Returning home after a rather difficult school year, I decided to take advantage of the free time I had and play those games that I didn’t have enough time for before. I’m ashamed to admit, but until recently I hadn’t even tried a single game in the Resident Evil series, and therefore I decided to start with this franchise.
Having completed the first part, I immediately took up the second, then the third and finally completed the fourth. Afterwards I took a short break, finishing DOOM 2016, and then returned to Resident Evil again, launching the fifth part. At first everything was generally good, but towards the middle of the game I got very tired of it and wanted to switch to something else for a while.
I didn’t go into the AAA segment again and decided to look for something interesting among less expensive projects. To this end, I went to explore my library in the Epic Games Store, where over several years of regularly receiving games from distribution, a decent collection had accumulated.
After looking through the list of projects available to me for some time, my gaze fell on the 911 Operator. I can’t say exactly why I suddenly wanted to try this particular project, because I had never heard of it before. Perhaps, looking at the title and cover, I decided that this was some kind of another indie simulator, which, although it does not give any valuable experience, is perfect when you are tired of everything and want to play something along with a podcast or some endless sitcom, and this is exactly what I needed then.
As a result, I spent almost fourteen and a half hours in the game, went through all the modes and tried almost all difficulty levels, but was this project worth so much time spent??
Three modes – one essence
It is worth saying that the game had a relatively small budget. Based on the information I found on the project’s Kickstarter page, the publisher managed to raise about $37,924 CAD (which is roughly equivalent to $28,443 USD), although I’m not sure if all of that money went solely towards development. Considering that the campaign was not hosted by the developers from Jutsu Games themselves, but by the publisher PlayWay, I believe that part of the budget also went to pay for marketing.
The lack of funding is visible in many aspects of the game and even in the main menu, which has a very unattractive design with rustic buttons and title music that, after finishing, suddenly starts playing again without any smooth transition. It’s not that I want to seriously find fault with the main menu of the game, I’m just trying to focus on the fact that the creators really didn’t have that much money for development. However, should we give the game any discount because of this and not pay attention to some of the shortcomings?? In fact, this is exactly what I planned to do, but then, out of interest, I decided to compare the price of 911 Operator on Steam with the cost of This Is the Police, with which I will sometimes draw parallels in this text due to the general similarity of the themes of these games. To my surprise, I discovered that 911 Operator and This Is the Police sell for about the same price, so I feel that I have every moral right to compare these games head-on, without giving any concessions.
Well, in that case, let’s start with the available game modes. There are only three of them in the 911 Operator: “unique situations”, “one city” and “everyday mode”. It would seem that three full-fledged game modes would be great, but that’s not the case. In fact, the difference between them is not as big as it might seem at first glance.
There is no plot as such in 911 Operator; in all three modes, the player’s task is to successfully complete work shifts that are not connected in any way narratively. For a day to be considered a success, you just need to avoid receiving a negative reputation at the end of the day. In “unique situations”, after completing several shifts, the game resets progress in the current locality and sends us to a new city. There are only six of them: Kapolei, Albuquerque, Chicago, San Francisco, New York and Washington. Depending on the current city, the set of available equipment and equipment may differ slightly, but, as a rule, there is no big difference between megacities.
As for the “one city” mode, this is absolutely the same as the previous mod, only all events take place in the same pre-selected locality. No new events or challenges appear here, but as progress progresses, progress is no longer reset, and the player can finally, to some extent, manage his crews, equipment and available funds. If “unique events” felt like a tutorial that was designed to introduce the player to game mechanics and available cities, then this mode is more like a half-fledged campaign.
And finally, “everyday mode”. This is the same mode as with one city, only more complicated. Shifts here last longer, and, as I understand it, there can be as many as you like. There are many more emergencies happening, and in order to open the next city, you need to gain a certain number of reputation points. However, there is no new content here either; although there are more calls, they appear not due to the occurrence of new events, but due to the repetition of what has already happened.
Strictly speaking, the game also has a “free game”, where, if you wish, you can even play on maps of cities in other countries, but I was not able to try this mode because the game stubbornly refused to connect to the servers. Perhaps this is just my problem, or perhaps there is no such mode in the game anymore.
