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| Ohnoes! A large fire in Northbridge! |
| Quick Info | |
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| Reviewed by: | Mark Goninon |
| Developer: | Jutsu Games |
| Publisher: | Games Operators |
| Release Date: | 24 Feb 2017 |
| Time played: | 5 hours |
The Unconventional RTS Niche
This isn't the first time I've played a game published by Polish company Games Operators: back in 2019 I backed a Kickstarter project for a game called Radio Commander and a few months later it was released. Published by both Games Operators and PlayWay and developed by Serious Sim, in general, I enjoyed the game, especially it's "less is more" approach by keeping you second-guessing about troop movements, but it definitely could've used with some more polish. Radio Commander is one of those real-time strategy games that doesn't follow normal conventions and is generally going for an immersive, simulation-style game instead of a balanced competitive multiplayer game like StarCraft or Age of Empires II.
Radio Commander inspired me to try out more games of a similar ilk. Thankfully, I didn't need to look far since Games Operators has a thing for this style of game. Back in March 2023, there was a Turkiye-Syria Earthquake Relief Bundle on Humble Bundle that raised AUD $5,685,235 for charity, after devastating earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria in February 2023, resulting in over 50,000 deaths. The bundle included many games including 911 Operator, a game released back in 2017.
The game is pretty much what it says on the tin: a game where you play the role of an Emergency Services Operator, dispatching police, firefighters and paramedics to various emergencies around the city. The game has a Very Positive rating on Steam with 89% of the 14,094 reviews being positive. Reception was more of a mixed affair on Metacritic though, with a Metascore of 68 for the PC version.
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| At the end of a shift you'll get assessed on how well you responded to emergencies |
Just Another Day At the Emergency Services Office
While the game has a tutorial that shows you the basics, it's really not enough. Thankfully, there is a manual that explains how team and vehicle management works.
Once you start playing the game proper there are a couple of game modes available to you: "Career Mode" which has you handling emergencies across many famous cities in a single player campaign, and "Free Game" which is a sandbox mode where you can play on any city map provided it exists in an online database (so there's a very good chance your home town exists as a potential level!).
The game is broken into shifts and at the beginning of a shift you're shown the Deployment Screen. You start off with a number of resources: staff, vehicles and equipment but you're able to purchase more as you're allocated some funds.
Staff are the police officers, medics and firefighters you will dispatch to emergencies. Each of your staff will have a certain aptitude at driving vehicles along with a secondary skill. For police officers this is Marksmanship, for medics, First Aid, and for firefighters, Technical. The more skilled staff are, the quicker they're able to resolve emergencies. Staff also have two slots to carry equipment that can help them out in particular emergencies. For example, police officers can be equipped with rifles and bulletproof vests which help make them more effective and more likely to survive shootouts with organised crime.
Vehicles also have different stats. A police bike or helicopter might be fast (and in the case of the latter, able to fly directly to an emergency) but both will have no spots to transport arrested criminals to the nearest police station.
Once you've accepted which staff, vehicles and equipment you're starting the shift with, it's on to the main part of the game: handling emergencies. Emergencies will pop up as little icons on the map and selecting them will give you an idea of which emergency service to send and how many staff or vehicles are required. It's then just a matter of quickly seeing which units you have available that are close enough to respond to the emergency, selecting those units and then ordering them there. The geography of a city will have a direct impact on how difficult a level is: a poor road network or hospitals, police stations and fire stations clustered around one area will result in longer travel times meaning it will take longer to respond to emergencies.
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| The most immersive part of the game is taking emergency calls |
Emergencies can range from speeding fines to large fires, and while this will keep you entertained for a bit, it's fortunate that you're not only expected to respond to incidents in this manner. The most tense yet exciting part of the game is handling emergency phone calls. When someone calls 911 you have to quickly gather as much information as you can from the caller within a short period of time before ultimately determining how you are going to respond to the emergency. Sometimes you'll receive miscalls to the emergency number or people reporting parking infringements, but other times you'll be handling hostage situations or house fires. You communicate to the caller through a series of choices, similar to conversation trees in point ‘n' click adventures. If you talk too long with the caller, sometimes this results in bad things happening, but being hasty in your response can also be dangerous as you might miss out on some vital clues. This means your words can literally mean the difference between life and death and this part of the game has definitely made me respect those who work in emergency call centres: it must be a stressful job and developing trauma must be an ever-present danger.
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| There are many available maps to download, from regional Australian towns like Albany, to Middle Eastern metropolises like Abu Dhabi |
Home Town Advantage
As mentioned, the core mechanic of the game may be entertaining for a while but it will eventually become boring and repetitive. Having the 911 call abates this issue somewhat but even with that you'll soon start hearing the same calls being made, over and over again (unless you create your own custom emergency calls or download some from the Steam Workshop). The single player campaign also helps somewhat by adding some unique emergencies that only apply to particular cities, such as handling the many emergencies following an earthquake in San Francisco. But again, while this helps increase the amount of time that one is willing to play the game, you're not very likely to replay a single player campaign, which is why the ability to select from a database of real-world city maps to play is this game's saving grace: Perth, Kuala Lumpur, Abu Dhabi, Canberra and even Batemans Bay, NSW, they're all available in the database. If you happen to live in a decent sized town in a first world country, it's probably available to play on. They even place the hospitals, fire stations and police stations in similar locations to real life and the streets are named after actual streets. The only issue that broke the immersion for me was when you received calls from people with houses situated on the freeway: obviously, home addresses are made up.
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7
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If you've ever wondered what it's like to be an Emergency Services Operator this is actually not a bad game to give you a small taste of what it's like. Multi-tasking is key, and things can definitely get stressful if you're trying to keep someone on the phone alive while catering to multiple other emergencies at the same time. Gameplay can get repetitive after a while but the ability to download maps of cities from across the globe and create your own emergency calls, helps increase the game's longevity. |
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