Every day thousands of calls are made to the European Union emergency services number, specifically 112, where men and women have to take calls from individuals that more than often, are life-threatening situations and are required to dispatch proper aid to them in a small time-limit. Can you handle all of this? This is the question posed by Jutsu Games 112 Operator, the long-awaited sequel of 911 Operator.
112 Operator is a big step up from the previous game and while the main game focuses on the European Union, in the free play mode, one can choose from over 100,000 real-world locations to play in. This along with the map sizes and emergency calls being increased significantly has greatly expanded the scope and reliability of the game.
The gameplay starts out slow and basic with answering calls, dispatching proper services, and providing advice if needed to the callers. However, the difficulty and duties players take on significantly begin to increase as one gets promoted, having to manage a greater area and at one point, being in charge of it all including the budget for your department. The increase from level to level felt natural and made the game a constant challenge no matter how skilled users were with the individual systems.
The game has also made some improvements to the core gameplay, with new types of units and a more in-depth management system for each dispatched squad. There are three main types: Medical, Police, and Fire squads, each with a subset such as patrol cars and firetrucks or even SWAT teams. On top of this, the UI itself has gotten much quality of life improvements such as less intrusive menus and better-organized tabs for gameplay.
‘112 Operators’ general theme is improving on what worked before, but it does add some new core gameplay elements. The biggest change from the original gameplay is the inclusion of city uniqueness with unique weather and city-type for each one. This means two cities will not be exactly the same and will have a combination of factors that affect the types of emergency, infrastructure, and crimes. This feature alone significantly advances the challenge in certain cities as well as replayability.
My only real complaint would be the price point coming in at $25 on Steam. The game is a significant improvement and clearly has a lot of love poured into it, but it is not worth this price, for what is included, but a price point of 10-15 dollars seems much more reasonable.
When playing the original game, I did not expect much, however, when playing the games’ latest release, I had placed much higher expectations and was not disappointed. “112 Operator” is a game relatively underappreciated and should be played by far more people, whether or not it’s worth its current price, I definitely recommend picking it up when it goes on sale.
