We figure out whether it is worth enduring all the problems of the shooter.
Until a few months ago, Escape from Tarkov had a reputation similar to Star Citizen. Little content, many mechanics not yet implemented, a huge list of promises, poor optimization, and a whole crowd of players furiously convincing everyone around that it is absolutely normal to pay from one and a half to several thousand rubles for participation in early beta testing.
But at the end of 2019, the developers staged a powerful PR campaign involving popular streamers. In such a simple way, they managed to show a wide audience that the game, although still in production, is already capable of capturing tens and hundreds of hours.
In just a couple of weeks, everyone who follows the industry has heard about Tarkov. Now that the hype has subsided, it’s time to find out what state the game is in and what it is at the moment.
Russia 2028
The game takes place in the fictional city of Tarkov and its environs in the Russia 2028 setting (Contract Wars also belongs to it). Due to the political crisis, this area was isolated from the outside world by the UN peacekeeping force, which led to chaos inside the isolated territory and a war between two private military corporations (PMCs for short) – USEC and BEAR. In addition, the city is undergoing a constant redistribution of power among the bandits and marauders, who were nicknamed the Wild.
The player takes on the role of a USEC or BEAR mercenary (at the moment the choice is conditional and does not affect anything), and the Wilds, with some exceptions, are present in the game as bots.
Despite the name of the game and the global goal of getting out of the conflict zone, at the moment there is no single storyline in Escape from Tarkov, at the end of which we would really get back into the outside world. All that remains is to make sorties from the shelter in order to replenish supplies, get hold of something useful (be it a weapon or, say, fuel for a generator), and fulfill the conditions for passing quests.
It is difficult to attribute Escape from Tarkov to any specific subgenre. It has something from a hardcore tactical shooter, and RPG elements in the form of character leveling, and even a bit of a battle royale.
There is no open world in the game, instead, before each raid, you can choose one of several levels, which are similar in size to the locations from “Stalker”. Each of them has its own type of gameplay. For example, “Forest” is ideal for sniper firefights, “Factory” is ideal for close-range battles, and at “Customs” the exits from locations are arranged so that on the way to them, players must pass through several especially dangerous zones.
But regardless of the chosen level, the goals and objectives are always the same: find the most expensive loot (on the map, in the stashes, or on the corpses of enemies) and arrive at the evacuation point before the forty-minute timer expires. Yes, there are quests, but they do not lead to anything and are carried out somehow “along the way.” So while the game does not have a full-fledged plot and a global goal, all that remains is to look for loot and shoot with enemies.
At the same time, there is always a risk of losing not only the things found but also all the equipment that you took with you on a sortie. In addition to you, the location will have many bots and about a dozen other players, and your death means a complete loss of everything that was on you at that moment.
Not for the sake of swag
In theory, for the sake of profit, you can go out on a raid every time with minimal equipment – for example, with a cheap pistol and even without a bulletproof vest. Thus, it is almost impossible to go into negative territory.
But over time, you realize that you are going on another sortie not so much because of the loot, but because of the very sensations of the game and, first of all, of shooting. I won’t say that the weapon feels “just like in life”, but Battlestate Games got as close as possible. Recoil, the difference between single and burst shooting, aiming – everything is done so that you believe that you are holding a real rifle in your hands.
Therefore, you start experimenting with equipment: you put on your best body armor, buy tactical headphones to hear better, and finally decide to take with you the very tuned M4 that you found in the third raid, but never used it for fear of losing. And then you look for partners who are ready to help, and already being in the team … you die in the first skirmish because of banal bad luck.
And yet, despite the failure, you heal the wounds of the protagonist in the shelter and again go out on a sortie. Not only because the feeling of excitement plays – will you lose all your equipment this time or find something very expensive. But also because it’s fun to play. Especially with friends.
Firefights in hangars, clearing buildings floor by floor, room by room, sniper duels, storming of premises, coupled with gameplay mechanics and teamwork within your squad create hundreds of unique situations.
Most importantly, you never get tired of excessive hardcore inside the game. This is not “Armagh”, where you almost need to look at the guides in order to learn how to move correctly. It is enough to understand a few simple things, and you already know the rest if you are familiar with the genre of first-person shooters.
From realism here, first of all, the elaboration of details. For example, the visor of the helmet gets dirty over time, and to find out the approximate number of cartridges remaining in the store, you first need to pull this store out. A system of damage to body parts and their healing has been worked out, you can not just squat or stand up to full height, but also choose how low you want to bend down, and so on. All this works great for immersion.
Annoying little things
Adjusted for the fact that it is still beta (and judging by version number 0.12, still early), “Tarkov” could become the online “Stalker”. In addition to battles and a system of exploring locations, completely based on the desire of players to find a better “swag”, there is the same “atmosphere” here. Post-Soviet surroundings, charismatic voices of mercenaries, catchy phrases, humor, small details and swear words on the fences – the developers perfectly play on the nostalgia for the GSC game.
But all the pleasure is spoiled by some indecent number of minor problems. Some of them may be corrected someday. For example, a recent patch saved the game from most of the cheaters and improved optimization – now, even on budget assemblies, you can achieve a pleasant picture at 60 fps. But whether the rest of the problems will disappear over time is not clear.
