You can’t browse Steam for more than 10 seconds without tripping over a Warhammer game. Games Workshop makes a pretty penny hucking licenses to developers for all sorts of tie-ins, and I doubt they’ll stop anytime soon. But if you’re anything like me, all that grim darkness of the far future wears on you. “There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter?” What am I, in church? Where’s the levity? Where’s the race cars?
There’s one faction in 40k’s smorgasbord of alien horrors that’s definitely having a good time in the grimdark: the orks. These football hooligan-inspired green goons are all about going fast and blowing people up, and it’s about time they’ve been affectionately adapted in Speed Freeks, a vehicular arena shooter where you pilot shoddy rocket-powered tanks and race to the death. It’s in early access, but already a good, chaotic time.
The orks’ cheeky, anarchic spirit is everywhere in Speed Freeks (on second thought, perhaps they should not have been given driving licenses). Every match is a whirlwind of twitchy firefights, exploding squigs, and everyone slamming the “WAAAGH!” button, erupting in a chorus of battle cries. Enemies are “krumped” rather than killed or fragged, and you can customize your ride with all manner of orky attire and tabletop-accurate paints. I haven’t seen so much organic roleplay in a shooter since Deep Rock Galactic had me cheering “Rock and stone!” with strangers, and if you need any convincing that this game’s effect is similar, just take a look at its top-rated Steam guide which teaches you to speak like an ork.
There’s more on offer than novelty, though. The two current modes are Deff Rally and Kill Konvoy; the former is a mix of team racing and point control, and the latter involves both teams defending giant Stompa mechs as they trundle to a finish line (and slowing down the opponents’ by dropping bombs on it and scoring kills). While I preferred Deff Rally’s emphasis on all-out teamfights, Kill Konvoy gave the bigger, slower vehicles more room to use their long range firepower and fostered unique teamplay around guarding the bomb carriers. I had particular fun in this mode as the Grot Mega Tank, circling the Stompa like a shark and shutting down enemy bomb carriers with a swift broadside. While clearly inspired by demo derby classics like Twisted Metal, it’s very much its own thing, and there’s more under the hood than one might assume.
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Different vehicles behave something like different characters in a hero shooter, each of them coming with a suite of abilities and special movement properties. My favorite of these is the Boomdakka Snazzwagon, which specializes in hit-and-run molotov tossing. It can leave behind a trail of blinding exhaust fumes to disorient other players or isolate healers from their team, and I found myself playing with a more tactical mind than I expected from a game about fungoid monsters in cars.
Movement is more robust than I expected, too, especially in the nimbler vehicles. While every vehicle can boost to gradually raise its top speed, speedsters like the Snazzwagon can dash to instantly accelerate to an absurd pace. Combining these mechanics allows for some truly ludicrous maneuverability when racing from one point to the next or trying to escape from an enemy tank. Maps are properly outfitted with ramps, half-pipes and spacious arenas, too, so it’s easy to apply them in a shootout.
It’s all pretty impressive stuff for an arena shooter in early access, and it’s sheer frenetic joy at the best of times. But a few gripes have spoiled the fun in my playtime so far, and I’m not sure how much longevity I’ll find in Speed Freeks, which debuts at a busy time for both multiplayer shooters and highly anticipated Warhammer games.
For instance, each game I’ve played so far has been stuffed with bots—easily spotted by their cookie-cutter orky names and 0 ms ping—despite the fact that I’ve never had to wait in a queue for more than 10 seconds. I’d much rather wait a minute for a full lobby than have to plow through AI enemies to get a proper scrap in. The worst match I played had a measly three human players, which sucked all the energy out of the on-screen mayhem.
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Moreover, with a launch lineup of eight playable vehicles and two modes, there’s not a lot to dig into yet. Maps have some visual variety but lack distinction from one another mechanically, and occasionally players ignore the various landmarks anyway to do donuts around one another like it’s Quake 3 on wheels. While I can see myself losing several evenings to the charming brand of violence on offer here, I’m uncertain it’s deep or novel enough to attract a bustling, active community.
I don’t expect the game to be feature-complete in early access, and the devs are already active in responding to player feedback on forums and via patches, but it’s also already stuffed with cosmetics purchasable with in-game currency and a lengthy battle pass. With games like Concord, Marvel Rivals, Splitgate 2, and even Space Marine 2 on the way, Speed Freeks is headed straight into a crowded pond increasingly dominated by big fish.
