Review By Taylor Price
In Rescue 2, you take control of emergency services such as firefighters and paramedics. You dispatch them on various calls and improve your vehicles, crew, and fire stations. The gameplay is actually not bad. The control scheme is a little convoluted – pretty much everything is done from a contextual menu in the bottom right of the screen, and sometimes it isn’t clear how to go about certain actions. For the first few missions I found myself getting a little frustrated while trying to figure out different mechanics. There is a tutorial system that walks you through the basics, but it is a lot of different steps to cover. I found it took me a little longer to memorize all the steps. Once you get the hang of it, it can be kind of fun to fight fires and stuff, but unfortunately around the time you get the hang of it, the missions start becoming rather repetitive. Certain missions (I’m looking at you, hotdog stand fire) will be repeated on a regular basis. Even though a lot of the missions are repetitive, there is a surprising attention to detail in how the fires act – you really do need to employ a bit of strategy that changes depending on the fire you are fighting.
The graphics are actually pretty good. They are a bit on the simplistic side, but I think the style works for the game. There are some issues with collision and AI (I often ran in to cars with my emergency vehicles) but that doesn’t really affect much in my opinion. I would say the quality of graphics is about the level I expect from a mobile game.
The story is essentially nonexistent – you are the operational head of a city’s emergency services, and you grind through emergency calls to improve your workforce. That’s really all there is to it. It makes for a good casual game. I could definitely see myself playing it in small spurts while I have a bit of free time. I give it a 3 out of 5. It isn’t incredibly thrilling, but it does have some play value. I don’t know if it is worth $25, but it is good for a few hours of play. It doesn’t have any story to go on and it can feel a bit like a grind, but I still enjoyed the time I spent playing it.
