911 Operator

Genre: Simulation / Strategy

Players: 1

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Review:

911 Operator is a Simulation game with Strategy elements where you are placed in the role of a 911 operator managing dispatch for a city, as well as managing income and spending for the various emergency departments. Probably that second bit isn’t super-realistic, but it gives the game an extra level of depth so I don’t mind that so much.

The entire game is portrayed with a simple, straightforward presentation that works well for the game and with the themes the game presents. It’s not going to impress anyone, but it suits the game well.

What will impress you is the game’s maps – there are nine hundred city maps in the game based on real-world maps, complete with accurate locations for various emergency facilities (I checked my city, and immediately recognized an enclave of multiple hospitals, as well as a fire station I pass by regularly). If you live in a decent-sized city, it’s probably included in this game.

As for the emergencies themselves, throughout the game, in addition to reports of incidents that simply appear on your map, you’ll actually receive multiple calls in-game apparently based on actual 911 calls, with full voice acting and conversation trees where you need to give proper responses and ask the right questions. These portions are fairly well-written and well acted, too – at one point I received a phone call from a man who found his daughter after she committed suicide that was damn near heartbreaking. On that note, be aware – this game does not pull its punches in the content of its calls, which can have graphic descriptions of death and injury.

As for the gameplay itself, it’s a strangely compelling sort of strategy game where, knowing the location of emergencies and various response vehicles, you must respond to emergencies by selecting and assigning vehicles to these locations. If you see multiple armed suspects in a report, you may decide it best to assign more police to that location, leaving the rest of the city with fewer cops to spread around. Maybe all of your ambulances are busy with other calls when someone reports an injury, so you assign a fire truck with a first aid kit to the scene.

Do you assign someone close, or someone better-suited for the task who’s farther away? Does that call sound like it might turn violent, requiring a police escort? These are the sorts of questions you ask yourself while playing the game.

In between “days”, you’ll be graded on your performance and earn (or lose) money accordingly. Respond to calls promptly and with proper personnel, and you make money. Miss them or take too long to resolve them, and you’ll go broke.

This is where a few of the game’s problems crop up. It’s not really clear before starting a new day or a new city exactly what sort of demands the city will place on you. Do you have enough Ambulances? Do you need more large police vehicles to cart criminals to prison? It seems like a shot in the dark and that should never be the case in a strategy game. Also, if you find yourself falling behind, the loss of funds can create a snowball effect you won’t recover from.

Also frustrating is the game’s interface, which is unnecessarily confusing, placing important commands in awkward places (I found the “pause time” command absolutely necessary, and it’s done by pressing in a thumbstick), and interrupting your actions whenever you receive a call.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, icons on the map often overlap, making it difficult to select them, and some commands that seem obvious simply can’t be done – if I have two police vehicles on scene, with not enough room to take suspects into custody, why can’t I have one vehicle stay with detains suspects while the other one ferries some of them back and forth to prison? On one map, I didn’t know it but my police were severely understaffed, and I literally did not have enough cops to detain the suspects at one location, making this particular emergency I was doomed to fail.

These frustrations really hurt what is at its core a fantastic game with a lot of really good things going for it. When it works, 911 Operator is compelling, addictive gameplay that does a great job managing strategic gameplay with emotional human stories, but the game’s flaws really mar the experience and drag it down far too frequently. It’s still a great game at its core, but it’s one with serious problems.

tl;dr – 911 Operator is a Strategy Simulation game where you are directing funds and dispatch for local emergency responders. This game is addictive and compelling, and when it works, it is a unique and thrilling experience, but it also has some pretty serious interface, control, and design issues that mar the experience. It’s still a good game, but one that could have been much better.

Grade: B+

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