Still, I hope its orky antics secure it the niche it deserves, because it’s damn fun and vehicular combat has gone underrepresented for far too long. I’ve rarely seen Warhammer’s lighter side portrayed with such infectious glee, and I’m eager to rope some friends in and krump some gitz together while the krumping’s good.
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I get the impression Bloober Team knows what you think of it. Ever since the studio was announced as the driving force behind Konami’s remake of the impossibly beloved Silent Hill 2, it feels like the game’s fanbase has been sucking air through its teeth, keeping one wincing eye on development to see how badly Bloober messed up.
I don’t think it has. Having spent three hours with the game, it’s not perfect, but I didn’t come away thinking the devs behind Layers of Fear and The Medium have massacred a classic. Instead, I think people’s scepticism has inclined them to play things safe, turning out a UE5 embellishment of the original that feels a lot like Silent Hill 2 filtered through the design sensibilities of the Resident Evil 2 remake.
For die-hards and purists (terms I don’t use pejoratively; I’m a die-hard and purist about plenty of stuff), that shift will likely be too much by itself. But if you’re just Silent Hill-curious, or someone with vague memories of the now-23-year-old original game who’d like to return to that town? I think Bloober might have actually pulled it off.
Leon Sunderland Kennedy
It does feel a lot like that RE2 remake though, in terms of how it plays. The three hours I spent with Silent Hill 2 took me from its opening—James Sunderland getting his head together in the roadside toilet we all know and love—through the streets of Silent Hill and into the Wood Side and Blue Creek apartments. If I’d squinted I probably could have convinced myself I was playing Capcom’s 2019 banger using some kind of greyscale ENB preset.
Bloober has dispensed with the fixed camera angles and tank controls of the original game and given us something all about shaky over-the-shoulder aiming and rotating objects you pick up in the world. A transition from Resident Evil (old) to Resident Evil (new) in gameplay.
If you’re not wedded to those fixed camera angles, it works. The pitch-black and creaky flats of the Wood Side apartments didn’t feel any less tense and fearful just because I was looking at them from over James’ shoulder and not from a viewpoint placed somewhere in the corner of the room, and I suspect the angle will be a lot more palatable to a disturbingly adult-aged population of players who didn’t grow up with games that refused to let you control the camera.
If I’d squinted I probably could have convinced myself I was playing Capcom’s 2019 banger using some kind of greyscale ENB preset.
Besides, not everything feels new. You’ll still have to solve slightly baffling puzzles to progress at times, just like in the good old days. That’s baffling in a “why would a human design this?” sense, mind you, not difficulty. On normal puzzle difficulty (you can choose separate difficulties for combat and puzzles, just like the old game), I had little trouble getting through puzzles old and new: things like fixing the Neely’s Bar jukebox, solving an expanded version of the coin puzzle, and figuring out the code to a safe by pointing my torch at spots on the wall.
I’m glad those puzzles are there, because they gave me a break from what’s probably my biggest gripe with the whole experience: the combat. Just like the RE2 remake, Silent Hill 2 makes gunplay a high-risk, high-reward proposition. Hit your enemies and they go down relatively quickly, but miss and you’re wasting your very limited supplies of ammo.
But where RE2 remake’s zombie foes were good cannon fodder—they were slow and shambling, which kind of made up for the fact that Leon had a tendency to sway as he aimed—Silent Hill 2’s don’t feel suited to shooting. They can be fast, particularly the Mannequins, and that makes for a frustrating combo when James’ aim wibbles and wobbles like psychosexual jello.
Melee’s a little better: Fighting single enemies with James’ club is a matter of whacking away at them and hitting dodge as they telegraph their counterattacks. It’s not the meatiest or most engaging combat you’ve ever played, but it works. Trying to go mano a mano with groups of foes, though, is a surefire recipe to end up getting mobbed.
Fighting is plentiful, which gives you a lot of time to pick away at its flaws, but to be clear, Bloober hasn’t turned Silent Hill into a character action game. There’s still lots of room for the atmosphere to breathe and seep into you, and I never actually died in all my time with the demo, despite a few close calls. Perhaps the real problem is the cramped environments I spent the demo in: Encountering foes on the streets isn’t so much of an issue given that you can just run around them, but a lot of my time in the apartments—which were sprawling—was taken up by fights that often felt more frustrating than tense.
