Hands On: Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator (Xbox)

Today marks the review embargo for Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator, and although we’ve been checking it out here at Pure Xbox, we haven’t played enough to give a full verdict. In our first few hours with it though, we’ve found it to be very much what you’d expect from the dev behind 2022’s Police Simulator: Patrol Officers – a game that’s both enjoyable and addictive in many ways, and broken and unintentionally hilarious in others!

The core loop of Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator sees you embarking on shifts where you’re called out to all kinds of emergency scenarios – from anxiety attacks to burn victims – and it’s your job to reach the scene as quickly as possible, provide the right kind of treatment in your ambulance, and then navigate your patient safely to hospital.

You can feel the ambition that developer Aesir Interactive has put into Ambulance Life in terms of the impressive number of tools at your disposal for dealing with a situation, such as the ability to administer all different kinds of intravenous medicine, and you will want to read up on all of this via the in-game “handbook” – the array of options at your disposal can make things pretty overwhelming at first.

Just like in Police Simulator, you can question patients and witnesses to try and find out more about a situation, as well as conduct an array of tests to get a better picture of a patient’s health as you treat them. It then becomes a game of prioritising – who needs your attention the most (only one patient can be transported at any time), what needs to be done first, how quickly does it need to be accomplished, and do you have enough time to do everything before they go into cardiac arrest?! It’s a game that keeps you on your toes, and it’s pretty stressful at times without a doubt!

It can also be very funny though. Trying to navigate your way through the busy traffic is a nightmare when cars sometimes refuse to give you enough space, maneuvering a stretcher is hilariously clunky, the way patients react in terms of behaviour and dialogue can be brilliantly bizarre, and the ability to treat them however you see fit can lead to ridiculous scenarios where you’re preparing the entirely wrong remedy for whatever ails them (à la Mr. Bean).

To get the most out of Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator, you’ll need to look at it in a certain way. Police Simulator: Patrol Officers is a poor game if you’re searching for something truly realistic, but it can be an enjoyable one if you’re not taking it too seriously. In fact, we’ve had a really good time with it despite its repetitive nature and general bugginess. Ambulance Life is very much the same – it’s a million miles away from a true-to-life epic such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, but that’s OK! There’s still fun to be had if you go in with the right mindset.

Just like in Police Sim, there’s a well-realised map to explore in Ambulance Life as well, which expands over time as you unlock more varied districts (along with more emergency scenarios). It all looks decent considering Aesir Interactive isn’t a AAA developer by any means, and again, we should reiterate that we’re impressed with the overall ambition that’s gone into this game from both a presentation and gameplay standpoint.

It might have been too ambitious in some ways though. As things stand, Ambulance Life needs polishing, with plenty of instances of pop-in, cutscenes that don’t transition very well (or seem low quality for some reason), occasional glitches, and a variable frame rate that can’t be adjusted in any form on Xbox Series X.

Taking all of this into account, if we were to give a review score to Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator right now, it would be a “Not Bad” 6/10 – although, as mentioned, we’ve only spent a handful of hours with it so far. It’s exactly what we expected it to be – a familiar experience to Police Simulator, albeit far from a simple reskin. It reaches similar highs to that game in terms of its addictive ‘just-one-more-shift’ appeal, but it also sinks to the same lows with its bugs and unintentionally silly gameplay – which you’ll either appreciate or be totally turned off by.

Fortunately, we fall into the “appreciate” camp – although it’s not quite as fun as Police Sim just yet.

Are you buying Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator for Xbox? Tell us down in the comments below.