Arena Breakout (Closed Beta 3) - They're Serious! And I Want It to Succeed
Tactical Extraction shooter isn't exactly something new in the mobile gaming market. Games like; Lost Light, PUBGM's Metro Royale, or Badlanders already made their way into the scene. But Arena Breakout is definitely the one that felt the best and I enjoyed the most. Frankly, coming from PC gaming, I've never been into survival or extraction shooter before. But I do love watching people playing games like Escape From Tarkov, Warzone's DMZ, and also Rust.
I can't afford myself the time needed to actually play them on my PC, especially with my current work routine. Most games I play nowadays are more on the casual side, where it only needs me to just get in and play a quick match or two after work without much of thinking. Or whatever available on my phone at the moment.
As the time I'm writing this, the game is currently still on its closed beta test. But I must admit, the game felt polished enough and running well despite it's still being in development. I found it extremely fun and refreshing to be able to play this type of games on mobile. I'm still looking for mobile games to cope with the lost of Apex Legends Mobile, and I also got bored with CoDM's repetitive game cycle and its terrible battle royale ranked experience. So when I saw this game online, I thought "Finally, something new!". And It got me hooked immediately right after my first real match.
CORE GAMEPLAY
Arena Breakout is an immersive first-person extraction shooter, developed by MoreFun Studio under Tencent. It's a "high risk, high reward" type of games, where you go into a raid, loot for valuable items, compete against other players, eliminate the militants, fight your way and get the hell out. With its ultra-realistic gun customizations, different injury treatments and other game mechanics, you're free to use any tactic to approach every raid the way you want. You wanna be stealthy? Sure. You wanna just rush and run through risky bullet hell? Why not? But be careful of militants tho. They may have pretty terrible aim, but they sure are very sharp at spotting people (even sharper than most players in some cases LOL).
The game currently has 4 playable map (5 if you're playing in the China test server) and each maps are locked behind your account level. Each maps get bigger and harder to traverse, but the loot gets significantly better too. It's a PvPvE game, so in each maps you'll meet not just real players, but also AI militants through out the map during your Tac Op raid. Occasionally there are bosses figure spawned in certain important locations, along with their elite squad guarding the place. They're all well-equipped with better gears and also tougher to fight.
You could also play Covert Ops where you going to infiltrate the map as a Militant. In this mode, the other Militant won't attack you unless you shot them first. But be careful of Bosses and their elite squad because they will see you through your disguise. And also be aware of other Tac Op players too.
BASIC MECHANICS
Survival is key in this game. It's very important that you have enough gears and supplies to make sure you made it out alive. You can equip 2 primary weapons, a secondary, a melee weapon, body armor, a helmet, tactical chest rig, and a backpack. Each gears has its own weight that will definitely affect your movement speed. You get on the map, shoot your way in, start looting, and get to the Extraction Point alive.
Each armor has its own level of quality and durability, but keep in mind that your armor won't cover all of your body parts. Some body armor, depending on their price, are able to cover more body parts than others, like; lower stomach, shoulder, and thorax. Remember that our armors and body parts can endure certain amount of damage, but getting shot right into your face is lethal when you don't have any face shield equipped. Even if it's just a single bullet, it's an instant death.
When you get badly injured on certain body parts, it'll be broken, and things will get worse.. Any injuries will have different physical effects on your character. It'll affect your aim, movement, stamina, or it'll bleed you to death. Not just injuries, your character could also be physically affected by certain conditions.
Your character is able to feel hunger, thirst, feeling tired, and pain. It could affect your character's physical abilities, or death if it's left untreated. If you died during a raid, you're going to lose everything. Everything you have with you on that match, from gears you brought with you to loots you found, will be gone forever. So keep that it in mind before rushing enemies.
HEALTH & PHYSICAL STATUS
Each of your body parts has its own health and each can get injured independently depending on the damage dealt. So be careful to not get yourself hurt and remember to always bring enough supplies with you. Certain types of physical damage could leads to certain type of injuries. You need medkits or regen booster shots to gain back your health, and bleeding organs needs bandages. The same goes as lung injury and broken body parts that that needs its own treatment.