But combat in the PS2 game was no picnic either. Maybe making it kind of a chore in the remake is just Bloober trying to be extra faithful. It’s the atmosphere and narrative that makes up for it. The monsters might not be super-fun to fight, but they are truly horrifying, all squeaky and shiny and unnervingly sexual, and the sinister crackle from your radio that signals their approach never stopped being creepy and ominous to me. Silent Hill’s vibes have survived its transition to modernity even if the fighting sometimes leaves something to be desired. And hey, iffy combat never stopped the original from becoming a classic.
So despite some missteps, I think the attempt to modernise the game is a success. Sure, it feels a lot like Silent Hill 2 in an RE2 skin, but that remake was pretty excellent. There are far worse examples for Bloober to follow, and for the most part it’s done well at wrapping the vibes of SH2 in that modern package.
Story mode
Narratively, the remake is the Silent Hill 2 of old: James has got a letter from his wife saying she’s hanging out in Silent Hill. As an attentive husband, James is like 85% sure his wife died three years ago, so that’s concerning to him. Off he goes on an adventure to figure out just what’s going on, finding a town filled with monsters and a few kindred spirits who have also found themselves inexplicably drawn there.
In my time with the game, I met characters like Angela and Eddie, and they, too, are pretty much as they were 23 years ago. Their voices have changed, though. Bloober isn’t reusing the voicework from the original game or the HD re-recordings, and the new direction definitely feels different. The PS2 version felt like it had a bit of a stage-acting thing going on: Characters tended to speak clearly and with great enunciation, maybe even getting a little hammy at times.
Not so in the remake. Here we have acting that sometimes dips into Silent Hill 2 ASMR; James and co speak quietly, naturally, often muttering to themselves as they work through the tumult in their heads out loud.
It feels more, well, modern. Acting you’d see in a movie or on prestige TV as opposed to the kind of thing you’d find in the bombastic annals of videogame history. I liked the performances, but if you view acting in the original game as a crux of the whole weird, off-kilter experience, I can imagine being disappointed that Bloober didn’t try to capture that essence.
Mostly, though, things seem to be staying as they were. Cutscenes like James’ first meeting with Angela in the graveyard and his first encounter with Pyramid Head are very much as you remember them from 2001. There may have been actual unrest in the streets if Bloober had tried to change the game’s storytelling, so I’m pretty sure we can all rest easy that the studio—which has always been criticised for its narratives—seems to be taking a light touch.
Pretty sure. Like I said, I spent most of my time wandering around the Wood Side and Blue Creek apartments, so I wasn’t exposed to much beyond the beginning of Silent Hill 2. Could Bloober try to pull the narrative rug out from under us later on? Maybe, and boy I do not envy its email inbox if it does.
See that town? You can go there
Fans have been rightly sceptical of Bloober’s involvement in the Silent Hill 2 remake, but I think the studio’s instinct to stay mostly faithful has paid off. Despite being a long-time advocate for remakes getting weird with it and mixing things up, I don’t think that attitude would have served the developer well in this case. Let’s be honest: To Silent Hill 2 stalwarts, perfection brooks no improvement, and the studio’s writing just wouldn’t be up to the task of doing something interesting with the game anyway.
Yes, there are jettisoned aspects of the old game that will rub devotees the wrong way, and some things (the combat) that just don’t quite feel great to me, but overall? My time with the remake gave me the feeling that Bloober has taken an admirable stab at a nearly impossible task.
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Gourdlets Launch Trailer – YouTube
A cute little building game released this week called Gourdlets, all about designing cozy towns for little vegetable people to walk around and enjoy themselves in. Made by solo designer AuntyGames, we first saw a simple demo of it back in 2022, but this full release is way richer with stuff to build and quality of life delights.
The basic premise is that you plop down all kinds of stuff to build a townscape for the little Gourdlets to come and explore—that’s it, really. The delight comes in the huge range of things to place and landscapes to design, then watching the little gourdlets make themselves at home. As they enjoy things they’ll grow flowers that earn you presents delivered on the train—all of which are new and cool things to place in your town.
