Arena Breakout: Infinite is setting itself up to be a main challenger to juggernauts of the extraction shooter genre like Escape from Tarkov. But, after spending time playing the game’s closed beta, does it live up to the hype surrounding it, or are you better off sticking with what’s already out there?
Arena Breakout: Infinite Review
When you first load into Arena Breakout: Infinite, you’ll be welcomed by a series of tips and pointers to get your footing. If you’ve played Tarkov, you’ll immediately feel at home with how things are set up. You have your character – and militant, or SCAV –, your gear, supplies, traders, missions, and maps to choose from. Again, all very familiar…for better or worse.
Outside of the action, the game’s user interface is friendlier than the ones it’ll often be compared to. Everything just seems easier to find. Quality-of-life features like quickly buying and equipping rations, easier storage organization, and even healing based on suggestions from the game are so nice that you’re left wondering why other games aren’t implementing these.
Even the after-match reports are special. After finishing a run, you’ll be shown a full report of everything that happened during the raid including a map that shows you everywhere you went and highlights key moments along with full breakdowns of every gunfight you were a part of.
Get Into The Raid
Joining a raid is simple enough. You gear up, select your map, and choose whether you want to play Normal mode or enter the Forbidden Zone. Normal is the standard experience that’s more arcade-like in how people play while the Forbidden Zone caters to the more hardcore group of players. That’s likely because there’s far more to lose as not only do you have to pay Koen to enter, but your gear has to be worth at least 80,000 Koen.
Getting into raids took no time at all. The longest I waited was just about a minute to connect and deploy. There’s also a team system that, if you don’t already have a squad, will put you in one just as quickly. But should you not want to join a team, you can simply turn off automatching.
When in a raid, I’ll admit that it’s a mixed bag at this point. On the positive side of things, gun sounds are solid, and the use of your weapon feels pretty good. Submachine guns, shotguns, rifles, and pistols all feel different enough to add variety.
Gunplay itself feels strongest in close quarters. There was never a situation where I questioned how or why something happened in a gunfight. It all played out and felt exactly how I thought it should. At long distances, though, sometimes the guns just feel off. It’s kind of hard to explain without experiencing it yourself, but at times you feel like you’re aiming and using a BB gun as opposed to a rifle.
The two playable maps in the beta – Farm and The Valley – are nice, but they’re nothing to write home about. They feel a bit boring and lack the personality that you see in the maps of Tarkov and even in Lamang in Gray Zone Warfare.
Speaking of Tarkov, there are a lot of one-to-one comparisons between the two with what’s offered. Like Tarkov, Arena Breakout: Infinite has traders who offer you missions as you progress. There are also items you can loot that are identical. Blue tape, anyone? I don’t want to compare too much to Tarkov here, but, I mean, that is the target audience for this game.
Going back to the gameplay, the AI feels a bit hit or miss. Sometimes, you’ll find yourself in a fun fight against a group or a boss like Ajax. Other times, well, you’ll just watch the AI run around aimlessly or stand there looking like a deer in headlights.
Visually, Unreal Engine 4 shines in making the game look good. There were some frame drop issues, but that’s something I chalk up to the game being in beta.
Of course, there’s the worry about monetization when the game fully launches. Being free-to-play means that microtransactions are coming. After all, the developers have to make money somehow. But how it works will be something to watch as it could turn the game into a pay-to-win experience.
Should You Play Arena Breakout: Infinite?
At every step of the way, it’s clear that Arena Breakout: Infinite has its eyes set on both Escape from Tarkov and Gray Zone Warfare. The game offers several things that neither of its main competitors have while having gameplay that’s captivating enough to want to come back to.
At the end of the day, however, it’s going to come down to what else Morefun Games does to the gameplay and the out-of-raid experience that makes players want to come back rather than feel like they need to. Also, how the team attacks monetizing a PC audience will play a big role in the success of the game.
For now, though, Arena Breakout: Infinite is one game that all players need to keep an eye on and get into as soon as the opportunity arises.
Arena Breakout: Infinite’s Closed Beta was reviewed on PC with a code provided from the publisher. For more on Insider Gaming’s reviews, view our full review policy.
