Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator review – the worst game of 2025

It’s already been a engaged twelvemonth for breathtaking caller games, with a fig of highly rated titles, but Ambulance Life is not 1 of them…

Simulators are a unusual business. While astir video games are built with the sole volition of entertaining you (or connected mobile, shaking you down for spare change), simulators often fto amusement instrumentality a backmost spot to authenticity. That whitethorn springiness them a narrower appeal, but for those obsessed with a peculiar occupation oregon pastime, whether that’s pilot, arable farmer, oregon successful this case, paramedic, it gives players a accidental to prosecute successful unusually heavy role-play.

Set successful the fictional metropolis of San Pellicano, whose peculiar assertion to fame is that it’s ‘home to immoderate of the world’s finest EMTs’, its hills, elephantine suspension bridge, and bay country suggest it’s astatine slightest loosely based connected San Francisco. Access to the metropolis is initially confined to a azygous district, but arsenic you summation acquisition and level up you unlock 2 more.

As with astir simulators, its absorption connected its taxable substance is total, truthful portion you tin take the cosmetic quality of your paramedic and their spouse from a abbreviated list, each you’ll beryllium doing is shifts of ambulance work, which commencement retired arsenic 15-minute forays into San Pellicano. Running to your conveyance you’ll person an exigency telephone wrong seconds, leaving you to find its determination connected a map, and fto your sat nav crippled a route.

Plunging consecutive into the appalling postulation jams that plague the metropolis astatine each times of the day, switching connected your sirens encourages drivers to borderline precise somewhat retired of the lane they’re stuck in, creating constrictive gullies, which you’ll request to follow. For immoderate crushed practically each postulation airy is stuck connected red, truthful junctions thin to beryllium clear, letting you navigate corners with comparative ease, earlier having to negociate the adjacent car park-style boulevard.

The developers were intelligibly excited by the possibilities offered by PlayStation’s DualSense controller, truthful you’ll find the adaptive triggers connection a spot of absorption arsenic you accelerate and brake, portion the wailing sirens of your ambulance are besides broadcast done the controller’s speaker. It’s a diagnostic that rapidly degenerates from curiosity, done mild irritation, to pestilential torment arsenic you travel to realise conscionable however overmuch of that dependable you’ll beryllium listening to.

While your siren helps somewhat with postulation it besides has an effect connected pedestrians; for immoderate crushed making them tally on the pavement successful pathetic small herds, adjacent erstwhile they’re obscurity adjacent the road. Ironically, connected the uncommon juncture you bash person to equine the pavement, adjacent with your sirens blaring you’ll find azygous pedestrians strolling on successful beforehand of the strobing lights of your ambulance without a attraction successful the world. That’s a peculiar occupation due to the fact that if you deed 1 it’s crippled over.

Having negotiated the clogged streets and cretinous ft traffic, you’ll get astatine your emergency. Leaping from the ambulance, your archetypal occupation is to measure the casualties. Although initially determination whitethorn lone beryllium 1 oregon two, arsenic you advancement determination are often aggregate injured parties and adjacent corpses. That means you’ll request to triage the wounded, moving retired whose information demands the astir urgent care.

You bash that utilizing a mates of techniques. The archetypal is anamnesis, which is paramedic jargon for talking to the patient, asking questions astir what’s happened and their aesculapian history, earlier trying to calm them down. It lone takes a fewer patients to realise however wholly pointless that process is, with the victims’ constricted scope of canned responses telling you perfectly nothing.

Far much utile is simply a ocular inspection, undertaken by aiming astatine a bid of achromatic dots connected the patient’s body. Once you’ve paused to look astatine each azygous dot, you tin get retired your aesculapian iPad, which volition past archer you what’s incorrect with them, ranked by severity. Fairly obviously, breathing difficulties are much urgent than tegument abrasions, portion spurting arterial humor trumps everything else.

That requires an contiguous tourniquet, but for each different conditions you’ll request to drawback a stretcher from the ambulance and stow the diligent wrong to stabilise their condition. Once you and the diligent are safely successful the ambulance, you’ll request to connect a humor unit cuff and pulse oximeter to measurement humor oxygenation, and past code immoderate different symptoms they have, which are conveniently listed successful an on-screen checklist.

Hilariously mediocre mini-games travel a clutch of communal procedures, truthful inserting a cannula into a patient’s arm, truthful that you tin administer drugs, is done utilizing a swinging pointer, a spot similar taking a changeable successful an aboriginal 2000s play game. Applying a bandage requires you to travel a swirly enactment with the near analogue stick, occasionally hitting a bushed action-style fastener erstwhile prompted. It’s truthful debased effort it’s really comedic.

Every diligent needs a ocular inspection, humor unit cuff and pulse oximeter, a process that rapidly becomes repetitious. Many besides request a cannula and oxygen mask, and adjacent erstwhile much exotic conditions commencement popping up, due to the fact that your iPad tells you precisely what’s incorrect and what to bash next, each attraction becomes a futile crippled of Simon Says, arsenic you blandly travel the checklist earlier hopping backmost into the driver’s spot for different travel done braindead postulation jams to the hospital.

Your ambulance tin smash done halt signs and occurrence hydrants, but lamp posts and postulation lights bring you to a grinding halt, thing players of Grand Theft Auto volition request to get utilized to. Not that you tin usage driving skills honed successful different video games. Crashing into cars oregon pedestrians, and making abrupt manoeuvres is strictly forbidden.

They punctual your spouse to intone, ‘Please thrust much carefully. Think of our patient’, delivered successful a level monotone each clip you crest a hill, instrumentality a country excessively rapidly oregon interaction a kerb, which tin beryllium connected good implicit fractional a twelve occasions successful a azygous trip. That and the godawful siren noises issuing from your controller are capable to trial adjacent the saintliest patience.

Numerous conditions and mishap varieties lone go disposable arsenic you progress, truthful if you play agelong capable you tin look guardant to getting your latex-gloved hands connected patients suffering from ventricular fibrillation, epinephrin overdose, punctured lungs, and venomous spider bites – amongst a big of different perchance lethal ailments. You’ll besides yet unlock 30 infinitesimal shifts, extending the ordeal into the realms of intelligence torture.

Taxis person ads connected the roofs that accidental AD oregon ‘place your advertisement here’, arsenic though cipher could beryllium bothered to travel up with thing applicable oregon interesting, truthful defaulted to adust placeholders. It’s a plan ethos that echoes done the full game. That includes the dependable acting, which is astir surreally lacklustre, particularly amongst the patients who dependable universally woody and mildly apathetic, adjacent erstwhile their injuries are catastrophic.

Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator is truthful abjectly unspeakable it really manages to trigger nostalgia. Its endless insignificant glitches and budgetary limitations harken backmost to a simpler property of PlayStation 2 games, erstwhile dross similar this utilized to get pumped retired each the time. It’s casual to hide however overmuch amended games person got implicit the intervening decades. Or astatine slightest astir of them.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £34.99
Publisher: Nacon
Developer: Aesir Interactive
Release Date: 6th February 2025
Age Rating: 16

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