Who you gonna call?
112 Operator allows you to manage emergency services in any city in the world! Dispatch units, take calls and face situations caused by weather, traffic or changing seasons. Help the city survive escalating events like riots, organized crime, terrorist attacks, cataclysms, natural disasters and many more! Help on a scale bigger than ever before. The sequel of the award-winning 911 Operator lets you act on many, completely different levels — from taking care of a single neighbourhood, to coordinating several operators’ work in the world’s biggest metropolises.
112 Operator is a bit odd for a console game, if I’m being honest. It feels like it was built for PC keyboard and mouse controls instead of a controller setup. The game lets you pick from different cities to manage and the game handles more like an RTS, which I wasn’t expecting.
You’ll get units which you can deploy to certain events and you’ll need to try to balance them out, sending them to the right situations and try and keep on top of things. It can become stressful, sometimes overwhelming, but the real thing must be even worse. If only the controls were more streamlined for consoles, it’d be something I’d highly recommend. Plus when I found out that the actual PC version came out 4 years ago, I have to ask why it has taken so long to bring to consoles and why hasn’t the controls been optimised for them?
It’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially when everything else including the UI is immersive. It may not look like the most exciting game in screenshots/video footage, but you do get sucked in when you are playing, which makes it all the more frustrating when the controls are as problematic as they are. It sometimes feels like I’m trying everything to select a unit and send them to an event, but it just won’t work for some reason, or it will after numerous attempts and me cursing at the screen.
The visuals are pretty basic but get the job done, while the framerate is consistent. I can’t tell if the game is just glitchy or if the controls are really that broken at times, but when it works, it works well. When it doesn’t, it’s infuriating. There are no differences in performance between PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions.
The Verdict
112 Operator has the potential to be a great RTS-style game, but in its current poor console optimisation state, it’s hard to recommend anything other than an coroner. Maybe if it improves it by patches, it’ll be worth a look. Otherwise, I’d try and get this on PC.