Emergency Call 112 - The Attack Squad

I went in wanting to like this one. The Emergency Call 112 series has always occupied an interesting niche: a sim grounded enough to teach you something about fire suppression tactics, light enough that you don't need a manual to start. The Attack Squad narrows the lens further, putting you inside the helmet of the front-line crew rather than the dispatcher's chair. On that premise alone it should work. After spending time with it, though, the execution consistently undercuts the concept. The core loop runs like this: an emergency call crackles in, your team rolls to the scene, and you work through a checklist of objectives in first-person. The tool selection is actually the highlight. Standard hose lines for ordinary blazes, powder extinguishers for grease fires, fog nozzles for electrical incidents, the Halligan bar for forcing doors, a turntable ladder for upper-floor rescues, smoke curtains, ventilation fans, binding fluid for chemical hazards. That is a legitimate vocabulary of firefighting equipment, and the game deserves credit for making you pick the right one for the job rather than pointing a single magic hose at every problem. Mission evaluations score your performance, giving completionists a reason to replay. So far, so reasonable. The problems pile up fast. The stamina system is the most immediately irritating design choice: carrying equipment up four flights of stairs drains a bar so quickly that simple tasks become slow slogs. It adds friction without adding tension. The map pool is thin, with a small number of environments recycled across the mission list to the point where you will recognise every staircase by your third outing. Character models are dated, animations are stiff, and the mission-briefing voice work has drawn consistent criticism from players who suspect synthetic generation. There is no ambient audio during missions either, so you work in near-silence, which is an odd call for a game built around chaotic emergency response. Community feedback on Steam sits at roughly 48% positive across more than 80 user reviews, a "Mixed" rating that reflects genuine frustration rather than genre snobbery. For strategy and sim players specifically, the depth ceiling is low. Tactical decision-making exists on paper: you assess the scene, prioritise objectives, choose your approach. In practice the missions are short, linear, and do not meaningfully branch based on your choices. Fans of Emergency Call 112: The Fire Fighting Simulation 2 have noted aloud that this sequel strips back functionality rather than building on it, which is a damaging comparison to have circulating. There is no mod ecosystem to compensate, and no co-op to share the tedium. The tutorial introduces basic fire scenarios but leaves several emergency types unexplained, which is a missed opportunity given the game's own aspirations toward realism and education. If you have zero firefighting sims in your library and the concept appeals, the bones here are just about functional enough to deliver a few sessions of novelty. But Crenetic's own predecessor does everything this game does, and does it better. Until significant post-launch patches address the stamina tuning, the map repetition, and the sparse audio, The Attack Squad is a hard sell at full price.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

Be the first to comment on Emergency Call 112 - The Attack Squad.