Welcome to Collective Chaos, a new feature where some of the FULLSYNC team get stuck into the mad world of four player co-op games. We’ll accompany these articles with Let’s Play series so you can see our experiences for yourself! (The accompanying video for this instalment of Collective Chaos will be up soon!)
Embr is a co-op game for up to four players which takes place in some sort of dystopian future where emergency services have been replaced by the gig economy. You’ll respond to emergencies delivered by a phone app, tackling it with a wide array of wacky tools as you battle fires and… Canadian politeness?
We do have a video for this one on the way, and this post will be updated as soon as it’s ready. In the meantime take a look at our collective thoughts on Muse Games‘s whimsical fire-fighting title.
NIL:
Co-op games are enjoying a massive renaissance at the moment, and I’m loving every second of it. Embr is a huge new entry into that genre, and while it shares similar visual notes with games like Overcooked and Moving Out the first-person gameplay is fantastically frantic. What at first seems like a fairly straightforward game is deepened with tons of loadout options and upgrades, allowing your squad to progress individually and bring the right tools for every challenge. Rescue perpetually pooping victims from housefires, hunger and toxic gasses, whilst resisting the urge to steal everything that’s not nailed down (or currently on fire).
As if that wasn’t enough, Embr mixes things up with new game modes that unlock as you play, allowing you to replay older levels with more complex objectives. The real stand-out for me is the humour – Embr has a definite comedic tilt, and the environment it offers is massively conducive to organic jokes with your friends. The difficulty seems to jump up pretty harshly, but a variety of different level types and challenges helps prevent the game from ever feeling stale or repetitive.
DIZZYSNAIL:
Embr is a blast! Fighting fires, chopping doors, rescuing the inhabitants that are too busy looking at their phone to realize that they are in a blazing inferno, about to either burn to a crisp or be electrocuted.
As we continued one of us had a slight slip of the ol’ axe, which accidentally found its way towards one of the people that we were supposed to rescue, and then again, and again. As we finished the mission we got the flavour text “Shame about Bob” giving us a permanent inside joke and tons of laughter.
Upon finishing the mission you get rewarded with money, both for the grade you get and the things you may have salvaged from the fire, and you get to spend it on creative items to help you in your battle against the inferno. A few upgrades to your hose, making you able to spray more water, ladders, trampolines, even a water grenade! And my personal favourite, the slip-and-slide, giving you a speed boost as you ride across it. Because who says you can’t have fun while fighting fires. Embr is full of fun toys, and hours of fun.
LU:
Embr is a fast-paced, frantic fire-fighting simulator that will entertain adults and children alike. Not only are you tasked with putting out fires, there are a lot of other alternative game modes to keep things fresh. You can deliver food to burning buildings, rescue expensive heirlooms from disaster sites (or steal them for yourself.) The large variety of items and upgrades in-game make for further shenanigans – you wouldn’t expect firefighters to use grappling hooks, breaching charges or water slides – and it’s this goofiness that makes Embr a real joy to play.
I don’t imagine that the game would be that much fun to play solo – it’s really built around a group experience, although there are settings that can be changed to tailor the difficulty should you choose to play on your own.
CHRIS:
Embr is the perfect game to put the saying “its not where you are but with whom you are with” into practice – it is not a game which I would be interested in if I had to play it alone, but with three close friends it becomes a great experience. You are firefighters, tasked to save people from a burning building which unfortunately keeps burning even after you spray it with a cubic tonne of water.
Getting to navigate the building and turning off switches and breaking doors is fun as it makes the experience realistic, but it can feel it scales in difficulty a little too much ,as after a couple of levels you begin barely making it out with the required number of saved people. The laughter barely stopped during our session, mainly because of all the people we found taking a dump or in stupid places – the game does not take itself seriously at all, and that helps the humor while playing.
Embr is available now on Steam! Check out more of our game reviews here.