Let’s say the game still doesn’t have a compass. And if it is not particularly needed among the factory premises and in the city, it is difficult to navigate in the forest or other greenery without a compass. Not to mention, it would have made it much easier to point your partner in a direction.
It also lacks some simple functions like wiping a dirty visor or interrupting a drinking animation. And some of the details, on the contrary, seem silly. So, if you decide to recharge, and in your unloading, there is no place for an empty store, then the character will throw it to the ground. And it doesn’t matter that the pocket for an empty store will be free as soon as you get a new one.
Such little things are often justified by defenders of the game with words such as “realism”, as well as phrases like “you yourself try to do it,” but in most cases, these arguments simply do not work. I specifically checked with my service friend, and he confirmed that even if you have a rifle in one hand, it will not be difficult for you to first get a new magazine out of unloading with the other hand, and then put the old one there.
I would also like to complain about the inadequacy of the quests. They are given to you by the merchants in the shelter, accompanied by some small story. Some of them are interesting and not very difficult to perform – there are even whole lines of quests related to each other.
But a number of assignments make you doubt that their authors generally understand how this game works. Let’s say that my friend has been unable to complete the quest for a week, because he is faced with the task of killing several mercenaries with shots to the head, being in a state of tremor. It even sounds absurd, and such a task can be completed only by accident.
What game time is spent on?
And in general, everything that is in one way or another connected with the shelter evokes only negative emotions. Even the raid system itself is annoying. If you die in battle, you will not be able to immediately go on a sortie again with the same character. You need to wait until he heals his wounds, and at this time you can take control of a random bandit with random equipment.
If you are killed after that, then you do not lose anything, but if you survive, then all the loot found will be added to your stash. And in principle, this is an interesting system, apart from one problematic situation.
Sometimes, in a very short period of time, they manage to kill both your main mercenary and a random raider. And in this case, a new random character is not available to you until the twenty-minute timer expires. As a result, the player is forced to sit idle for a long time without any opportunity to simply enter the match.
Perhaps this is done to balance or to protect against those who like to abuse the mechanics of the game – but in the end, such a system is just annoying. The only thing that saves you is that the hideout is full of things to do while you wait. The only pity is that such activities do not bring pleasure.
For example, you can play “Tetris” – as the community called the process of sorting things in the cache. This inventory window contains everything that you bought or found during the raid: weapons, body armor, crafting materials, and everything else. But the volume of the stash is limited, so you have to get out of it, trying to pack everything as compactly as possible.
This doesn’t seem like a big problem at first, but the more things you have in reserve, the harder it becomes to store them. At first, most items are stored in unloads – they usually give more available slots than they take up. Then there are various boxes for cartridges, shops, EFT currency, medicines and everything else. And at some point, you realize that you are completely confused and unable to answer exactly where you put that Kalash and where the sight is from it.
You have to spend a lot of time in the cache. Something you sort, something you put up for sale to other players, something you put aside for sale to NPC merchants (this increases their level of trust). Last weekend I spent about 18 hours in “Tarkov” – at least a third of them went to the cache.
In addition to arranging the cache, it takes a lot of time to modify your weapon. This is completely optional, but entertaining. Almost every detail is subject to replacement – from the barrel to the rubber pad on the butt. It is possible from the simplest hunting “bolt” to assemble a full-fledged sniper rifle with a polymer stock, a unique sight, and a removable magazine.
Moreover, the system is not entirely realistic for the sake of balance. For example, on the Saigu-12 it is impossible to simultaneously hang a collimator sight at an angle of 45 degrees and a conventional optical sight because otherwise, it would be possible to get a too versatile barrel.
Unfortunately, all the fun of modding is spoiled by the unintuitive interface. For example, in the template design mode, all available parts are not displayed until you study them at a flea market. And to do this, you need to flip through 200 pages with scopes, silencers, and everything else and click on every object unfamiliar to your character, which takes a lot of time.
In addition, there is no adequate description or instruction of how what and what fits. Of course, the Internet is full of guides, but you want to figure everything out on your own. I spent an hour and a half trying to figure out how to mount the sight on the AK-105 at a 45-degree angle. The solution turned out to be simple – you need to buy a small adapter. You can only guess about this by reading the description for each mount in the game – and there are more than a hundred of them!
At the same flea market, instead of just finding and buying the necessary body kit, you have to go from item to item for long minutes, read descriptions, manually compare the characteristics of spare parts in order to still make a mistake, buy the wrong thing twice, spend time to sell it back, and buy what you really need.
The problem of unintuitive UI plagues the game everywhere. It’s scary to think what percentage of your game time goes nowhere due to a poorly designed interface.
All these problems make it very difficult to enjoy playing Escape from Tarkov right now. Yes, this is not the same raw alpha as it used to be, now there is something to do here, and most of the basic functions work as they should. But a lot of time will pass before it will be possible to call “Tarkov” a finished product.
There is a lot to fix and a lot to add. The list of small but annoying flaws is longer than the list of promises from the authors themselves. If you believe them, someday Tarkov will have a peaceful location with an NPC, and transitions between levels within a single raid, and full-fledged story missions, and much more. But when all this will actually appear is not clear.
MMO Area and Guide 