I’ll be the first to admit Escape from Tarkov has always seemed a little daunting to get into. I’ve watched from afar as Batlestate Games’ flagship title has heralded the extraction shooter genre ever since it first hit early access, but I’ve really rarely jumped in myself.
Yet, I felt some excitement as I took the mouse and keyboard controls during TwitchCon 2023 here in Las Vegas late last month, as Escape from Tarkov: Arena seemed like a fantastic entry point for me. And I wasn’t wrong - even if it was still a bit hard to wrap my head around at first.
Enter The Arena
Tarkov: Arena is meant to bring a faster, more accessible Tarkov experience to players, pitting them into smaller arena maps to duke it out for supremacy. A game set within the universe itself, Escape from Tarkov: Arena is much like a Gladiatorial match, where players compete with a crowd of cheering spectators.
During TwitchCon, I was able to try out the Arena Teamfight mode, which sees teams of five players wipe out the other team till one side reaches seven wins. It reminded me of the defuse gameplay in Valorant, only there wasn’t a bomb to deal with - just an enemy team.
Each round is timed, and if the round timer runs out without a conclusion, Teamfight can revert to control over a map to determine a winner. There is also an NPC clean up crew who can make an appearance with the intent of wiping players out instead. I didn’t encounter this during my gameplay, but the live tournament that Tarkov hosted at TwitchCon did happen to see the NPCs barrelling through the level at one point, with both teams using it to draw the other out into the open.
Escape from Tarkov: Arena should appeal to hardened Tarkov fans who love the extraction shooter's realism and the gunplay mechanics, but maybe not the survival elements. Instead of getting pissed at the moment you are meant to extract, only to take a stray bullet sent in your direction, Arena’s more PvP-focused gameplay should appeal to those who want to engage other players. However, despite this, Game Director Nikia Buyanov says that Arena should act as a bridge between hardcore EFT players and those who prefer arcade shooters.
“Arena is not a basic shooter, but something that many players are familiar with, a session-based, multiplayer shooter. So it has basic generic mechanics but with all the hardcoreness of EFT. So we just decided to make some to create a bridge between [Escape From Tarkov] players to arcade players, to make that an option for them to easily get into EFT.”
Two Games, One World
One aspect of Escape from Tarkov: Arena is just how much it ties into the core of the extraction shooter that has made Battlestate Games famous. In fact, I’m not quite sure how much I expected to be different the first time I loaded into a map. I started to play the shooter like I might a Call of Duty or even Valorant, sprinting and trying to slide into a crouch or standing exposed, thinking I could easily duck out of the way if there were trouble.
Instead, I was in for a rude awakening the first time I tried to move my character as if this was an arcade shooter. The hardcore movement and weightiness of Tarkov is here in all its glory, with characters moving a lot more like we do in real life. We aren’t going to see too many soldiers, regardless of their SpecOps training, slide across the ground in full gear, and it seems you won’t really see that in Tarkov: Arena either.
Guns themselves also retain the weightiness and impact that they have in ETF. I found it hard to control the first few rounds, with the insane recoil on my rifle hard to get used to, especially as I was determined to go fully automatic at first. The first full match I played, I’m not sure I really got used to it at all - though afterward a Battlestate Games rep assured me it was mostly because I was playing against seasoned Tarkov pros who could win a match before I’d really get a firm grip on my gun barrel.
She wasn’t wrong - I spent most of that first match spectating other players, not necessarily in the action myself.
Nikita explained that every movement, damage calculation, armor penetration - everything is from Tarkov proper. Every balance pass and every change to the mechanics will automatically filter to EFT: Arena.
“The mechanics are purely from EFT, 100%,” he said during our interview at TwitchCon. “Everything you see in Arena is 100% the same [in Escape from Tarkov]. The same balance, the same armor damage, penetrations - everything. So it’s just EFT but in close, small locations. Nothing changed, nothing wll be changed - it will be the same gunplay, the same mechanics, but wrapped up in the arena.”
This extends even to your character and character bank. Before each match you buy your kit with your shaed bank across the two games, much like you might in regular Tarkov. Unlike the original game where your loadout can drastically change based on what you extracted with - or left behind in the last match - Arena is all based on class presets.
Class types make it easier to get a load out to fit your own play style, like a sniper class or a more all-around character assault character.You’re not really bringing your epically geared character into the Arena, but all of the rank and improvements made to your character do carry over. Nikita also tells me during our interview that you can earn things in Arena and transfer them to your main EFT account, giving even seasoned extraction veterans a reason to jump into the fray.
Learning Tarkov The Hard Way
In my second match, I was a bit better. Despite this appealing to arcade shooter players, I'd learned that EFT: Arena really isn’t an arcade shooter. The fast-paced nature of Arena isn’t down to the character movement but rather the fact that the maps are designed to create epic firefights between teams almost from the get-go.
I would follow my teammates into the arena, hiding behind shipping crates or nearby debris to give myself some cover while I searched endlessly for a splash of the enemy on the screen. Since this is Tarkov, realism is at its core. There is no real HUD like you might expect in a game like CoD or PUBG, and your friendlies aren’t highlighted either - meaning it’s just as easy to kill a teammate as it is an enemy if you’re not careful.
Healing in Tarkov: Arena also works like it does in the main game. You’re not going to pop a healing potion and see your life bar miraculously go up - instead, it’s the same complicated system of pain pills, splints, and bandages to patch you up enough to finish the fight. This was one of the hardest aspects as a non-Tarkov player to wrap my mind around initially, but eventually, I got there. Given how often my character was riddled with bullets from the enemy team, I had plenty of chances.
However, despite the incredibly hardcore mechanics compared to other arena shooters around it, I found myself drawn to Tarkov for the first time. I wanted to get better. I wanted to learn where I went wrong and how I can fix it for next time. And I think by allowing this trial and error in an arena setting where I’m also not met with the frustration of losing everything when I die, it was a lot more endearing.
In a way, Escape from Tarkov: Arena serves dual purposes here: it gets new players engaged with the universe meaningfully without the extraction frustrations, but it also gives veteran players who just want the PvP aspect of Tarkov a place to play too. Thankfully, the matchmaking system in Arena is smart, so new players shouldn’t be set up in matches against players with high character ranks and more, allowing for a steadier learning curve versus a frustrating deluge of round after round of not feeling like you’ve made any progress.
As the end of the second match I played approached, I felt more comfortable, scoring my first kill against a player who had dominated the whole match. I was clotheslined by enemy gunfire almost immediately after, but it felt good. It felt like progress, which allowed me to ride that high all th way home, where I installed the full game that night. I wanted to play more - Arena being that great introduction to the broader Tarkov universe.
It is a shame that Escape from Tarkov: Arena is not packaged with the full game unless you are one of the players who bought the Escape from Tarkov: Edge of Darkness package; Arena is free DLC. Everyone else will need to shell out at least $35 for the Arena mode, which feels like a lot when you consider other arena shooters are, in many cases, free to play. It's a stand-alone game despite the amount of interplay between Arena and EFT proper.
However, for some this might be the only version of Tarkov they play, so charging for it does make a modicum of sense as well. It’ll be interesting to see the adoption rate as Arena rolls out when it fully launches. For those fans who want a chance to check it out for themselves, Escape from Tarkov: Arena is slated to start rolling out this December.
