk of the game becoming stale despite the action never letting up at any point while the FBC’s latest recruits are in the field.
Revisiting Remedy’s decision to stay away from the live service model, it’s a showcase of how a major selling point for Firebreak has turned against it. It’s a problem that should have been addressed with the game’s release, an error that Remedy might come to regret a little down the line.
As it stands, Firebreak’s exciting early hours make way for a grind that one can only describe as an uphill climb as it requires its players to grind high-difficulty missions for limited rewards which they must then collect in order to work with an upgrade system that seems stacked against them.
The last part’s especially disappointing when the success of another co-op multiplayer spinoff from none other than FromSoftware is considered.
Firebreak’s FromSoftware Conundrum
In many ways, Firebreak’s ambitions are similar to Elden Ring Nightreign. They are both spin-offs looking to riff on an already popular game. They both bring a frantic, action-packed cooperative gameplay loop between three players to the table. And they are both priced quite competitively although Firebreak does take the advantage on that metric.
However, Nightreign has capitalized on Elden Ring’s popularity in a way that Firebreak has not. Its enemy variety is bolstered by familiar faces from FromSoft’s extensive rogues gallery, going beyond just Elden Ring to bring bosses from other popular titles in the Japanese studio’s illustrious history to Limveld – a factor that is a huge part of its success.
Moreover, the presence of several distinct character classes and a lot of lore to uncover about them is another feather in FromSoft’s cap. Each of them brings a distinctly fresh approach to its gameplay loop, allowing players to experience the game in entirely fresh ways.
Additionally, Nightreign ditches progression systems to bring a roguelike RNG-based loot system to the table, with an insane amount of possibilities in build variety stemming from it. It’s a clever way to make grinding for upgrades far more engaging than Firebreak can hope to match as it stands today.
Remedy may want to take a look at how FromSoftware has managed to achieve nearly every one its own ambitions for Firebreak in comparative style while also managing to eschew a live service based model. That being said, bringing FIrebreak to PS Plus and Game Pass is a decision that helps Remedy one up its unlikely rival in the multiplayer space.
Bright Lights on the Horizon
Despite Firebreak’s shortcomings, we would argue that it is too early to write it off entirely. Remedy’s reputation for delivering excellent titles must be accounted for, and its entirely possible that every gripe expressed about its latest release will be addressed in future updates.
Firebreak might be a very different game a few months from now if the talented folks at Remedy put their minds to it. There’s already new content on its way for the game, after all, and opportunities to address concerns about grinding for loot and a lack of variety in its levels and enemies.
However, with the studio adopting a multi-project approach that involves upcoming remakes of its Max Payne franchise, a confirmed sequel to Control, and a rumoured sequel to Alan Wake 2 on the cards, it might stretch itself too thin by trying to make a good game even better to the detriment of its other projects.
However remedy chooses to deal with Firebreak’s middling critical and commercial response, the game’s woes are certain to be a blip in an otherwise bright future for the studio.
We’ll just have to wait and see if FBC: Firebreak is high on its list of priorities.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.