This review might seem a bit harsh, but let me be clear, I absolutely give credit to the developers for creating (for me at least) a stable game, with a much better UI than 911 Operator, giving a discount to those who owned it, updating the game often, but most important to me, actually lurking in the discussions area and responding. That's great. Also happy to finally see an option to sell units from the garage!

So as I mention the UI in this game has massively improved, among other great stuff, but unfortunately for me I cannot recommended it quite yet. But this isn't a game you should turn away from, but rather wishlist it and return in a month or two. Sorry if I sound overly negative but some of these things are just ugh.

- There are too many incidents! This feeling is shared a lot on the discussions area. Even in easy mode, the calls keep popping up especially as you get deeper in to the game. I absolutely get that it's unrealistic to get every unit to every call before it expires, because a lot of the time, at least in my country, units/resources are stretched, but this is pushing it a bit. You can get several incidents one after the other and you're not making enough money to upgrade your units quickly enough to cope with the increased demand and significant amount of more area you have to cover. Easy should at least be relaxing!

- The tutorial is reasonable but it seems to miss quite a few things, like it didn't tell me I could shift click an order to queue it, that I could double click on the map for a unit to go there with sirens on, and the tutorial came up telling me that I can hire additional dispatchers around the 8th or so day, but apparently the feature isn't available to use until around the 15th, making me look around the interface wondering how to do it, then coming to the forums to discover it isn't possible yet.

- I find it annoying that the difficulty modes for freeplay are locked. I can't play hard until the 15th mission or so and I can't play the top difficulty until I've completed the ENTIRE campaign. That will take ages! Why this silly lock?

- The time to respond to incidents on bigger maps is too small especially without the money to buy more units. It's a shame there's no realism with vehicle speed either, would be good if they could speed up a bit on long straight roads but that's just a minor ♥♥♥♥♥♥. :P

- This is by far my most fustrating experience. This game has not improved on the 112 calls from the 911 Operator game. The calls are extremely repetitive, often getting the same calls from the previous mission. I'm only 9 days in and I can already recite most of the calls, knowing exactly what they will say and what options I shall pick. It feels like I am rotating between the same 10 calls. I made a discussion thread on this and several others feel the same way. Both because of this, and not, I would like to see a setting to disable the public's incoming calls entirely so I can just play the game as a dispatcher. In my country, the call hander and the dispatcher are seperate people away, so the option would be a realistic one.

- There are a few UI ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, like if I sort my units by police, then open the new units menu, the filter I just set for my units will reset to show everything. That isn't what I wanted, it should stay as I filtered it. Some sort of 'compact' view to see all of my units without scrolling too much would also be valued. The lack of facility to re-order units or sort/group them by anything other than district is also a bit fustrating.

- As suggested in discussions, in some circumstances, like the police being at an incident and taking a prisoner, if I have the unit queued up to attend another incident, the vehicle will cancel the queue and will go to the police station. The vehicle should go direct to the queued event unless the vehicle is full of prisoner, and I think most others would expect this behaviour. If the vehicle did go back because it was full, that order should only go in between and the vehicle should continue with the queue once they stop the suspects off at the station.

- Some information, maybe on the tutorial, on how staff members skill increase (or don't they?) would be nice.

- The messages that appear in green at the top of the screen like when a fire engine runs out of water or police need backup, should disappear once the problem no longer applies. I.e. if a fire engine runs out of water, as soon as that fire engine leaves the scene to fill up or the incident becomes complete, the message should be removed. Sometimes I get multiple messages come through at once and I have to click each one to understand which are relevant and which have passed.

This is a great game and I have hope that many of these changes will come with the active development team, so I'm not refunding personally... but for now I cannot recommend purchasing this game. I will watch the development closely and will absolutely amend this review as appropriate, mainly after the balance and public 112 call problems are resolved.

Eight people died in a burning building because I sent all units to rescue a cat in a tree.

Fun game. Good tension. It's all about the quality of your decision making. UI could use a bit of work. When multiple units are in the same location it can be a nuisance to select among them. Also, should provide a very lightweight small icon listing on the edge of the screen for units assigned/unassigned. Sometimes it can be a challenge remembering who all is busy with the sheer volume of calls they're responding to, which is a little frustrating clicking through "I know one of these isn't busy...". But still, fun and engaging.

However, speaking of decision making, have to give this a thumbs down despite liking the game for their decision to put an advertising pop up after you click to exit the game, requiring another click to make their ad go away before it actually closes. Don't put ads in games, I already gave you money and it wasn't so you could advertise your other products to me.

DISCLAIMER: I backed 112 Operator on Kickstarter, and have been playing since Closed Alpha.
TL;DR: I recommend 112 Operator, especially if you're a fan of 911 Operator.

All the features and events from 911 Operator and its DLCs are there, e.g. earthquake, blackouts, search request, etc. So what about the new features promised in-this game?

1. New fire mechanics is one of the highlights of their promotion. Mechanically it works, and it does pose a large challenge to manage this event while considering things like the weather and wind. However, based on experience (on very early build), the mechanics is let down by the often poor pathfinding that the units take. I have had several instances where police units were stuck between the fire or can't find a proper path to a clear area, thus failing evacuation on the fire's path. This might've been improved in release, but sadly I haven't been able to see this in action since large area fires occurs very rarely in campaign, and almost never occur in free-game.
   