Gourdlets is firmly in that category of relaxed game-and-toy that doesn’t ask much of its player besides a sense of play and wonder. It’s the same kind of delight you might have gotten from stuff like Townscaper or Galaxy Garden or the more recent Dystopika.
That said, Gourdlets definitely has more full-fledged features and a bit more flexibility on its purpose than some others we’ve seen. It’s designed to work as a fullscreen application, but it also has a bottom-screen mode that stretches it across a section of your monitor—something that might be fun to put up as a bit of interest while you’re doing productivity stuff or chores.
You can find Gourdlets on Steam, where it’s a smooth $4.
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You’ve got this. Whether you’re after a few fresh ideas or the solution on a plate, we can help you win today’s Wordle. Take a quick look at our tips, spend some time with today’s clue, or go straight for the August 18 (1156) answer if you like. It’s your Wordle win, and we’re here to help.
“Find the last letter in four goes when there are five (or more) possible answers” isn’t my favourite kind of Wordle, but that’s what I had to deal with today. I’m glad I got there before I hit the bottom of the board, but I can’t help looking at all the words I did try and see myself being a finger-slip away from a faster win every time.
Wordle today: A hint
Wordle today: A hint for Sunday, August 18
This word could be—somewhat unkindly—used to describe a person who was tall and thin but in an awkward and ungraceful sort of way. Every single letter in today’s winning word is different from the last.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
No, there is no double letter in today’s puzzle.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
Anyone can pick up and play Wordle, but if you want to do it well and make all of your guesses count, these quick tips will help get you started on your Wordle winning streak:
- Choose an opener with a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants.
- The answer may contain the same letter, multiple times.
- Try not to use guesses that contain letters you’ve already eliminated.
Thankfully, there’s no time limit beyond ensuring it’s done by midnight. So there’s no reason not to treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you’re coming up blank. Sometimes stepping away for a while means you can come back with a fresh perspective.
Wordle today: The answer
What is today’s Wordle answer?
Here, for you. The answer to the August 18 (1156) Wordle is LANKY.
Previous Wordle answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
Past Wordle answers can give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh. They are also a good way to eliminate guesses for today’s Wordle, as the answer is unlikely to be repeated.
Here are some recent Wordle solutions:
- August 17: STORM
- August 16: BRACE
- August 15: ACORN
- August 14: SHORE
- August 13: NEIGH
- August 12: SKIFF
- August 11: SCONE
- August 10: MEDIC
- August 9: OUNCE
- August 8: SAUCY
Learn more about Wordle
Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and you’ll need to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them to keep up your winning streak.
You should start with a strong word like ARISE, or any other word that contains a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels. You’ll also want to avoid starting words with repeating letters, as you’re wasting the chance to potentially eliminate or confirm an extra letter. Once you hit Enter, you’ll see which ones you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.
You’ll want your next guess to compliment the first, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you might have missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. After that, it’s simply a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the correct word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words and don’t forget letters can repeat too (eg: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used you can scroll to the relevant section above.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
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Browser Diablo has been a thing for a while now, and we wrote about a previous incarnation back in 2019. That version is unfortunately offline these days, but another one has taken over my browser like someone jammed a soulstone into its forehead. Diablo’s source code, as reconstructed by GalaXyHaXz and the devilution team, has been ported to WebAssembly and lives again via Github.
My colleagues here at PC Gamer are split between Diablo 4 sickos and Diablo 2 enjoyers, but I’m here to tell you they’re both wrong. While Diablo 4 may have substantially improved thanks to its post-launch seasonal updates, there’s still nothing like the original for atmosphere and condensed simplicity.
All you need is one dungeon and one town, none of that open-world filler. Hearing a goatish whinny somewhere in the dark beyond the range of your light while you’re alone and too many layers underneath Tristram is the ultimate Diablo experience, and something none of the sequels have ever equaled.
To play Diablo in your browser you’ll first need to upload the DIABDAT.MPQ file. If you own Diablo, perhaps via GOG, you’ll have access to this file already, but if you don’t there’s a shareware MPQ loaded already so you can click and play. You’ll be limited to the warrior class and unable to talk to NPCs, but if you just want to test that it works you can fire up Diablo that way and immediately experience the classic flavor.
You can even play it on your phone with touch controls. You guys all have phones, right? Here’s the website.
