Let’s be honest we’ve all dreamed of sliding down a fireman pole. At least I have – it’s something I’ve wanted to do since a young age, hoping to become a firefighter. But it’s not only poles that are the attraction. There is the fire engine, the heroic endeavours, and the respect you get from wearing the uniform.
In Emergency Call: The Attack Squad, you get to live out your fireperson dreams, getting out there and helping people. It’s a hard job with many different things to remember. Are you the hero we’ve been looking to recruit?
Emergency Call: The Attack Squad is from a well-established sim games company, Aerosoft, based in Germany. The game is set in Germany as well and you start your training with a VR tutorial that introduces you to the equipment you will be using and how you should best deal with fires and smoke-filled apartments. You then should start with the campaign and off you go on your missions, working your way across a small town.Â
Each campaign mission begins with an emergency call coming from the place of danger, before you head off to deal with the incident. When you get there your boss gives a heads-up as to what you need to do and what the mission is. You can then go to the fire engine and pick up the tools you think you need for the job. From there, cross the fingers and hope. .
Each mission comes with several primary objectives and some optional objectives as well. Complete all of these and you will walk away with a full 100% score. And in a bit of a shock, the missions themselves are much more varied than I thought they would be; in that sense they never get boring. For example one of these has you tackling a fire in a house – you have to break in, put out the fire, get rid of the smoke, and then check the whole house, rescuing people in there. You even have to save a cat whilst you go about it.
In another mission, an exotic spider has been found in a grocers; it’s your job to find it and trap it. I’m not sure how often firefighters are called to that kind of job, but it is what it is. Stories and characters appear across these missions and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the missions and how each was different to the next.
You have different tools to get utilise too. There is gear for opening different types of doors, safety tape for blocking off areas, smoke grabbers, fans to wave the smoke away, fire extinguishers, and binding fluid to make environmental hazards safe. There are loads of things to do and a tool for each and every job. In terms of what is on offer, Emergency Call: The Attack Squad is detailed.
The game is played in the first person, coming across as fairly simple to get a hang of. However, swapping and attaching items is quite cumbersome and not as easy as I would have liked. In fact, in general the controls are not as intuitive as I would have liked; perhaps that is down to a transition from PC to console?
The visuals are fine and whilst Emergency Call: The Attack Squad won’t win awards, it can occasionally look good. Some areas are repeated a few times though, and the world feels a bit barren, but what do you expect when fires break out? The character animations themselves are varied, yet it is disappointing that they never open their mouths; something which is a bugbear of mine. The main stuff though, the fire trucks and ambulances, look authentic and the menus are easy to use. And yeah, the soundtrack has a tense feel to it – like a 999 reality TV show
Is Emergency Call: The Attack Squad a good simulation of how firefighters work? I have no idea but I had fun trying it out, heading off on varied and different missions. A sim-game that comes with arcade elements, you should have some fun with the firefighting tools that Emergency Call: The Attack Squad brings. However, the control system can feel a little awkward at times, and it’s a pricey game for what it is.
If you are curious, you could do worse than to grab the pole and head down for some Emergency Call: The Attack Squad action.Â
