FBC: Firebreak is the latest game in the ongoing Remedy universe. It’s a three-player co-op, PVE, where players control one of three characters running around killing Hiss and all types of otherworldly monsters in The Oldest House. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the exact location that Control takes place in. Unlike Control, the story isn’t all that important. Instead, the game mainly focuses on you and two other players running through The Oldest House to clean up some sort of mess. During Summer Game Fest 2025, MonsterVine was able to get our hands on the upcoming game and try it out for ourselves.
FBC: Firebreak Is Control’s Wild Multiplayer Cousin, and It’s Gloriously Unhinged
Before loading into a game, you’ll have the option to pick from three classes, and admittedly, we couldn’t explore what each class did (mainly due to time constraints). However, the class I was assigned allowed me to heal my partners and shoot fire out of my water hose (which will make more sense later, I promise). As for my loadout, I kept things simple and picked a pump-action shotgun and a standard grenade.
Once we loaded into our first mission, we had a simple task, and that was to destroy as many Yellow Sticky Notes as possible because of how dangerous they were. To do that, we pulled out our water hoses and began to wet as many as we could. Once they got damp, we filled them with lead. But completing the objective wasn’t that easy because as we were in the process of that, various Hiss would begin to spawn literally out of thin air and would begin running towards us to convert us into one of them.
This is where things got a bit tricky because if I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going and ended up walking on a sticky note, it would end up getting stuck to my body. And if I stepped on too many, it would convert me into a yellow sticky note monster that my friends would have to kill. Even though it is funny to put down your ally who just got turned into a monster, it means you have to stop whatever you’re doing to solve that issue right away.
But don’t worry, though, because even if you die, it isn’t the end of the world. Like in Control, there are safe rooms you can find throughout the levels. But instead of getting power-ups, they work as spawn points in FBC, so if you happen to die right next to one, you can load right back and jump into the fight again. But if you didn’t explore and find one nearby, you’ll end up spawning near the starting point and end up wasting a bunch of time getting back to your allies.
Of course, we slowly progressed through each stage in the level, where we would eventually need to heal up and restock on ammo, and the way FBC handles this is kind of funny. To heal, your character needs to take a shower in a special area. And the way you collect ammo is by playing a mini-game where you mash the right buttons as fast as you can.
But as we battled through waves of Yellow Sticky Notes and Hiss, we made it to the big boss. It was none other than a Giant Yellow Sticky Note Monster. Fighting it was no joke and required a lot of legwork. On top of avoiding the sticky notes, it dropped on the ground. We had to wet him and electrify him all at the same time. Once we did that, we could start inflicting damage. Thankfully, I forgot I had my ultimate and decided to use it then. This consisted of me pulling out my water hoses, but instead of shooting water, it shot out lava (See, I told you it would make sense.)
After we made quick work of the giant monster, we had one last goal. That being said, get out of there as quickly as possible. Like most things in FBC, that wasn’t as easy as it should have been. Because the path from the boss fight to the starting spawn point was filled with all sorts of Hiss trying to prevent us from leaving alive. But luckily, we all made it.
I didn’t have too much time to fully explore the game, and I know there’s a lot more to it than what I played. Some of the parts felt repetitive, but hopefully, that was just due to the limited one level we got to play. It’s very clear that this game is meant to be played with a party. FBC: Firebreak does have a lot of the charm that Control has, too. It’s weird some things straight up don’t make sense, and there are even little Easter Eggs that explain what Jesse is up to now as the director.
FBC: Firebreak is scheduled to come out on June 17 for the Xbox Series X/S, PC, and PlayStation 5.
