If zombies are the headliners of many action-horror games, then the star of Embr is fire. It slowly but surely consumes the walls of the structures you’re trying to save and licks the soles of your boots as you cross superheated floors. Unless you manage to extinguish the fire completely, it will never stop growing. It keeps spreading like parasite until finally its host collapses in defeat.
Fire is a worthy opponent. It’s a shame, then, that as you delve deeper into Embr, the focus shifts from simple firefighting to tedious puzzle solving. By the end of the game, I was spending most of my time fumbling through annoying key puzzles, in hopes that maybe, if I was lucky, I could hose down a fire or two.
There are two ways to beat a stage in Embr. You can either completely extinguish the fire, or you can rescue a certain number of people before the building comes crashing down. Tracking down and dousing every last flame is often difficult and sometimes virtually impossible, so usually I opted to rescue folks instead. This is done by dashing into the building, throwing a person over your shoulder, and bringing him or her outside to safety. Rinse and repeat until you’ve saved enough lives.
As you’ll quickly discover, humans in Embr – at least the ones who get trapped in burning buildings – are not smart. They play on their phones, sit on the toilet, and generally remain calm as sheep until their pants are literally on fire. They also make no attempt to escape even if a door or window is nearby. Hunting them all down can be quite onerous, especially in the larger stages. Fortunately, your in-game cell phone has a function that lets you spot them through walls.
The most fun I had playing Embr was while tackling the early stages in co-op. My partner and I would gear up, rush into burning buildings, and hose everything with reckless abandon. We’d experience the pain of splashing through electrified puddles and the pleasure of narrowly avoiding gas explosions. After we’d rescued enough sheeple, we’d hop into our Embrmobile and off we’d go to the next stage.
Hacking through doors with my axe, drenching ceilings and floors with water, and carrying citizens to safety, all made me feel like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of firefighters. Unfortunately, as we progressed into the mid and late game, the stages became increasingly complicated. Unbreakable doors, that would open only if I carried the correct key, started appearing along every corridor. Making matters worse was the fact that I could only carry one key at a time, and that keys frequently got stuck on doorframes or corners and tumbled out of my hands. While I understand the theoretical appeal of these puzzle elements, the execution just isn’t quite right. Levels that should have been fun to solve instead made me feel like I was operating a ferry service for keys. Haven’t these firefighters heard of keyrings?
Worse yet were the boss levels, which feature unskippable dialogue that’s littered with stale jokes about Canada and Silicon Valley. Most of the boss fights boil down to watching patiently as your opponent goes through a series of canned animations before you get a narrow window to fight back. Yes, I realize this description applies to the boss fights in many games. The problem here is that the balance between observation and action swings too far in the former’s direction.
Despite its flaws, Embr packs plenty of fun. The early levels are great, yet I really wish the developers would’ve found a way to make later levels more difficult without relying on key-ferrying puzzles. As it stands I still feel Embr is worth a play, but you may want to call it a career before you get burned by tedium of the later levels.
One final thought: If a crafty developer ever combines the firefighting of Embr with the voxel-based destruction of Teardown, they will have an undeniable hit on their hands.
Fire is a worthy opponent. It’s a shame, then, that as you delve deeper into Embr, the focus shifts from simple firefighting to tedious puzzle solving. By the end of the game, I was spending most of my time fumbling through annoying key puzzles, in hopes that maybe, if I was lucky, I could hose down a fire or two.
There are two ways to beat a stage in Embr. You can either completely extinguish the fire, or you can rescue a certain number of people before the building comes crashing down. Tracking down and dousing every last flame is often difficult and sometimes virtually impossible, so usually I opted to rescue folks instead. This is done by dashing into the building, throwing a person over your shoulder, and bringing him or her outside to safety. Rinse and repeat until you’ve saved enough lives.
As you’ll quickly discover, humans in Embr – at least the ones who get trapped in burning buildings – are not smart. They play on their phones, sit on the toilet, and generally remain calm as sheep until their pants are literally on fire. They also make no attempt to escape even if a door or window is nearby. Hunting them all down can be quite onerous, especially in the larger stages. Fortunately, your in-game cell phone has a function that lets you spot them through walls.
The most fun I had playing Embr was while tackling the early stages in co-op. My partner and I would gear up, rush into burning buildings, and hose everything with reckless abandon. We’d experience the pain of splashing through electrified puddles and the pleasure of narrowly avoiding gas explosions. After we’d rescued enough sheeple, we’d hop into our Embrmobile and off we’d go to the next stage.
Hacking through doors with my axe, drenching ceilings and floors with water, and carrying citizens to safety, all made me feel like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of firefighters. Unfortunately, as we progressed into the mid and late game, the stages became increasingly complicated. Unbreakable doors, that would open only if I carried the correct key, started appearing along every corridor. Making matters worse was the fact that I could only carry one key at a time, and that keys frequently got stuck on doorframes or corners and tumbled out of my hands. While I understand the theoretical appeal of these puzzle elements, the execution just isn’t quite right. Levels that should have been fun to solve instead made me feel like I was operating a ferry service for keys. Haven’t these firefighters heard of keyrings?
Worse yet were the boss levels, which feature unskippable dialogue that’s littered with stale jokes about Canada and Silicon Valley. Most of the boss fights boil down to watching patiently as your opponent goes through a series of canned animations before you get a narrow window to fight back. Yes, I realize this description applies to the boss fights in many games. The problem here is that the balance between observation and action swings too far in the former’s direction.
Despite its flaws, Embr packs plenty of fun. The early levels are great, yet I really wish the developers would’ve found a way to make later levels more difficult without relying on key-ferrying puzzles. As it stands I still feel Embr is worth a play, but you may want to call it a career before you get burned by tedium of the later levels.
One final thought: If a crafty developer ever combines the firefighting of Embr with the voxel-based destruction of Teardown, they will have an undeniable hit on their hands.