Munich-based development team Aesir Interactive, who are well known for the popular title Police Simulator and publisher team Nacon, have brought another simulation game to our screens with Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator, where you get to strap on the boots of a paramedic and see how many lives you can save.

You are a new paramedic on the United States West Coast in Pelican City. You have taken the oath to devote yourself to saving the people’s lives around the city. Pelican City is broken down into three different districts, which you unlock over time when you level up more. I was impressed that you didn’t always need to do the general shift and could do a more exciting thing like mass emergencies where you might have multiple casualties.

There is something about the immersive values that pulls me into these games, and Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator was no exception. The attention to detail with the injuries and what you needed to do to stabilise the patient was super cool. I’m not a paramedic, so I’m unsure how realistic it was, but it felt realistic from an outsider’s point of view.  You needed to set up a triage system when you had more than one patient. It would have been cool if you could do essential treatments on the side of the road to keep those less extreme patients happy. The levelling system needed to be worked on a little as it started feeling super repetitive earlier on in the game with having to do the super similar.

It would have been nice to see other emergency services around the city while I was conducting my shift. Still, you could see Police driving around but never involved in a crash, blocking or redirecting traffic. Building fires would have one or two fire trucks out the front without personnel near them, which took a little away from the immersive values of the game. I was impressed with the amount of traffic and how they behaved on the road when the sirens were on or if I was honking through traffic to get to the scene.

I did tutorials to learn what each instrument I could use would do, so I did what was best for the patient. There was a little checklist once you had diagnosed them on what to do, which made life easier, and if you did the wrong thing, you would end up with a dead patient.

I was impressed with the patients’ different voices, even if a couple sounded similar. However, the radio callouts made me want to turn the game off. They were looped over each other, so you didn’t just get the message once; you got it twice, which was unnecessary. I would have loved some more environmental factors with the audio on the sirens, like the echo whilst you are running through the city against the buildings. The sounds in this game need some polishing to make it a more memorable experience and add to the immersive values of the overall gameplay.

I was disappointed in the controls and how the ambulance handled being a big part of the game. I would have thought it would hold more fluidly and feel like you were driving a bigger vehicle. The paramedic’s movement was quite simplistic, and I didn’t need to remember too much, as there were prompts in the top right-hand corner. Apart from moving the stretcher around, the controls were backwards when moving it around and were confusing more times than I would have liked to admit.

I’ve never had graphics make me laugh before. Still, it made me chuckle when you admit your patient, and the cutscene has one of the doctors’ necks snapping downwards like some meme video. I’ve become accustomed to the standard of graphics in simulation games. Still, I would have loved to see this at a realistic finish and not the standard cartoonish feeling finish. I would have loved to see more detail put into small things like the ambulance and make the injuries more realistic. I also found that this game needed to be optimised as it was glitchy while hooking around in the ambulance. I was surprised by the screenshots before playing the game, which showcased more lighting and graphics than the actual gameplay.

Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator is an immersive experience that allows you to dive deep into the life of a paramedic and everything that comes with the job, including the good and the bad. The game felt a little grindy at times, which took away from it and made it feel repetitive earlier on in the game. Still, once you’ve levelled up, you unlocked the more nitty-gritty assignments.

Written by: Hayden Nelson