Online game "Arena Breakout: Infinite"

The Russian online extraction shooter Escape from Tarkov, if it didn't stand at the origins of an entire subgenre, certainly made it truly popular. It's no wonder that a huge number of imitations of the Battlestate Games studio's game have been released, and renowned companies of the caliber of Bungie, Tencent, and Sony have adopted mechanics taken from Tarkov. Usually developers try to disguise their borrowings, presenting everything as if they themselves stumbled upon the ideas they spied from competitors. But in the case of Arena Breakout: Infinite, it's immediately clear that this is a clone of EFT, and, unlike the original, completely free.

Arena Breakout is available in popular digital stores, including Steam, but it has regional restrictions. If the shooter doesn't appear for you, simply go to the official website and download the launcher from there — only a brief registration with an email address is required. Then every newcomer is greeted by equally concise training, where the hero crosses fields with barns (you'll later learn this is the Farm), learns to shoot, and, in the end, dies ingloriously. It's not even that the developers wanted to add more drama. They seem to warn everyone who enters: the stakes are high, so keep your eyes open and don't risk for no reason. Although to a person unfamiliar with extraction shooters, the task seems simple. All you have to do is gear up, get on the map, collect loot, fend off enemies, and escape in time at a special point on the other side of the location.

The second point worth knowing about the game before diving in is that it was originally mobile. Usually projects ported from smartphones to PC look unimpressive, or even downright ugly. But the staff at Morefun Studios don't eat their bread for nothing: instead of standard porting, they built the shooter from scratch on Unreal Engine 4, so Arena Breakout looks great, and there's not even a trace in the interface that we're dealing with a transplant from the world of touchscreens. However, the story foundation is the same for both the PC and mobile versions, so let's start with it.

The game takes place in the fictional country of Kamona. It once thrived thanks to resorts, fertile land, fishing, and gold reserves. But at some point, soldiers from the Second Legion staged a mutiny, which immediately led to a civil war between the southern and northern regions. The rebels captured the Television Center and the Arsenal, while the fields and industrial facilities in the south remained under government control. The front line ran through a map known as the Farm.

Following the tradition set by Battlestate Games, the war-torn areas have been flooded by fighters from various PMCs. In Arena Breakout, they are called operators, and they are all heroes controlled by gamers. Also, poorly armed characters controlled by AI operate at all key points — they are called combatants (this is an analog of the «wild» from Escape from Tarkov). Every fifteen minutes, every user has the opportunity to play as a combatant, but in this case, you have to make do with the equipment that the blind algorithm provides you. And since you can't prepare, the chances of defeat increase. Therefore, most of the time you are an operator.

The gameplay in the «Arena», as in any extraction shooter, is built around collecting loot during raids. But before each raid, you need to equip your fighter to avoid finding yourself in a situation where you run out of bullets in the middle of a fight or a complex injury finishes off your character before they can exit the map. Therefore, before the start of each match, you spend some time in the storage, where all items are located. You need to place weapons, full magazines, and just packs of bullets into the cells around the human figure, so you can reload them in a minute of calm. A helmet and body armor will also come in handy — they have levels and durability points in the game. First aid kits, field surgery kits, and painkiller tablets will also be useful, as well as drinks, because medicines «dry you out» and reduce stamina.

Separate pieces of equipment — vests and backpacks. The more spacious they are, the more trophies you can pull out of the battle. In addition, each soldier has a small safe — items placed in it will be saved in any case, while the rest of the equipment will be lost after the character's death.

An important element of equipment is tactical headphones. Arena Breakout: Infinite, like Escape from Tarkov, is one of those games where hearing provides more information about the battlefield than sight. With headphones, you'll know if someone is hiding behind a fence, if an enemy is walking on the first floor while you're opening a crate on the second, how far away the gunfire is rumbling and where to expect an attack from. If you wish, you can use ready-made equipment sets, but any self-respecting fan of extraction shooters prefers to spend 10-15 minutes in the «Storage» themselves — after all, this is a separate kind of pleasure. And since beginners start with modes where equipment cost restrictions apply, you also have to count koens (this is what the in-game currency is called here).

