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0 The first simulator of the year for me to review has me taking the role of a paramedic. I’ll respond to 911 calls and rush to the scene to save lives in Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator. Created by Aesir Interactive, who you might know if you’ve played Police Simulator: Patrol Officers. You can pick up the game via Steam for £24.99, or pick up the Supporter Edition that costs £34.99. In the Supporter Edition, you’ll get an expansion pack which adds new scenarios. Cosmetics are also part of the Supporter Edition.
We’ve got too many lives to save and not enough time!
Gameplay
Ambulance Life starts with you choosing your player from a colourful cast of characters. You go on shifts in which you respond to an emergency callout. While you only have 15 minute shifts (which are timed) to start, you unlock longer shifts.
You drive your ambulance to the scenes, but if you hit a pedestrian, it’s an instant game over. Sounding your sirens makes NPC’s and vehicles move out of the way for you. Once you arrived at a scene, look over the patients to see what could be wrong with them, along with asking the patient and witnesses questions (however, I felt the questions were pointless as no one ever seemed to have any useful information). If there are multiple injured/distressed people, you can label them from green, yellow, red and black in terms of severity. However, one thing I don’t like is that once you choose a patient to treat, you can’t treat others, even during catastrophes.
Treatment
Treating a patient starts with putting them on a gurney and place them in the ambulance. Here you have a list on the left of the screen of required actions and recommended actions you can take. You also have a paramedic handbook, where you can find information, and scroll through a list of conditions to choose what most matches the symptoms the patient is exhibiting. You also have to keep an eye on their vitals, as a simple panic attack can turn into cardiac arrest, or a patient could stop breathing.
Sometimes you have to get creative because you don’t have all treatments unlocked, which I’m not a fan of. One of my patients needed epinephrine, but as I didn’t have it unlocked yet, I had to be creative and find other ways around it. Sometimes there wasn’t always a way around it, so depending on the condition, there was nothing I could do simply because I hadn’t unlocked the treatment yet.
You perform treatments via small mini games, such as tracing a pattern along the leg for bandaging, or holding a button to inject fluid. However, only your partner can perform CPR, and you must drive them to the hospital while they do so. Once you’re done treating the patient, you drive them to the hospital and receive a rating based on how well you treated them, and the condition they arrive at the hospital.
Unlocking Districts and Treatments
There are three districts in the game, and they have seven levels. As you respond to call-outs, you unlock more treatments and callout types, with the final unlock being a new district. You also eventually unlock catastrophes. This is a callout event (such as an enormous pile up on the motorway) with mass amounts of injured, and treating them incorrectly results in their death. However, you still only treat one patient once you’ve loaded someone into the ambulance.
Graphics & Audio
While the game looks bright and cheerful with decent lighting, there are multiple graphical issues and bugs. Textures either load in slowly or not at all. Sometimes the same goes for entire buildings. Facial animations are barely present, and face models get reused often. While it’s understandable sometimes, it looks uncanny seeing five of the same face pasted onto everyone at an emergency scene. Combine texture issues with frame rate delay and you have a frustrating experience when rushing with a patient in the ambulance just for everything to be blurry or spawn almost right in front of you
Longevity
Ambulance Life’s longevity comes down to you. There are levels to work towards and other areas, but mainly it’s doing the same thing repeatedly. I played for close to 8 hours before writing this review and felt done with it.
Final Thoughts
The main issue with Ambulance Life is the amount of visual bugs/glitches. I’ve seen heads disappear during cut-scenes, hair be pulled across the screen. And full on buildings not loading in. These graphical glitches really need to be fixed.
Gameplay wise, I haven’t had that many problems. I enjoy doing the treatments for patients and trying to figure things out, although I think I’m always messing up. But one thing that annoys me is heading to a scene and only being able to really help one patient. Yeah, you’re able to stop bleeding and do minor treatments. But when three people have the same injuries and you can only take one to finish the call, it seems pointless, especially for the Catastrophe Events. I had to treat 5 people, but since one was having a cardiac arrest, the other got ignored and the mission finished.
All in all. Ambulance Life is okay, but I’d say try it yourself. This is why I’m giving it the Thumb Culture Silver Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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