Emergency dispatch simulator 911 Operator is free on Steam for a limited time

In 911 Operator, the player fields an incoming emergency call about downed power lines near a school.

(Image credit: Jutsu Games)

I've only ever had to call emergency services once in my life, when an elderly neighbour had a bad fall down her back stairs, and the ambulance arrived in a timely fashion. This is not how it goes in 911 Operator, a frantic simulation of the difficulty of dispatching paramedics, police, and fire fighters while on a budget and also trying to filter out the pranks and timewasters. It sounds a lot more exciting than sending out the ambos in suburban Australia.

There's a career mode that takes you on a tour of six cities across the United States while they undergo disasters—bomb attacks in Washington DC, an earthquake in San Francisco, and so on—and also a freeplay mode that lets you choose any city in the world to use as your map. Although the details and voices will still be as American as you'd expect.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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