Arena Breakout Infinite goes blow for blow with Tarkov (Preview)

Arena Breakout Infinite is breaching onto the extraction shooter scene to rival Escape From Tarkov and give those refugees a place to enjoy some high octane gameplay.

After the Escape From Tarkov oopsie (where the devs sought to ruin a decade of goodwill with its 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 all well and good, but the reality is that ABI is looking quite similar to Tarkov (almost too similar).

First impressions of Arena Breakout Infinite Closed Beta

The moment I loaded into the short tutorial I was surprised by how smooth the game was performing. I encountered no bugs, visual glitches, sound issues, or even HUD problems—at least for the first hour (we'll get into the strange bug shortly).

I found myself next to a friendly teammate and we quickly moved towards nearby buildings while wordlessly working together. They'd move forward, turn around, watch my back as I sprinted across open land. They'd take the first room of a house, while I looted the next, all until we extracted together after a few AI gunfights.

Arena Breakout: Infinite allows up to 4 teammates so those looking for some 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 have never been more impressed by sound in an FPS in a long time. Every single step that an enemy made I knew exactly where they were. Countless times an opponent and I were facing each other, ready for the gunfight, and it made every leaf crunch more intense. Audiophiles will find an experience here and competitive players will rejoice.

The AI enemies that populate the maps aren't particularly smart; they often miss and never truly feel threatening. It wouldn't hurt to give the NPCs some extra oomph to keep the level of pressure high. During my time playing I was AFK brewing a tea while an enemy NPC shot me in the back once, then proceeded to run around in circles screaming.

Missions are the major content that offers an objective other than loot, kill, and survive. You can accept any mission before a raid begins; some are specific to certain maps, but that restriction helped drive me towards other areas as part of the gameplay loop.

This is an extraction shooter, so the main gimmick is participating in a raid where you loot buildings while being ultra-aware of potential threats. That expectation has been met in ABI; I constantly found my heart racing as I heard muffled footsteps pitter-patter across the street.

Arena Breakout Infinite FPS and performance impressions

In my time playing I encountered only one problem: an FPS bug that was strangely linked to the polling rate of my mouse. It was a very unexpected issue that destroyed my FPS but only when I moved my mouse. Thankfully, the community around ABI was quick to locate the issue which was to lower the polling rate of my mouse.

Since then, I have encountered zero visual and audio issues, which is a breath of fresh air in this day and age. It's almost expected for a game to be released with countless bugs and problems that are ironed out over months. Arena Breakout: Infinite makes things easy for you: there are (almost) no issues.

I was routinely averaging 110 - 140 FPS throughout my time playing with zero stuttering or drops. I tip my hat to MoreFun Studios for a smooth closed beta.

The Gunsmith in Arena Breakout Infinite is strangely familiar

For those unaware, the Gunsmith allows you to fully customize your weapon of choice to the nth degree. You want a thermal scope? No problem. You want your weapon to never reload? Attach a drum magazine. Laser sights are your favorite? You can use both a flashlight and a laser sight. The Gunsmith has you covered.

One of the first things I did once I got out of the tutorial was jump straight into the Gunsmith and play around with all the attachments. What I found was a very familiar looking interface and systems that were straight out of Tarkov.

Very much like Tarkov, Arena Breakout: Infinite gives you the ability create a loadout from the Gunsmith screen, adding whatever attachments you want to the weapon and instantly bulk-buying them at once. With that, your newly customized weapon waits for you in your storage. Whenever you want that specific weapon you can quickly buy it so long as you have the cash.

Does Arena Breakout Infinite change up the Tarkov formula?

As it stands the question remains whether Arena Breakout: Infinite is an Escape From Tarkov ripoff. When I entertain the idea of a ripoff, I often compare the relationship between Dark Souls and the Souls-like genre. Souls-likes are spiritual ripoffs of Dark Souls and they do not hide that fact; they take all those great systems and adapt them into something new. So that leaves us with the question of whether or not Arena Breakout: Infinite changes the formula, and how much.

The resemblance between ABI and Tarkov is striking: the UI is similar, and the systems, the gunsmith, the missions, and even the art style have Tarkov inspiration. What makes Tarkov Tarkov is found within Arena Breakout: Infinite, and there are not a lot of risks taken in regards to different systems or a unique art style. There are plenty of 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 product—which is exactly what makes this situation morally grey. Tarkov is a full-priced experience built by people that surely love their product, but here comes ABI to offer an alternative that looks worryingly close to the former.

That's all we have on Arena Breakout: Infinite. If you're looking for similar content then check out How to sign up for the Arena Breakout: Infinite beta and more on Pro Game Guides.