As you may have noticed, there are no significant differences between the modes in this game. They all offer give or take the same experience, just adding some modifiers to the gameplay, which again don’t really affect the overall picture. Let me remind you that in the same This Is the Police the developers offered us a full-fledged story campaign for 18-20 hours with cutscenes, voice acting and even small splashes of non-linearity, and as a bonus there was also an endless mode. Compared to all this, the 911 Operator looks especially meager. And even if we don’t compare this project with Weappy’s creation, three modes, where you need to spend about 4-5 hours to complete one of them, and the other two are slightly modified replicas of the first, it all doesn’t sound very attractive.
Gameplay: unrealized depth and balance problems
Since the game has neither a story nor a variety of modes, then perhaps all this is compensated by deep gameplay, during which the player will have to make many interesting decisions? On paper, this is probably how it should have been, but in practice the gameplay situation is not so rosy.
In general, regardless of the https://nonukcasinosites.co.uk/casinos-not-on-gamstop/ mode, map or difficulty level, the task before us as a player is this: to respond to as many emergency situations as possible, earning as many reputation points and money as possible.
After starting a new game, the squad management screen will first appear in front of you. Here, with the money earned from fines and bonuses, you can buy new equipment, hire new workers and buy equipment, and then from these components you can form several of your own squads.
There are three classes to choose from: police, firefighters and medics, and each of them has its own characteristics. For police officers, these are “accuracy” and “suspects,” that is, how quickly they deal with criminals; for doctors, this is, respectively, “medical care,” and for firefighters, “technical skills.”. In addition, each of them has parameters such as “wounded”, “severely wounded”, “fires”, “search” and “technical”. work". All these indicators affect how quickly a particular employee will cope with an emergency situation. In addition to the characteristics described above, there is also such an indicator as “driving”, which affects how quickly the crew will move around the map.
Obviously, the parameters will differ depending on the employee. For example, someone may have a very high score in a special skill – police marksmanship or medical.help from doctors, while others, on the contrary, are better at driving, and therefore, in theory, it would be nice to create balanced squads that will not only move quickly through the streets, but also act promptly at the scene of an incident. However, you need to keep in mind that the better a person’s performance, the higher his salary.
It should be mentioned that if following the main indicators that are displayed next to the character icon still makes at least some sense, then here are the secondary parameters such as “wounded”, “severely wounded”, etc., which appear on the screen only after hovering the mouse over the corresponding character are not so important. Firstly, they differ insignificantly from employee to employee and, in general, remain approximately the same for all employees within the same class, and, secondly, even if they were somehow very different for different heroes, keeping track of them is quite tedious, and in fact there is no particular need for this, which we will talk about a little later.
It is very inconvenient to change equipment or personnel, because you cannot simply drag the desired item into the place of another so that they switch places, or at least the replaced item is removed from the inventory. You must first remove an already installed piece of equipment, and only then drag the desired one to the free slot.
Okay, we hired people, now we need to buy them the appropriate equipment. Each employee can take exactly two items with him. The policeman is able to carry pistols, rifles and system terminals, which reduce the time to resolve the situation. You can also use a shotgun, but no matter what modes I played, I couldn’t buy it anywhere. You can get a shotgun only by playing on the map of New York, going to the section with equipment already in your inventory. This is where it will lie in a single copy.
Doctors can take with them an automatic continuous massage device, which is effective against heart attacks, and firefighters have at their disposal protective masks that can save them from acrid smoke.
Body armor (a very important piece of equipment that reduces the risk of injury. If, for example, a medic or police officer is wounded on a mission, he will become unavailable for use for several shifts, and if he is very unlucky, the employee may even die), tool boxes (they are useful if there is any interference in the form of transport or other technical problems), first aid kits and fire extinguishers can be used by any workers, regardless of class.
Finally, the time has come to deal with technology, the most expensive pleasure in the game. Transport differs from each other in speed, number of available seats and, most importantly, price.
The police have the following types of transport at their disposal: a motorcycle (accommodates two policemen, but cannot transport criminals; quite fast and relatively inexpensive), a car (also accommodates two policemen, but can transport two more criminals; a little slower and much more expensive than a motorcycle), a van (accommodates four policemen and four more criminals, but is very slow), a helicopter (accommodates two policemen, cannot transport criminals; is a very fast transport, which, however, takes time to take off and costs a lot of money to maintain) and a horse, which raises a lot of questions.