   
2. Dispatcher system: I can't comment much since I have yet reached the point where I can hire dispatcher, but reports from other players indicates that the dispatcher works but can often override the priority of the players. I don't know if this has been fixed yet.
   
   
3. Region-specific legislation and districts characteristics: Haven't tested the region-specific legislation since it's just recently added. However, the devs did ask people to contribute to this data gathering, so I assume it will be quite accurate, and if it isn't, it would be safe to assume that the devs would readjust it. A nice touch though is that the currencies are localised, e.g. if you play in London it will display pounds, and if you play in Warsaw it will display the zloty.
   
   But the districts characteristics does work. e.g. you get more chemical spill or warehouse fire on industrial districts, and armed robberies happens in urban areas. This adds an additional layer on where to position your units and with what gear in the game-map, e.g. you would put ladder trucks in business/residential areas, and a fire truck with specialist gear for industrial areas. My only wish is that these districts characteristics could be expanded further, e.g. if a district has an airport, then there might be some specific events that triggers because of an airport. Another example would be district area density (e.g. to give more granularity of that urban feeling), whether a district is a tourist hotspot (could make certain crimes occur more often than not), etc.
   
   
4. Larger map: Oh boy, when one say the map is large, it's not a joke. After playing 112 Operator, the map in 911 Operator feels like peanuts. It's also great that the large map is accompanied by a good optimization. Campaign maps are well-balanced and the districts are well-defined, with some semblance of differences. In free-game, you can play on almost all cities (I assume), but the districts are less organized, leading to some districts being too big and cost too many points for being just 1 district. One example is Frankfurt am Main, with the city center taking up a big chunk of the map for 23 points, which makes sense but could've been broken up better. Some other maps are quite good though, like Rotterdam and Hong Kong.

For those new to this game, there's not much music playing in-game, but it's a good thing since the prompts for calls and events would pop up often especially when you have half the area open to you, and moreso if you have radio chatters (they don't overwhelm the popup sounds though).

However, the star of the game are the voice actors. It feels weird the first time playing 112 Operator to find the VAs all speak with an American English accent. It will be great if we can have more European-sounding VAs, but it's understandable given the cost of recording voices. Once one get past this fact and drill into the voice acting themselves, they're quite great. The aforementioned 112 Operator of course is the same VA from 911 Operator and Radio Commander, which is no stranger to some. The people who record the callers themselves have done an astounding job in bringing that human emotion to play, e.g. when that caller is on the verge of tears finding his girlfriend OD-ed. The sounds are also decently mixed, e.g. the call in the storm, the train call, etc.

Not much left in some of the latest builds as far as I am aware. There's the very rare issue of units somehow stuck / not working when handling a dispatch. Balancing still feels a bit off (e.g. sometimes it takes too long for police units to stop a speeding car, police effectiveness vs armed gunmen, etc.), but it's nothing that can't be fixed.

Despite the issues, I feel like I have got my money's worth and did not regret backing the game. Looking at some of the things the devs put in the Kickstarter pledge, I'm tempted to see where the devs would take 112 Operator next (hint: please give us water events :v). If you're a fan of 911 Operator, then I highly recommend 112 Operator, since it builds so much of what 911 Operator has that it can feel difficult to come back to 911 Operator. If you're new to this type of gameplay, I would recommend you watch a couple of videos to see if this game is right for you. If it is, then I feel the pricetag, especially at launch, would not deter you from this game.

Advertisements every time you launch and quit the game. There should be no ads in paid products.

The only game where you have the right to send an entire SWAT team for a parking violation and a police bike to an armed robbery

I do not appreciate the in-game popups ads to buy more of their games, already payed 21€ for the game I should not be getting ads!


Edit:

Originally posted by Usher (developer):

hello, this is only on escape plus we will add an option to disable that permanently if you really hate to see that.
You can always turn off the game with alt+F4, just make sure you have an autosave :)
Please consider changing your review, we hope that apart from that you enjoy the game!

It' should not be in the game to start with, you have the store page to sell your other products, you can link your other games aswell on the store page, there is no reason to have that in the game. It' would be one thing to have small icons on the main menu about the DLC's for the game in question.
But popups about other games is not okay.

The only way i'll remove this review or change it would to remove the popups n' ads for other games that not related to the game in question.

So there I am, quarantined because I have Coronavirus and this bad boy drops. It's like a better version of 911 operator and I love that game. Those who read my review for that will recall that I am an Emergency Services Worker and will recall I stated there are few things sadder than those who play at their job on a video game at home. It's got to be the definition of being job-p*ssed and I am unrepentant.

I get a massive adrenaline kick every time I hear emergency sirens start up, because it makes me think I'm about to start running to a call. I've had three bloody weeks off trying not to die and I crave it and in a small way this game is helping.

Yes, I'm covering the area where I work and yes I've also given the units I have call signs appropriate to that area. I love it! The scope is bigger and the only thing I hope for (at this point I've less than an hour in) is that there are more units and equipment, for example Area Cars, Q Cars, Dog Vans, Helicopters, Paramedic Response Cars and so on.

They did a great job with this and I'm excited to keep playing!

Got this game because it was on offer, thinking "Aah, it's just a police game, shouldn't be too hard."

- Gets a call from a kid who's dad was a firefighter, recognises a gas leak in his apartment building.
- Told him to stay outside, but he ran in to alert the neighbours and to save his sister.
- Explosions can be heard through the phone call.
- Call ends.

Great way to develop a trauma.

I somehow told a man to jump off a 5 story building.