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I might tut tut at the endless, rapacious pursuit of wealth for its own sake that defines our society, but at the end of the day, I still want to know who’s making the big bucks and imagine what I’d do with them, baby. Thankfully, The Sunday Times has just come out with its Rich List of the 30 wealthiest figures in the UK games industry.
At the top of the list are Igor and Dmitry Bukhman, whose names, games, and studio I had never heard of before beholding this very list. The brothers founded and own Playrix, a 4,000 person-strong developer of free-to-play mobile games, with their most notable releases being Township, Fishdom, Homescapes, and Gardenscapes. I guess I’m happy for them and their eye-watering £12.5 billion fortune.
Past a metaverse guy and the founder of Candy Crush developer King, now the oft-forgotten third pillar of Activision Blizzard King, you’ll run into some rich guys more PC gamers will recognize: Dan and Sam Houser, who lay claim to an estimated £350 million fortune. Co-founders of the niche indie developer, Rockstar Games, their fortune was built on revenue from Rockstar’s breakout hits: The Warriors in 2005 and Bully in 2006. Those games’ runaway success have allowed Rockstar to indulge in less lucrative passion projects like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption.
The biggest surprise, at least for me, is #6 on the list: Garry’s Mod’s titular creator, Garry Newman. I guess it shouldn’t be a shocker. Garry’s Mod is a ubiquitous presence in PC gaming, and despite the name, it’s a $10 standalone game. Newman’s Facepunch Studios is also behind the highly successful Rust, and his deep pockets have me much less worried about Newman’s imminent Skibidi Toilet-related legal battles.
There’s a lot to dig into with the 30-person list: PewDiePie is still rich as hell, believe it or not, and I definitely felt my heart warm at the sight of Luca Galante, founder of poncle and creator of Vampire Survivors, at #26. It’s a bit of a bummer and not exactly surprising that there are only three women on the list, but I don’t know if “more women in the UK games industry 1%” should become our next rallying cry for gender equality in the hobby. One thing we can all agree on though: The people I really like and admire on the list like Galante and Newman are just cool guys with talent who also got lucky, and the rest of them should be paying more taxes.
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Getting your Saturday Wordle off to the best possible start is easy—just take a look at today’s freshly prepared hint and those winning green letters will appear in no time. And if you’re further down the board and things aren’t looking too great, just click through to the answer to the August 17 (1155) puzzle and turn your game around in a flash.
I’m not going to win any records for speed today, but this turned out to be a very satisfying win. A few early crumbs led me in the right direction, then I had a little bit of struggle followed by a last-minute plot twist before my triumphant turnaround right at the end. I basically Wordle’d my way through a mystery novel today—just call me Poirot.
Today’s Wordle hint
Wordle today: A hint for Saturday, August 17
This is a name for a particular sort of bad weather. When this is happening the skies will go dark and cloudy, and there’ll be heavy wind and rain too. Hail might turn up if it’s cold. There’s just a single vowel in this one, so concentrate on those consonants.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
No, there is no double letter in today’s puzzle.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
If there’s one thing better than playing Wordle, it’s playing Wordle well, which is why I’m going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:
- A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants.
- A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
- The solution may contain repeat letters.
There’s no time pressure beyond making sure it’s done by midnight. So there’s no reason not to treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you’re coming up blank.
Today’s Wordle answer
What is today’s Wordle answer?
Don’t worry, you’re about to win. The answer to the August 17 (1155) Wordle is STORM.
Previous answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today’s Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that’s already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh.
Here are some recent Wordle solutions:
- August 16: BRACE
- August 15: ACORN
- August 14: SHORE
- August 13: NEIGH
- August 12: SKIFF
- August 11: SCONE
- August 10: MEDIC
- August 9: OUNCE
- August 8: SAUCY
- August 7: MACAW
Learn more about Wordle
Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it’s up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them.
You’ll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.
You’ll want your second go to compliment the first, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer.
After that it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used you can scroll to the relevant section above.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
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When things go to shit in Arena Breakout: Infinite, they go to shit fast. Each of the 10-15 minute matches in this brutal extraction shooter start the same way: you’re stood in a peaceful wooded area with a military-grade firearm, an empty rucksack and a glimmer of hope that this will be the time you find a stack of valuables.