The fact is that a horse, like a motorcycle, can only accommodate two policemen and cannot transport criminals, but, unlike an iron horse, it moves much more slowly, which is why its purchase seems completely unjustified. Yes, the horse itself is cheaper and requires less maintenance, but the difference between the price of the motorcycle and the price of the horse is only $5,000, which is not such a large sum in the world of 911 Simulator, and therefore in a hundred percent of cases I preferred the more expensive, but faster motorcycle. The horse’s description says that it doesn’t make sounds and is therefore effective in parks, and I’m not really clear on how I can use this information. Perhaps police on horseback are better at catching pickpockets due to their noiselessness, but I didn’t notice anything like that in the game.
Deciding to figure out why this type of transport was needed in the game, I went to the wiki page, where I read that horses can maintain their speed while moving off-road. However, again, it is not entirely clear how to use this feature. Understanding what is considered off-road on a map and what is not is not so easy, and if we take it as an axiom that everything that is located far enough from the city center is considered off-road, then in fact I have never noticed that anywhere a motorcycle was slower than a horse. If the developers had made the horse a little cheaper or narrowed the gap between its characteristics and the characteristics of the motorcycle, then perhaps this type of transport would have become more useful, but in its current state, it seems to me that it does not have much value.
The equipment available to rescuers is generally similar to police vehicles. They can use a car (it holds two rescuers and one patient; is a fairly fast and cheap option), an ambulance (it seats three rescuers and two patients; slightly slower than a regular car, but still cheaper), a medical transport (exactly the same as the previous transport, but instead of two it can carry three patients) and a helicopter (unlike the police one, this one can not only transport two crew members, but also one patient).
In general, I have no special complaints about the rescue equipment, except for one: a strange balance between an ambulance and medical transport. The problem is that a medical transport has the same speed as an ambulance, has the same price and can accommodate the same number of rescuers, But can carry one more patient. What is the point then in buying ambulances if there is a more versatile alternative for the same price?? Not entirely clear. Turning to the wiki again, I found information that medical transport does not provide such a speed bonus for the work of doctors as an ambulance, but apparently this bonus is not so great, because, again, I did not notice any big difference in resolving situations, and therefore I did not buy ambulances.
And finally, the firefighters. This class is the most balanced in terms of technology. They have a cheap ATV (can carry two crew members, but is quite slow), a pickup truck (can carry up to four rescuers and is slightly faster than an ATV), a fire truck (can travel at the same speed as an ATV, but, like a car, can carry four rescuers. In addition to this, this vehicle slightly speeds up the work of firefighters due to the special equipment that is installed on it), a technical vehicle (absolutely similar to a fire truck, but costs a little more and significantly speeds up the work of firefighters) and a helicopter (accommodates two people and can be used for firefighting).
Having started a new shift, the game will offer to place the crews on the map, which is actually a rather useful option, because if you correctly distribute your cars across the area, then it will be much easier for them to get to incident sites that can appear quite far from each other.
The map itself is a schematic representation of the city without any frills, on which small emergency icons appear from time to time. By clicking on this icon, we will have two choices: either send the necessary units there, or ignore. In fact, such a simple, at first glance, choice could add additional depth, for example, by developing the ideas of the same This Is the Police, which from time to time threw players false calls to which there was no point in sending crews. There, such situations could be recognized by reading the text, which briefly described the task and made it possible to save scarce units. Such an element would be perfect for the 911 Operator, moreover, it could flourish here to the fullest, but, unfortunately, there are practically no such challenges in this game. Of course, you can still ignore some incidents for which no bonuses or penalties are given, but there are so few of them in the game and they appear so rarely that in the end you just start reacting to absolutely everything without really understanding. However, this mostly applies to ordinary situations, but with another type of task, calls, the situation is somewhat different.
Calls are entire mini-stories, which are perhaps the most developed aspect of 911 Simulator. When the emergency service receives another call, you need to pick up the phone and listen to the caller’s message: someone might be complaining about their neighbor’s illegal parking, someone about a sudden pain in the stomach, and someone about a kitchen cabinet on fire. The player’s task is to determine whether the case is an emergency. This is where it makes sense to look for false calls, because if you send teams to solve a non-emergency situation, you can get a rather large penalty to your reputation. Some cases can generally be resolved without the intervention of units, simply by giving the correct instructions to the caller, but here you need to be careful, because if the wrong course of action is chosen, the situation may only get worse, and then you will not only have to send additional crews, but also pay for your failure with your reputation.
