The latest in a long line of Extraction Shooters has just hit the ‘shelves’ in the form of Arena Breakout: Infinite. With it being free to play it has the benefit of people being able to check the game out with no fees involved. Which is exactly what I’ve
done.
So far, I’m pleasantly surprised by the game. But can it dethrone Escape from Tarkov?
A new contender
Arena Breakout is a new extraction shooter that started life as a mobile game and has been remade for PC. I’ve dabbled in some raids both solo and with a few friends. From a gameplay perspective, I have to say it plays pretty well. The performance has been good so far, I’ve not noticed any major issues. Furthermore, there are some nice quality of life differences compared to Tarkov – a game I’ve played for about 1500 hours.
There is no doubt that Arena Breakout feels like Tarkov Light. Almost all of the controls are the same. Weapons, attachments, gear, meds etc… are all very similar. But the game has stripped back some of that Tarkov jank to make the game feel more accessible.
The Extraction Formula
The premise is simple, as you’d probably expect if you’re familiar with extraction games. You gear up with weapons, armour, and other items from your stash. Then head into a raid either on your own or with up to three other players. You
can queue with friends or have team slots filled with randoms – which is a nice option if you’d prefer the slight security of more numbers.
Once in a raid, you make your way through the map looting and shooting. You’ll encounter AI and other real players. Should you survive any gun fights you can loot whatever you want from the bodies and head out to add that gear to your stash
or to sell it. There are traders that offer quests and will sell you items. It’s not doing anything new, different, or fancy. Just solid foundations for a decent experience.
Quick and Easy
I’ve found that it’s been a way more accessible game – as I mentioned. But what I mean by that is, that it just feels easier to get into a raid. Picking your gear feels more streamlined. Right from the get-go you can access full customisation
of weapons and see all the attachments you can add to any weapon. Once you’re happy with a build you can assemble it and buy all the parts with a simple click of a button. You don’t have to do any searching of traders or online markets to find the right parts. You don’t have to drag things around in your stash to build the gun. It’s just done.
Additionally, items such as gun magazines and medical supplies will auto-fill the right pockets or spaces in rigs or backpacks with a click of a button. Which when in raids is really helpful. Knowing that any meds you pick up with immediately go in a slot that will let you use a quick-use button is great. Additionally, random items will prioritise going into your backpack rather than a rig. It might sound like a small thing, but it’s just a helpful simple feature. Furthermore, you can roll up backpacks you’re not using so they take up fewer slots.
A lot of Arena Breakout: Infinite feels well thought out and as if it values the players’ time a lot more by making the small things much easier and quicker to manage.
From a pure gameplay perspective, this is a decent game. However, we’re not just looking at gameplay when we talk about the game. With it being free to play, you have to expect microtransactions and this is where the game gets egregious.
Pay-to-Win?
Firstly, you can buy the in-game currency, called Koen directly for real money. Which raises the question of play-to-win. You could effectively spend £100 to ensure you have the best loadout possible for a raid. And let me tell you, when you come up against someone with high-tier armour you will notice how many bullets they can take. Me and my friends all invested in the best armour in the game and it basically made us feel invincible. It cost around 1.2 mil of the in-game currency which we’d easily made from a few early quests.
Secondly, there are two types of secure containers in the game. One holds keys, the other can hold other random items. There are options for both of these to buy bigger containers. Not only that, your purchase will only last for 30 days for
each of these. Meaning if you buy both containers in the largest variation available then you’re looking at about £16 a month to keep them both.
These are just a couple of examples of the types of things you can spend money on. You can also spend money on being able to send messages in the global chat for some reason… I have no idea why you would want to do this beyond trying to
run some sort of scam.
I don’t understand why some people would want to spend money on things like the in-game currency as you would immediately lose anything you’ve just bought. But I have no doubt that there will be those who buy into it and will probably fork out hundreds and hundreds on the game.
Will it Last?
There is also the potential issue of hackers. With it being a free-to-play game you can typically expect some level of hackers to be prevalent. We know how bad the situation got with Tarkov, and that game has a paywalled entry. These types of games where you can get rich in-game lead to people wanting to sell accounts, leading to people hacking to make accounts seem valuable. It’s too early to say whether this will be a major issue or not. However, I expect it will to some extent. If it gets out of hand, people will start to leave.
The question remains, can it topple Tarkov, or even sustain a place of its own in the extraction shooter genre? I think it will survive for some time and will have an active player base. However, I just get the immediate impression it won’t have a good community. Predatory microtransactions and free-to-play don’t always attract the best communities in gaming. I’m already seeing many people on social media arguing over microtransactions and there’s a lot of whataboutism going around too.
Besides that, I’m not sure what sort of longevity the game offers. Is the gameplay loop engaging enough to keep players involved for a long time? The developers have said they won’t feature a wipe cycle much like Tarkov has. However, Tarkov wipes are probably one of the reasons people regularly come back. Despite it meaning you’re going to run through mostly the same quests again. It creates an air of excitement every few months where all players are back to square one. Typically, this also means some new content as well. It’s a focal point for players to come back, or to look at whether they want to return or not.
Additionally, the in-game quests aren’t very interesting. They’re very much a mobile game style of doing this thing 2 times. Pick up X amount of loot. With it not wiping are we just going to see more of the same quests being added?
There isn’t a roadmap for Arena Breakout at the moment so it’s hard to say how content will come for the game. At the moment it’s probably too early to tell how well the game will do. Once it’s released on Steam I think we will get a real feel for how people feel about the microtransactions. As well as getting to see the player count.
For now, it’s a fun game to mess about with for a while. But with Tarkov just wiping, I’m already seeing everyone going back to that.
-Will
