PS Plus Just Quietly Added the Quirkiest Co-Op Shooter of the Year​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Some of my favorite gaming memories of my life stem from the utter chaos of surviving co-op shooters with my friends — games like Left 4 Dead or Gears of War’s Horde Mode. There’s just something about getting your best friends together and screaming into that mic, whether it’s in shock or glee. FBC: Firebreak manages to hit that same feeling at the best of times, even if the journey to get there is a little rocky. It’s an imaginative co-op shooter that can be an absolute blast if you get the right squad together, and luckily, it’s on both PS Plus and Xbox Game Pass to make that easy.

Firebreak is the first multiplayer game from Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind games like Alan Wake and Control — and it actually takes place in the Control universe. Your group takes on the role of grunt workers at the Federal Bureau of Control, a “Firebreak” unit that’s sent in to clean up chaotic paranatural events. But, just like in Control, the supernatural entity known as The Hiss wants to stop you from completing your job, and they’ll send everything at you in order to do that.

Left 4 Dead is the most apt comparison of Firebreak, as a chaotic first-person shooter that focuses on survival and escape. Each match in Firebreak is themed as a different “Job,” where you and two other players have to complete highly unique, and usually fairly goofy, objectives. In one you need to clean up a bunch of sentient sticky notes covering a wing of the building, in another, you need to clear out an infectious goop from a bunch of turbines. A third one has you booting up portable heaters and placing them by hostile icy beings to melt them, with more heaters meaning they melt faster.

Every Job in Firebreak feels distinct, and the big catch, of course, is that Hiss will be attacking you the entire time you’re trying to complete the job. This means there’s a constant sense of pressure you have to contend with, and that only becomes more true when the job is complete, which prompts a mad dash back to the elevator so your whole team can escape. There’s a nice ebb and flow to Firebreak, seesawing between massive waves of enemies and quiet moments for you to regroup.

But where Firebreak really shines is in its absolute weirdness and absurdity. The paranatural Jobs all have some surprising sort of status effects that make things more interesting. Those supernatural sticky notes can stick to your helmet and obstruct your view, even turning into goofy paper people that lurch forward like their drunk. In the job where you clear goop, said goop can also get stuck to you, and infect you. It also grows in weird, awkward ways that change the landscape of the level, obstructing doors and entryways.

That same sense of quirkiness applies to the game’s weapons and kits. While you do have your standard machine guns, pistols, etc, you can also get “Altered Augment” items that let you unleash bizarre attacks. One is a piggy bank you stick on your wrench to unleash a whirlwind of coins on enemies, and another is a teapot you stick onto your water launcher to heat it up with deadly steam.

Every player has their own “Kit” they can bring into jobs — a wrench for quickly repairing items, a shock system to jump electronic bits, or a water cannon to put out fires. Each of these Kits has its own progression, on top of a general set of progression points that you can use to unlock new Altered Items, grenades, perks, and more. Each job awards a healthy amount of points, but you can also find top-secret files scattered throughout maps to gain even more. It’s a fairly satisfying sense of progression, allowing you to get some kind of new toy to play with between each match.

Of course, Firebreak isn’t without its issues as well — the matchmaking can feel finicky, sometimes enemies bug or objectives bug out, and the difficulty can occasionally feel all over the place. But Remedy has, so far, been incredibly committed to patching and listening to feedback, which is good. There’s also a post-launch plan for the game to add new Jobs and content entirely for free.

It’s the kind of game that’s already a good time for a group of friends, but feels like it could grow and change fairly drastically in the months ahead — in a good way. It’s worth jumping in for a weekend of fun, no matter what, but if you snag a copy now, you might even come away with a co-op game you and your friends can keep playing for months, jumping back in when something new arrives.

FBC: Firebreak is available on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.