Arena Breakout Infinite is bursting onto the extraction shooter scene to rival Escape From Tarkov and give those refugees a place to enjoy some high-octane gameplay.
After the oopsie Escape From Tarkov (where the developers sought to ruin a decade of goodwill with their community by introducing a $250 edition), Arena Breakout: Infinite stepped in to offer players an alternative to the quintessential ultra-realistic extraction shooter. It sounds great, but the reality is that ABI is quite similar to Tarkov (almost also similar).
First impressions of the Arena Breakout Infinite closed beta
The moment I loaded the short tutorial, I was surprised at how smooth the game was running. I encountered no bugs, visual glitches, sound issues, or even HUD issues, at least for the first hour (we’ll get to the strange bug soon).
I found myself next to a friendly teammate and we quickly moved towards the nearby buildings while working together without saying a word. They moved forward, turned around, and watched my back as I ran across open ground. They would take the first room of a house, while I ransacked the next, all until we emerged together after some AI shootouts.
Arena Breakout: Infinite allows up to 4 teammates so those looking for interaction can team up. If you meet a tragic end during a raid, your team can loot your weapons and extract them to return them to you, which is a nice touch.
As a Call of Duty player, I’ve never been more impressed with sound in an FPS in a long time. Every step an enemy took he knew exactly where he was. Countless times an opponent and I stood face to face, ready for the shootout, and that made each rustling of leaves more intense. Audiophiles will find an experience here and competitive gamers will rejoice.
The AI ​​enemies that populate the maps are not particularly intelligent; They often fail and never really feel threatened. It wouldn’t hurt to give the NPCs an extra boost to keep the pressure level up. During my time playing, I was AFK making tea while an enemy NPC shot me in the back once and then proceeded to run around in circles screaming.
Missions are the main content that offers an objective other than looting, killing and surviving. You can accept any quest before a raid begins; some are specific to certain maps, but that restriction helped me steer toward other areas as part of the game loop.
This is an extraction shooter, so the main trick is to participate in a raid where you loot buildings while being very aware of potential threats. That expectation has been met at ABI; I constantly found my heart racing when I heard muffled footsteps across the street.
Arena Breakout Infinite FPS and Performance Impressions
While playing, I only encountered one problem: an FPS error that was strangely related to my mouse’s polling rate. It was a very unexpected problem that destroyed my FPS, but only when I moved the mouse. Fortunately, the community around ABI quickly located the issue that was reducing my mouse’s polling rate.
Since then, I haven’t encountered any visual or audio issues, which is a breath of fresh air these days. It’s almost expected that a game will be released with countless bugs and issues that are fixed over the course of months. Arena Breakout: Infinite makes it easy for you: there are (almost) no problems.
The gunsmith in Arena Breakout Infinite is strangely familiar
For those who don’t know, Gunsmith allows you to completely customize your weapon of choice to the nth degree. Do you want a thermal scope? No problem. Do you want your gun to never reload? Place a drum magazine. Are laser sights your favorites? You can use both a flashlight and a laser sight. The gunsmith has you covered.
One of the first things I did once I exited the tutorial was jump straight into the Gunsmith and play with all the attachments. What I found was a very familiar interface and systems that seemed straight out of Tarkov.
Arena Breakout: Infinite gives you the ability to create loadout from the Gunsmith screen, adding whatever accessories you want to the weapon and purchasing them in bulk at once. With that, your newly customized weapon awaits you in your storage.
Does Arena Breakout Infinite change the Tarkov formula?
As things stand, the question remains whether Arena Breakout: Infinite is a rip-off of Escape From Tarkov. When I consider the idea of ​​a rip-off, I often compare the relationship between Dark Souls and the Souls-like genre. Souls-likes are spiritual copies of Dark Souls and make no secret of that fact; They take all those great systems and adapt them to something new. That leaves us with the question of whether Arena Breakout: Infinite changes the formula or not, and by how much.
The resemblance between ABI and Tarkov is striking: the user interface is similar and the systems, gunsmith, missions and even the art style are inspired by Tarkov. What Makes Tarkov Tarkov is found in Arena Breakout: Infinite, and there aren’t many risks taken regarding different systems or a unique art style. There are many areas that could have been changed to further differentiate ABI from Tarkov, but they simply weren’t taken.
Arena Breakout: Infinite certainly gives similar games a run for their money, especially since it’s a completely free-to-play product, which is exactly what makes this situation morally gray. Tarkov is a full-price experience created by people who surely love their product, but here comes ABI to offer an alternative that looks worryingly similar to the previous one.
That’s all we have in Arena Breakout: Infinite. If you’re looking for similar content, check out How to Sign Up for Arena Breakout: Infinite beta and more in Pro Gaming Guides.