Along the way, it's worth checking the contacts menu and taking a few quests from NPCs, so that in case of success you can get not only trophies and experience points, but also a bonus in the form of koens, guns, body armor, and more. Finally, when preparations are complete, you can go on a raid. Initially, only one map is available — the Farm. Then Valley and Arsenal are added. In the lobby, where player matching takes place, team search is set by default, so the system will somehow throw random companions at solo players to make a quartet. Forced team assembly can be disabled, but keep in mind that the chances of a lone beginner are slim. And teammates, even random ones, will cover you and share their experience. Sometimes they share not only experience, but also a valuable trophy.

Item protection is organized in a very peculiar way. In «Tarkov», as you know, there is insurance in case your hero dies: you invest a certain amount to get your lost items back in any situation, even in defeat. Here, your items in case of failure can be picked up by teammates — and then the lost items will return to your «Storage», rather than replenish someone else's.

On the map, you are given half an hour to cross the terrain, collect loot, cracking a couple of safes along the way, and exit at one of the evacuation points visible from afar thanks to a column of red smoke. Along the way, heroes are awaited by a host of dangers, so each raid turns into a unique adventure. Combatants on normal difficulty aren't all that dangerous — if only because they take five seconds to aim. This leeway is enough to take down any AI-controlled bot. Even a beginner can easily exit a raid with a good dozen frags — such a situation was simply unthinkable in EFT. But battles with gamer-controlled characters are truly dangerous. No concessions: whoever is good at shooting and better equipped wins, and the loser loses everything except the contents of the safe and the key belt that grants access to certain rooms.

You don't get to use weapons in the game often — after all, most of the raid is spent running around and searching stashes. But when it comes to a fight, you realize how carefully the developers approached the design of shooting. Here you have controls for any situation — from leaning to peek around corners to firing while lying down, and a choice of weapons with ammunition. There are six types of 5.45x39 caliber ammunition alone for the AK-74. Each fighter has several zones that can be injured by bullets, and in addition, a system of damage to armor and helmets has been thought out. If your character is wounded, for example, in the arm, on the «doll» it will turn red, but soon bleeding will make the arm black — and to treat such a wound, one first aid kit is no longer enough, you need to use a surgical kit. A bullet hitting an unprotected part of the head or neck, of course, immediately guarantees death.

Visual touches complement the gameplay experience. If you eat the local analog of ibuprofen, the picture becomes slightly sharper — this is how the developers show the increased concentration of the hero. When checking the remaining bullets in the magazine, the character will actually take the magazine out of the gun and inspect it, and then put it back in place. The eating of canned stew from a can is also shown clearly, as is drinking juice through a straw, and placing tablets on your palm if you need to take them. A transparent visor on the helmet, of course, protects the face, but in rainy weather, water droplets running down the armored glass interfere with viewing through it. It's a small thing, but it's nice.

As you have probably already noticed, talking about Arena Breakout: Infinite inevitably invites comparisons with Escape from Tarkov — the two games are as similar as brothers. Only one of them is older and more serious. The main difference of the «Arena» is that it is slightly simpler in all aspects. The maps here are more compact, the bots are dumber, and the developers are more generous — they not only offer the game for free, but also shower people with all sorts of incentives. A 2x3 safe, for which fans of «Tarkov» shed blood, sweat, and tears, is given to everyone here for free for ten days — all you have to do is log into your account and complete a couple of tasks. And what about the sound hit indicator and maps with user markers? The employees of Battlestate Games don't give such concessions to anyone and don't intend to. But here — please.

Not counting special locations, the game has five large maps: Farm, Valley, Arsenal, Northridge, and Television Center. Each has a characteristic landscape and features that affect tactics. And it's better to memorize each one so you can orient yourself without switching to the menu, to know where you were dropped and where to go. Because any distraction from the game can lead to the death of the hero and the loss of everything valuable that was on him. On the terrain, you can see key points guarded by bosses and AI-controlled combatants — in the valley, such points include, for example, the Beach Villa, the Radar Station, the Industrial Zone, the Port, the Pinio Radio Station, and the Supply Camp. In addition to bots, safes are located at these locations — sometimes especially valuable loot lies in them. But during the cracking, an alarm sounds that is audible to everyone around — you can be attacked at that very moment.

There are three main modes for raids («Tactical Operations»), and they are divided according to the principle of increasing difficulty. There is «Normal», «Blockade Zone», and «Forbidden Zone» — the further down the list, the tougher the bots and the more valuable the trophies. But the opponents' equipment will also be better, since the cost limit for it increases. In «Normal» mode, you and your friends can equip your characters with gear no more expensive than 450,000 koens — for clarity, there are body armor and guns in the game that cost half a million. This limits the choice of weapons and protective measures not only for you, but also for your opponents. But in «Blockade Zone», the threshold is already higher — which means any opponent can be better armed and carry more durable armor.

