Recent reviews by Ramen Cup

EDIT: TL;DR: The Gameplay in its current state does not justify the current pricetag. Numerous key game features are broken or are so buggy that your game will crash. Instead of prioritizing these issues, fluff content gets added in(New vehicles, VR support etc. > A working Multiplayer experience). Devs and staff censor people who speak up about issues https://imgur.com/a/2gfoozi https://imgur.com/a/FYGpRTf Devs can't meet set deadlines, so they no longer set them. Many more issues, but this is a TL;DR. NOTE: Updates in the comments.

After having this game for almost 6 months and about 40-50 hours in game, I feel obligated to write a review and state my views on the current state of the game, the painfully slow development cycle, and the devloper.

First, right off the bat you are shown some "interesting" wording in what the Developers have stated to us EA backers in what is on the store page. "Full access is given to you, the customer as a gift from Flipswitch Games in order to show our gratitude for supporting us during our development. It is important to note that when purchasing early access you are not purchasing the game, rather you are purchasing an early access pass." also following that is "Again, you are not purchasing or ‘preordering’ the EmergeNYC game. You are solely purchasing the right to access the latest development build (and additional features based on your level). All other ‘features’ are guaranteed gifts to you, from FlipSwitch games as a token of our gratitude for your support during our development."

Now this wouldn't be an issue to me atleast, but FlipSwitch Games has now decided to remove the "testing" branch of their builds(The one used for bug testing etc.) for their normal backers/supporters and reserve this for their V.I.P supporters. Again, wouldn't be an issue if they wern't activly advertising V.I.P to get the new build. So for the "latest development build" it will cost you ~$45USD now. Also I feel like this cheapens the original kickstarter V.I.P supporters support. After this move, it made me actually question the wording found in their Early Access Statement. I have screenshots to back it up if they change it nefariously. Will we actually get the game, if and when its finished? Who knows?
EDIT: I also found this post from April 24th of LAST YEAR. Stating that they knew the game was overpriced and were going to lower it to ~$25. Seems like that didnt happen.. wonder why.. >_> https://gyazo.com/82206e6b05634322d465325519f14cfc

The gameplay itself if quite broken. Hoses do not work or connect properly, or if they do they drop everyones framerate to a crawl. Engines get stuck or completely dissapear. Multiplayer at this point is a laughing joke. If you ARE able to set up a multiplayer game(on the testing map, Fire Academy) and have your friends connect to it, you are only going to get about 20 minutes of gameplay tops before something breaks and you have to completely reboot the game to fix the issues. Try a MP game in Manhattan and its an even shorter "uptime". Camera angels are horrible, clipping through whole city blocks sometimes. Fire mechanics are somewhat complete, but with the other bugs and horrible optimization you are truly unable to test these features out fully.

Next is the devlopment cycle and the developer themself. If you got this game around when I did, it was getting regular testing branch updates, about once or twice a week. This was a good start. Most of the updates were small fixes and tweaks to make the game better, and for a while it was on the up and up. But as you can see from the forums here on steam, the FaceBook group, and on the Discord, things have slowed to a the crawl of an unlubricated snail. The only updates we do get are from the volunteers that staff these places, and they all are worded vaugely the same,"Oh its comming! Dont worry!" To save some face they rolled out the above mentioned "VIP build", but have moved away from the weekly updates to the bug testing branch. I was told by their PR guy that this was to insure a smaller testing group to limit the bug reports(in a nutshell). To me this screams "We cant keep up with everyones bugs so we will just limit the games access"

I believe Sim UK, Maple Tea-Baggs, and ArticSpyders reviews are the most spot on and the ones I can relate with the most. The "lead" developer Raf - if you can call him that, has once again fallen off the face of the planet. This leaves an already straped devlopment team of 3 people down once again to handle everything this game needs done. Their is no specific "project manager", if you watch the last development video released at the time of me posting this review, you will see that instead of showing off more optimization, control/bug fixes etc, they show off NEW FIRETRUCKS! *eyeroll* There is no direction with this game, instead of fixing whats broken or meeting publicly set deadlines(seems thats nolonger a thing either) it seems that the lead dev just wants to cram more "content" in the game. If you know anything about the Dev team this actually is explainable, because as far as my research has shown, they really are mod content producers trying their hand at developing a game.

Also, dont mention ANY of this on the forums here or Discord, you will be activly cencored for speaking up on the issues with the game and the devs. I can attest to ArticSpyders account of the thread "this game sucks", I was activly following that thread when it was deleted. Seems the only way we can really make our voices heard is by leaving reviews.

Also also, please dont come at me with the regular BS that the PR,mods and staff have been feeding you. Yes, I understand its a 3 man team. YES, I understand its an Early Access Game. Yes, I know about Rafs accident!( not wishing the man ill) But when you activly are taking peoples money for a product, you are expected to deliver on that product. Its like paying a guy to build you a deck, and he keeps calling you every few days with personal excuses. Hate to say it bluntly but, get off your asses and get on track!

All in all, if you TRULY feel like supporting a halfway decent devolpment team and not expecting a return for your money, by all means buy this game. If philanthropy isn't your game, I would wait until this FlipSwitch Games gets itself back on track and not trying to milk everything from the people that already backed them in the first place (arguably for an unjustified price)

I will update this review as the game updates. I am still excited, as are many that have posted here, about a fully fledged emergency responder simulator. This game though, just is not it. Go play some GMod, ArmA RP or some other mod.