Emergency Review – Time Management Game for Catastrophic Events

I’ve played my fair share of time management games in my gaming years but I can’t remember one that was based on controlling the emergency services during critical situations, unless you count the alien attack in Sim City!

This is what you get to do in Emergency, the 13 situations that you have to manage range from train and plane crashes, gas explosions, burning submarines and even an alien invasion and you have a whole range of emergency services at your disposal, from the day to day services such as the police, ambulance service and fire brigade to helicopters and the secret service.

Each of the 13 campaigns are introduced with a short animated video showing the incident taking place, don’t worry, while the scenarios are pretty intense the videos aren’t too graphic, although whether you’d want younger children playing this game is up to you as the themes are obviously pretty dark.

Once the campaign starts you can’t stop, or even slow down, as there are lives at stake here and one false move could see one, if not all of the injured become fatalities. As with the introduction videos none of this is graphic in nature as its all completed in a Sim City like environment.

There are continuous themes throughout most of the levels. Put out fires, rescue people, tend to their injuries and get them to hospital, this is all interspersed with scenario specific actions such as cutting people out of train carriages, stopping and arresting terrorists and of course the alien destructions.

Actions are controlled by tapping on the person or vehicle and then selecting the available action. Some people and vehicles have multiple actions available but only the ones that can be used at the time are highlighted which helps direct you. And over the initial levels you are also guided by a help system.

As with most time management games the basic activities are pretty similar throughout the levels but with the campaign specific actions thrown in create a nice variety that keeps things moving along nicely and the difficulty level keeps raising also to keep the challenge level raising too.

The graphics look good and there is certainly no problem telling what is what and interacting with the people and vehicles even when they are close to each other which is all via touch controls.

Medals are awarded throughout the game based on points earned and these are earned through completing the various objectives in each level and based on how quickly you complete them too. It’s the speed that is the biggest challenge and while you may be ok with just scraping through with a bronze medal as you take your time completing each task if you do things too slowly you could end up with a catastrophic event on your hands as a gas line explodes!

I’ve very much enjoyed playing Germany’s number #1 rated App Store game, it could certainly do with more levels, but the variety between the different scenarios is fun, if fun is the right word when dealing with catastrophic events.

At $3.99 it’s not cheap but if you are a fan of such games you can’t go wrong with Emergency for iPad and comes highly recommended.

Rating: ★★★★☆

What we like

  • 13 different emergency situations
  • Easy intuitive controls
  • Solid gameplay

What to know

  • Needs more levels
  • Some dark themes

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One Comment on “Emergency Review – Time Management Game for Catastrophic Events”

  1. Its a nice game, but frustrating sometimes. Sometimes controls arent that good, example it can happen that a unit cant perform an action, when you sekect another one he can while he has the same equipment. The aliens are disapointing, eliminate a alien with a fire extinguisher…. The game is realistic and then you get this 🙁 it also would be helpfull when units would say they finished a task, also a minimap to help you locate your units would be a great add on. For the rest a nice and. Challenging game

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