The aim of the game here—and Escape From Tarkov, the game Arena Breakout: Infinite takes liberal inspiration from—is to charge around the map hoovering up loot and heading to extraction. Get lucky and you’ll kill a couple of players along the way, taking some of their gear, too. Die, and you lose everything you went in with. In practice, each of these raids is a coinflip on whether you’ll survive rich or bleed out.
Ostensibly you want money for guns, ammo and armour. In reality, you just want to make money for the bragging rights of having a bigger pile of money than your friends.
The loot you find, the gameplay mechanics and even the keybinds are similar to what you would find in Tarkov. I’ve played several thousand hours of Tarkov and I slipped into Arena Breakout like a warm, bloody bath.
Arena Breakout: Infinite is a PC reimagining of Arena Breakout, a mobile extraction shooter. With its PC release, Infinite is now battling with the very game that inspired it. However, it’s not quite that simple. Arena Breakout: Infinite has a different philosophy than Tarkov: matches are shorter, maps are generally smaller and the gameplay feels much faster as a result. The lethal firefights are just as quick as anything Tarkov can toss in, but you’re having those brawls more often.
While Arena Breakout’s early access release has only a trio of maps and much less gear than its better established stablemate, even at this stage it offers a much lower barrier to entry. There’s a decent tutorial and several quality of life features that seem ready to welcome new players. However, there’s no getting around the elephant in the room: Arena Breakout: Infinite has some awful monetisation, and we’ll be talking about that in-depth later on.
Welcome to hell
But first, the good bits. Firefights are frantic and lethal, and death can come in a single round. Close quarters fights are messy and unpredictable, and with so much on the line with each death, it should be infuriating. Instead, it feels exhilarating.
This is because Escape From Tarkov was never a game just about the shootouts, and nor is Arena Breakout: Infinite. There’s a thrill to extracting with a graphics card, broken phone or even a backpack full of toothpaste and flipping them for money on the market. Better yet, the way you have to weigh up whether to use the AK12 you’ve just found in a raid or sell it for a premium creates a tension that underpins the whole game. It’s not just about the suicide runs you’ll make through a series of blind spots and ambush points. It’s about making a ton of money while you do it. EVE Online, but for armed sociopaths instead of those that fly spaceships. Playing the market in Arena Breakout: Infinite requires a keen eye for the most valuable bits of loot and nerves of steel to get it back to your stash so you can sell the bloody stuff.
Arena Breakout: Infinite’s biggest success is that it manages to make the extraction shooter genre accessible without cutting too much of the experience away. There’s no getting around that Arena Breakout: Infinite takes liberal inspiration from Escape From Tarkov. However, to help even the playing field, Arena Breakout: Infinite has added a lot of new features.
The most obvious of these is the addition of an in-game map that marks where your extracts and loot hotspots are. The first stage of learning a new map is now as simple as pressing the M key. You won’t learn all the good sniper spots, fatal funnels and annoying bushes that people camp in straight away, but you’ll be able to navigate between big landmarks and get yourself out without bother.
Similarly, floating markers will hover over your squadmates heads so you can see which way they’ve plodded off as you stuff your pockets with loot, and easy in-game radio chat has meant it’s easy to coordinate with even random players. End of battle summary screens will let you trace your entire route through the match, while combat recaps will let you see how you killed who you killed, and even tell you how much health your killer had left.
Inventory management has a lot of tweaks on Tarkov’s system too. You can strip a gun for parts and sell it on the in-game player-to-player market with just a few clicks, and there is the ability to roll up rucksacks and bags up so they take up less space.
While these are to make things simpler, several of the more arcane mechanics from Tarkov have been done away with entirely. Weapons don’t have durability, mastery or skills associated with them here. Weapon modding is all present, but as long as you’ve got a good bullet in your magazine and decent aim, you’ll get kills.
Teammates extracting with your gear will automatically return it to you, meaning carrying a friend’s gun out doesn’t involve the tedious act of giving it back to them next raid. Better yet, this works even when you’re playing with randoms.
Finally, missions seem to be simpler, even at this early stage. I’m level 25, and many of the missions I’ve encountered have asked me to go somewhere, kill something or bring out a certain amount of loot. I’m rarely punished for dying beyond losing my gear and because the maps are smaller and raids often take between 15-30 minutes, the pace is much faster than many of its extraction shooter brethren. You’ll often have one big firefight before you and your squad scarper for the nearest exfil point with the loot, and that makes it very moreish, like a snack-sized Tarkov you can’t stop playing.