Some medical treatment will have certain negative effects on your character's body. Some med items could reduce your max health for a certain percentage or draining your hydration level. When your character is thirsty or hungry, your vision will start getting blurry and heavily affecting your stamina. Constantly running while carrying heavy stuff could also physically affect your character.
INVENTORY & RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Managing your inventory is an integral part of this game, and a challenge itself. It's a grid-based inventory system where every items has its own size dimensions and weight. You can sell your loots for cash or keep it on your inventory for use later. But, same goes as your backpack, your main inventory space is limited. So make sure to sell stuff you don't need in order to free more space and earn money.
Managing your items that you bring along with you is also important. You'll be limited not only by your chest rig and backpack capacity, but also by the maximum weight your character could carry. The heavier you carry the more it impacts your movement speed.
Before you entering the battle, make sure you have enough supply with you and make sure to put them in your pockets and chest rig for quick access. You need to put your loaded mags into your chest rig to be able to quickly change mags. And the same goes as med kits, consumables, and tactical grenades. If they're in your backpack, so won't be able to use it quickly but you need to open your backpack and manually using it.
THE GUNSMITH
This game's weapon customization might confuses people at first because some attachments don't work on each other, so you can't just put everything on top of each other easily like in battle royale or any other multiplayer shooter games. But once you understand it, everything will make sense. That's how realistic the gunsmith is.
Different attachments has its upsides and downsides. Some attachments allow weapons to have better recoil by sacrificing its ergonomic, thus slows your ADS speed down. Some attachments only compatible with certain attachments that physically fits. And some types of scopes needs its own type of mounting attachments. You'd be able to customize weapons from your inventory or build it from scratch, using recommended builds or saving your own, with parts you already own. You could also buy missing parts needed from your Contacts and the Market.
CONTACTS & MARKET
Throughout your gameplay, you'll be introduced to several NPCs that'll help you with your progression, they're called Contacts. From these Contacts, you'll get some basic tutorials and informations about basic game mechanics, you'd be able to complete tasks give by them, and also buy gears and other important supplies.
The Market is an in-game player-driven marketplace where you can sell and buy supplies from other players. You can buy guns and their specific parts, different types of ammo, survival kits, basically everything you need. And because of its player-driven nature, the price is always changing almost every second, and sometimes.. They get insanely inflated and overpriced.
CUSTOMIZATIONS
Currently, character customization is very limited. You can only use male character model and his base appearance, from face type, skin tone, hair design. There are no cosmetics available in the game right, other than a couple of base outfit from Battle Pass (you're going to out your armor anyway). There's literally nothing available to buy from the in-game store right, nothing but some Koen bundles but you aren't able to top up yet.
If you already familiar with other shooter games made by Tencent, you'd probably find its HUD and control layout customization familiar here. They're basically works the same, so I don't think you'll find any problems with it.
OPTIMIZATIONS
At its current state, the game is fairly optimized even on my mid range Android phone. I'm currently playing this on my Redmi Note 10 Pro and it's pretty smooth most of the time, running in 60 fps with Balanced graphic. Sadly, didn't get the access to their iOS beta test, so I haven't been able to try it on my iPhone yet.
For Android users, you could also install the Lite version from Arena Breakout Official Website. It has a smaller overall package and.. a slightly worse graphics, but I think it'll work smoother for mid to low-end devices.
Currently, my only issues with the game performance is the random lags and small UI buttons. Some buttons are so small it's annoying sometimes, even on a fairly big phone I'm using. Random lags tend to happens whenever there's another players nearby. And I've read some reviews and comment online about it, and it seems like I'm not the only one here. I installed the Lite version because I thought it was a hardware issues, but it seems like it wasn't the case at all so I'm installing the regular one back.
FINAL VERDICT
I've been feeling really bored with mobile FPS lately, and I'm having so much fun with this game. In this game, everything is a risk, and that's what makes this game is immmersive and extremely fun (except the dying part). Yes, this game is what people refer as "a pretty hardcore one", so it might won't have that big of playerbase compared to other titles that are more appealing to casual players.
But this game has so much potential, and I'd like to see it grow and further developed. Even with some small issues I've mentioned before, I'd say this game's performance is pretty solid and polished enough to play with. And I'm excited to see what they have to offer in the next closed beta and global release.
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