Emergency 2012

Whenever a disaster strikes, the affected area suffers a lot of damage, whether it’s debris from a tornado, or charred forests from wildfires. However, people are also at risk in most situations, which is why the rescue services help the people first and worry about any other environmental damage later. Naturally, this requires a lot of practice and very good decision-making skills, especially for the troops on the ground and those in command.

Emergency 2012 is part of the unique strategy series that allows you to go head-to-head with nature itself, as well as many other man-made disasters that are liable to cause a great number of human victims as well, such as terrorist attacks. The goal is the same as always, though: save as many lives as you can, while also keeping your crew safe and keeping the disaster under control for as long as possible.

In order to do so, the game puts the complete range of emergency vehicles at your disposal, although it depends on what kind of emergency you have to tackle. Hence, firetrucks are a must whenever you must deal with a great wildfire, but ambulances are always required and handy to have around, since you never know when something goes incredibly wrong.

The campaign mode holds a reasonable amount of missions and scenarios, but it is usually over after a few short hours, which is definitely not what you want. However, you can get into the free play mode and start your own emergency team from scratch, in order to protect the city from all kinds of disasters and generally try to keep the people alive by any means necessary.

This episode also comes with quite the long list of technological improvements as well, the most obvious of which is visible when it comes to the graphics engine. The units are very detailed and the environments themselves seem to be more lush and worthy of remembrance. Scenarios still get repetitive after a while, regardless of how good the landscapes look and how well are the people animated.

All things considered, Emergency 2012 should make every little child happy, since it features all the cool trucks and helicopters one might have admired on TV. However, the gameplay is quite unpolished and boring, while the missions quickly become repetitive and they drag out for quite some time, without too much happening in-between the usual rescue routines.