It’s the greed that gets you.
This, combined with the tutorials, means even the most unfamiliar of players will go from timidly skirting the edges of the map with a scant selection of loot to visiting the high-traffic areas of the map hoping to turn the other player controlled mercenaries into loot for the taking.
That, of course, is the fun. Get greedy and visit areas like the sprawling, maze-like Motel or the killing fields surrounding the Stables on the initial Farm map and you’re likely to find yourself in a fight for your life. But that’s where the best loot and the most tooled up players will be, so time and again you’ll venture into this dilapidated crucible to test yourself anew like a modern day gladiator.
More often than not, when you die in Arena Breakout: Infinite it’s because you’ve pushed into a dangerous part of the map, looted a body in the open or ignored the nagging feeling of your gut and gone to scour another room for valuables as time ticks away. It’s the greed that gets you.
Nickel and die
And on the subject of greed, Arena Breakout: Infinite’s monetisation is reminiscent of the dark ages of free-to-play games: many of the in-game purchases are made in 30 day chunks, meaning you can buy perks to make your game easier, but you’ll have to do it every month.
Secure containers are a core part of the extraction shooter experience, allowing you a small but safe place to store valuables in the case of your death. This is a huge part of early Tarkov, where you’ll scavenge loose bits that are helpful for progression and stash them away for safekeeping. Other games in the growing genre have aped this trend, and it’s a slight concession to the fact that, well, you’re going to die a whole lot.
Arena Breakout: Infinite is the same, but there’s a catch. You’ll have to buy a secure container, and you’ll have to fork that cash over every 30 days. There’s a two square (2×1) secure container that you can unlock via an event I’ve not yet encountered in 10 hours of play, but then there’s also a four square (2×2) container that you can buy for 500 Bonds ($4.99 / £3.90), the in-game currency of choice for true Infiniteheads. A larger six square container (3×2) can be yours — for 30 days — for just 1,000 bonds ($9.99/£7.82).
If that’s not enough, you can get a slightly bigger case for all of your keys for just 1,600 bonds ($15.97, but you have to buy three different amounts of Bonds just to make that possible). If you have a ton of cash and no idea what to do with it in the real world, you can replicate that in-game by buying Kron (the in-game cash) in a variety of different options.
Also up for sale is the in-game Elite package, which gives you an extra 150 lines of storage space, ups your weekly limit for selling things on the player-to-player marketplace and lets you list more things on that market at once. That’ll cost you another 500 bonds ($4.99/£3.90) for 30 days. It also comes with a premium label that you can show to other players, presumably so they know you’re the one to go to when they’ve got a bridge to sell.
It’s very clear that squeezing money out of players is at the top of its design goals.
Arena Breakout: Infinite is a fun game that I can see myself turning to again and again. However, it’s very clear that squeezing money out of players is at the top of its design goals. This isn’t technically pay to win—you can still get shot in the face by a player clutching nothing more than a pistol. But it does offer players a way to get ahead of the competition, with more security, more potential to make money and the ability to amass a larger amount of gear to take into raids. If you’re not willing to spend that cash, you’re probably going to feel like a second class citizen.
This is a real shame, because I have found myself glued to Arena Breakout: Infinite over the last couple of days, and would usually be happy to drop a few quid on a free-to-play game that I was genuinely enjoying. Thanks to this, they’ve decided for me that I won’t be dropping cash on it for pretty much any reason.
Otherwise, the game gets my stamp of approval. The smaller maps and bite-sized conflicts at the heart of Arena Breakout: Infinite don’t feel any less monumentous. While the entire vibe of Escape From Tarkov has always been “this game is hard and you’re shit at it, but love us anyway”, Infinite smooths over a lot of those rougher edges and presents a well-polished free-to-play alternative that is bound to win over a lot of fans, both those tired of Tarkov and those wanting to give the genre a try without any prior experience.
With a few more maps and a stack of new weapons, loot and other gear to fight over, it feels like Arena Breakout: Infinite could find its niche. If, along the way, it could ditch its shitty monetisation, it seems like this could be an arena I don’t even want to breakout from.
It’ll be on Steam in the future, but for now, you can download Arena Breakout: Infinite’s early access version from its official site.
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