We gamers are a funny bunch, aren't we? After a hard day at school or work, we throw ourselves on the sofa, start a game to relax and... bang! We suddenly find ourselves in a new full-time job. Whether we're running supermarkets, building entire cities or - as in today's case - having to keep track of things as an incident commander in the middle of a burning mess: The main thing is that we have something to do! By the way, today it's about EMERGENCY from Sixteen Tons Entertainment... but such "work games" that get you hooked despite the stress can be found en masse as Let's Plays on my YouTube channel.
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When chaos learned to walk: a look back
Back in 1998, the clever minds at Sixteen Tons Entertainment an ingenious idea: What if players really had to go on a fire department call, to the hospital or to the police? This is how EMERGENCY: Fighters for Lifethe ancestor of an entire series that has been making us sweat ever since. The idea was simple: you're the boss who has to rock the disasters. Most of the time, the whole thing is set in modern times, with fast emergency vehicles and all kinds of high-tech. Just imagine: A train crashes into the end of a terminus, terrorists play "hide and seek" with hostages and bombs, or a major fire causes entire city districts to go up in flames. And you? You are the glorious pixel rescuer! So if you've always wanted to give the command "Extinguish! Now!" ", this is EMERGENCY your perfect training camp.
EMERGENCY: Free stress from the Steam cloud
The latest baby in the series is EMERGENCYand the best part? It's free on Steam! Since May 2023, we've been able to really get to grips with it again. Sure, it's structured a little differently to its predecessors, but for me it's a worthy successor that reliably raises my blood pressure.
You start on a large map with four very unique districts: Countryside, Downtown, Laborton and Industrial Port. Countryside is a bit of "country love meets small industry", Downtown is the urban jungle, Laborton is pure industry plus "amorous nightlife" (don't ask what that has to do with rescue, but it sounds exciting!), and the Industrial Port offers lots of water, shipping and - surprise! - even more industry. And we all know that where there's industry, there's bound to be a bang at some point. Perfect for us who love explosions!
Difficulty level: Your personal heart rate monitor
You choose your level of difficulty, which basically just measures how much suffering you want to endure today. The green tasks are for warm-blooded people and beginners: easy-peasy, hardly any work, fires almost extinguish themselves. But don't you dare get any better! With every level you move up, the chaos increases and new factors are added that drive you to the brink of madness.
Take the weather, for example: in a storm, fires spread like wildfire across a dry field and your people crawl through the wind like snails. In fog, you can't see your hand in front of your eyes - flying blind is inevitable! The cold may slow down the flames a little, but your poor pixel patients will freeze faster and immediately become an emergency case. Oh yes, and your people like to slip and then lie around stupidly for a few seconds. In the heat, they get heatstroke and also fall over. And fires? They spread all the more. My personal highlight: when lightning strikes and starts a new fire and you have to call in an extra fire-fighting unit. That's always exhilarating for the blood pressure!
Upgrades, coins and the matter of money (once again)
Before each mission, you can select three upgrade cards to pimp your units for a short time. You get them by playing and improving them with coins. Coins are awarded for successful missions, daily or weekly tasks and sometimes even for logging in every day.
But let's be honest: leveling up takes ages. You soon realize: Oh yes, it's a free game! And what does a free game have? That's right, a store! Here you can buy in-game packages for real money and speed up the whole level grind considerably. In addition to temporary upgrades, there are also permanent upgrades that also eat up coins and make your units better in the long run. These range from simple power resistance (handy!) to better engines for faster travel and bullet protection for your rescuers. Doctors heal their patients faster and you can even tune their movement speed. A total of 58 temporary and 142 permanent upgrade cards are waiting for you to unlock them. That's a lot of coins!
The store also offers Emeralds, the precious currency for cool skins or "consumable cards". This is particularly interesting, because EMERGENCY is heavily geared towards co-op mode. Sure, you can try everything on your own, but from the "red" (i.e. really difficult) tasks onwards, the solo game becomes a suicide mission. I can't say much about the co-op mode myself because I haven't had a human teammate yet. But hey, if you want to support me in the chaos, feel free to write to me on Discord! The stress is much better together, isn't it?
Your job: Extinguishing, rescuing, overpowering - and constantly losing your mind
The missions are small packages of horror scenarios that you have to complete within a time limit. There are only a few at the beginning, but the higher your level, the more they pile up. Eleven tasks at the same time? That can happen! But seven to nine is the rule.
What is your job? You put out fires, treat injured people and send them to hospital, defuse bombs, repair broken electrical boxes, overpower armed villains and send them to prison - and much more! You have a whole fleet of vehicles at your disposal: Fire truck, fire engine, ladder truck, emergency doctor, ambulance, police car, SEK, engineer and crane vehicle.
And now comes the fun part: you have to select the right units and send them to the location. There you give them tasks which they... well, bluntly fulfill. Whether they get shot at or stand in the middle of the fire? It doesn't matter! When in doubt, they simply fall over and become an emergency doctor themselves. The rescue pixels are so stupid that you as the incident commander can really lose faith in humanity. They're standing right next to a fire and nobody thinks to put it out! You have to click on them and direct them, otherwise nothing will happen. And so you're constantly busy finding the right units from a jumble of pixels, giving them orders and praying that they don't get killed. Because if your units fail, the whole mission quickly goes to hell!
Oh, and you can only have five vehicles on the field at a time if you don't have any special cards. If personnel are injured or a vehicle is damaged, it blocks a slot. For repairs, you need an engineer, who also occupies a slot. And vehicles? You can never have enough of them! Especially when the game gets really crazy and throws three or four new missions at you at once. Then the word "stress" takes on a whole new dimension!
If you don't react quickly enough to the fires, you'll have a fire front in no time at all that you'll never be able to get under control again. And the injured? They need help immediately too! The worse the situation, the faster your chaos level rises. When the chaos reaches a certain level, a timer starts ticking and your mission will fail within a few minutes. But don't panic, there's also a card that resets the timer. To buy in the store, of course!
There are plenty of missions, and as the level increases, they become more and more insane. If a ship is captured by terrorists at medium level, they still have a bomb and hostages on board at high level. At the same time, the cooldown times of your vehicle slots increase, making it increasingly difficult to keep everything under control at all levels.
Conclusion: If you love high blood pressure, play EMERGENCY!
All in all EMERGENCY a great sequel that will keep you hooked for hours and really push up your stress levels. The many random tasks in the missions provide variety and challenge your strategic skills. It's always exciting because some missions are less frequent, while others, often slightly modified, appear more often.
So if you like to have higher blood pressure and a good dose of stress in your free time, then EMERGENCY (2023) just the thing for you! And don't worry, as you level up, your neighbors will know that you're still alive. Your swearing will tell them when everything gets out of hand and you've lost track of all the tasks!
You can find my video for this game here.