Another undeniable advantage of the game is the sound design of calls. These tasks are not just typing, but a fully voiced story, where there is even background noise accompanying any events. If a witness says that someone is leaving in a car, then the sound of the engine and the squeaking of tires will definitely be heard, and if someone is loudly quarreling in the background, then conversations and screams will be heard. In some cases, this background noise becomes an indicator of whether the situation is an emergency or not, which is a pretty good find, which, unfortunately, is quite rarely used.
During the conversation, time is not paused, and therefore, if we hesitate in choosing an answer, the interlocutor will definitely react to this.
In general, with the exception of the main soundtrack, there is no music in the game, but this is compensated by constant conversations on the radio between units, which, although they cannot boast of a wide variety of lines, generally create a good atmosphere.
Well, we concluded that the call was really urgent, and decided to send the necessary units, but we still need to decide who to send. In general, who is needed at the scene of an incident can be determined by the icon itself, but in some cases it is necessary to send additional crews, which in theory may be required. For example, if there is a robbery going on, then in addition to the police, it is worth sending an ambulance there, because the criminals will probably resist, which means someone will definitely get hurt. By sending an ambulance in advance, you can save valuable time. You also need to take into account that after some cases, the crews will need to return to base, for example, doctors will need to take the victim to the hospital, and the police will need to take the criminal to prison. This takes some time, which may be needed when a new task appears.
By the way, the incident will not hang on the map forever, waiting until the player deigns to send someone to it. Sooner or later it will disappear, which will cost a significant amount of reputation points. Moreover, different situations require different amounts of time: if a person with a heart attack cannot wait long for an ambulance, then some small accident where there were no casualties can, in principle, wait, and therefore it would be a good idea to send units first to where the situation is most critical (by the way, they give more reputation points for them, but they also take away more if they ignore them). This is a good element of the gameplay, which on the one hand keeps you in suspense, and on the other hand forces the player to constantly think… Or rather, he would do all this if 911 Simulator presented a worthy challenge.
In fact, the full depth is largely not realized due to a lack of complexity. What’s the point of monitoring a large number of indicators and making some unnecessary movements if the game is already completed without any problems??
The developers had the opportunity to make the game more difficult, especially since they implemented as many as four difficulty levels. I tried everything, and even in the most difficult, according to the developers, “daily” mode at the highest difficulty level, there is nothing that could seriously complicate the passage. Increased shift lengths, fines for overtime, the absence of an in-game pause and a general increase in the number of incidents, although they can cause minor problems, do not seriously complicate the gameplay. Yes, you probably won’t have time to respond to a certain number of calls, but even in this case, getting a negative amount of reputation is very difficult, and the money you will lose is not that significant. The only time the game really gets harder (more difficult, but still not difficult) is during special force majeure events like an earthquake, during which there are a large number of calls requiring a response at once. This is where a small puzzle begins: which car to send to which place first, which call to leave for later, and which to respond to immediately. It’s a pity that in the campaign itself, this only happens one and a half times. During the mentioned earthquake and the demolition man, but in the second case, many incidents do not appear at once, you just need to very quickly respond to the call from the demolition man himself and send as many people as possible to the bomb installation site so that they can either defuse it or have time to evacuate everyone. So it turns out that all the potential depth of the gameplay is not realized due to the lack of balance of this very gameplay.
Well, what’s the end result?? 911 Simulator is not a terrible game. You can spend 5-6 hours in it, going through a couple of modes, but, unfortunately, it critically lacks content, and most of the elements of the project that are already in it are not polished to the required level.
911 Simulator has a great premise that could have been a great game if the developers had done a good cohesive campaign with more varied challenges that constantly force the player to think, make tough decisions, and balance between making money, gaining reputation, and saving time.
Would I buy this game? At its standard price, most likely not, but you can get it at a fairly large discount, provided that you like this kind of simulators, and both parts of This Is the Police have already been completed, in principle, you can.