911 Operator Review

911 Operator is a simulation strategy game that places you in the role of a 911 operator/dispatcher. This means you are tasked with answering incoming calls,  giving instructions on first aid, dispatch firefighters, police, and ambulances to incidents or even make the decision to ignore a call.

This is the main aspect to talk about with this game.

Gameplay

911 Operator is a very love it or hate it style of game. You manage your few units, sending them to different incidents while making visual novel like choices in regards to 911 calls. Admittedly, this isn’t usually my “kind of game.” It was very slow, repetitive and overall kind of boring. I can definitely see how this would be right up someones alley though.

The majority of 911 Operator is spent looking at a map of an imaginary city. You can choose to play the game on actual cities, such as New York. That does next to nothing to affect the overall gameplay though. On this map you have your three types of units, Ambulances, Police cars and Fire Trucks. Periodically incidents will pop up with colors corresponding to the type of service needed, white, blue or red. When you send a unit there, that’s pretty much it. You just wait for it to be resolved. Sometimes backup is required but that just means you have to send another unit.

Calls happen periodically as well. When you answer, the caller describes one of the very few voice acted incidents. You then are given various choices regarding how you want to handle the call. If you get a call of a girl ordering pizza you can either take it as a joke or ask if they’re pretending to order a pizza because they’re in trouble but their captor is in the room, you might even get a call regarding a cat in a tree, and can explain that you don’t have enough resources for such a minor incident.

This is fun at first, but after under an hour of playing the calls started repeating and just became busy work.

The Concept

This is probably the strongest part of 911 Operator. It’s a very unique thing to put you in the position of a lesser discussed, but very important job. There have been more than enough games putting you in the shoes of a police officer, fire fighter, or paramedic. Having a game involving the behind the scenes aspect of who you actually talk to if you have an emergency, and who decides where service providers go, is very interesting.

Final Thoughts

Overall the game just doesn’t have enough going for it. The concept is interesting but the execution is lackluster to all but a very niche audience. Couple that with the fact that the game has a hefty $15 price tag and it’s just not that worth it.

911 Operator is avaliable on Steam now.