There is also a fourth mode for raids in the role of a PMC fighter — «Solo». Here everyone is for themselves, that is, you can't take friends for help, but you can equip yourself as you please. But the stakes in such a situation are especially high, after all, no one will cover you while you're cracking a safe or searching the body of a defeated opponent.

You can enter the map as a combatant («wild») in «Covert Operations». The plus of such a raid is that you don't need to spend on equipment — the game itself will provide you with both a gun and ammunition, and sometimes even some protection and a small bag for collecting loot. However, there is also a minus — you will have to make do with only what you were given. A «wild» cannot add armor-piercing bullets or first aid kits from «Storage» to their vest. Or change the barrel. Were you given a shotgun or a Mosin sniper rifle? Then you will have to adjust your tactics to what you have with you. But the loot upon successful evacuation is yours without any loss. It's just that you can play as a combatant once every 15 minutes — after each raid, you have to wait for the mode to 'reboot.'

Fans of collecting, disassembling, and handling cool guns will not fail to check out the «Gunsmith» section. Here you can take any of the basic models, be it SCAR-L, the same «Mosin» or «Kalash», and construct on its basis that very weapon with which you will be in combat like a fish in water. The replacement and installation of numerous parts affect vertical and horizontal recoil, ergonomics, accuracy, stability when firing from the hip, and other characteristics. Arena Breakout immediately indicates the cost of the assembly, taking into account the prices of all components. Nothing prevents you from saving a ready-made assembly as a template and then quickly assembling subsequent weapon samples according to it when you need them. The «Gunsmith» also stores schemes from other gamers — if you don't feel like fiddling with dozens of handles and flash suppressors, pay attention to battle-tested options.

To test a gun assembled in the «Gunsmith», there's no need to immediately go on a raid. You can do this on the «Shooting Range», in safe conditions. Unfortunately, there is no separate hideout like in «Tarkov» here. But there is a trophy room (for some reason with a sculptural portrait of Yuri Gagarin, «sculpted», apparently, by a neural network). In the room, you are allowed to decorate various stands and display cases with what you have extracted from raids, so that you can occasionally look in here and admire your achievements.

You won't find the usual progression in the game. For no amount of experience points can you speed up your character, increase their stamina, or make them rummage through stashes more quickly. But there is still level growth. Progression is only given by successful operations and completing quests from contacts. And these levels are needed to unlock content. The more experience you accumulate, the more activities are available to you. For example, only those who have leveled up to level 30 can get into «Solo Mode» and «Forbidden Zone». But this applies not only to modes — contacts, weapon modules, the assortment of goods on the in-game market also open up as the account develops.

As befits a free-to-play game, Arena Breakout abounds with offers to splurge on something that will significantly increase your chances in a raid. You are allowed to invest real money in any bonuses — from increased loot to personal safes with high capacity. Let's not forget about guns, exclusive decorations, and other ways to stand out from the crowd. Nevertheless, all this is unlikely to replace a gamer's skills — for a fee, you simply get a certain bonus, not the ability to kill any opponent with one shot across half the map. At the beta testing stage, the developers really «squeezed the donation». Suffice it to say that they demanded payment from gamers even for negotiations in voice chat. But now the game has been freed from such radical practices — the chat works for free, and money allows you to purchase only a premium subscription and in-game items.

Arena Breakout: Infinite is, if you will, the perfect clone of Escape from Tarkov, created for those who find «Tarkov» too difficult or too nerve-wracking. You get almost the same thing for free, only with a number of concessions and gifts for any occasion. This is precisely why hardcore fans of the genre won't come here — and you won't be pursued in raids by gamers maneuvering like Julius Caesar and shooting like Chris Kyle. On the other hand, beginners will get the hang of it here in an instant — they will get both the feeling of excitement, shootouts of all kinds, and the joy of victory from the very first raids. Add two weighty advantages: an excellently working netcode and the absence of cheaters (at least for now). The shooter from Morefun will appeal to everyone who is bored with ordinary shooters and «battle royales» in the style of Fortnite.

Zarium. December 2025.