Escape From Tarkov (2016) is Outstanding

Escape From Tarkov is a hardcore online survival RPG for FPS fans seeking the ultimate challenge. Played in a hybrid battle-royale fashion, your goal is to escape from various maps filled while others try to do the same, all without respawns. Easier said than done.

Players are thrust into one of two factions, USEC or BEAR, and must bring their own equipment into “raids.” The equipment in question can either be found in-raid or purchased from traders outside of deployments using roubles, dollars, or euros. To earn money, players must find goods during deployments and escape with them in order to sell them. Tarkov is very much economy-driven, with players being able to buy and sell goods that are in demand to traders, and to each other, using the “flea market.”

There’s a large variety of locations to visit, from forested woods to close-quarter shopping malls.

In order to access better gear, players must complete quests given to them by the various traders. These missions can range from simple tasks, like finding certain items or killing a certain number of “scavengers” (which can be either AI or player-controlled), or much harder ones, such as dropping packages off in high-traffic areas. Some tasks even span over multiple raids, such as the early “Delivery From The Past” quest, which has you collecting a documents folder from a locked high-risk room in the map “Customs,” to then survive that raid and bring the folder into the hectic, close-quarter “Factory” map as a dead-drop. Death in either segment means a full redo, proving some missions to be extremely challenging.

One of the main mechanics setting Tarkov apart from every other shooter is the sheer options you have when it comes to customizing your firearms. Nearly every attachment and gun you can find has a real-world counterpart, and every weapon comes with a complete, detailed suite of animations no other shooter to date has bothered with, such as being able to inspect the chamber or check the ammo left in your magazine. Indeed, these actions are present because the game does not actively give you much in the way of HUD; aside from a simple noise/movement speed meter, you’ve really got to use your eyes and ears more than anything, and manually remember how many rounds you’ve got left in your gun.

Tarkov doesn’t hold your hand; you’ve literally got to check your gun to see if it’s even loaded.

Every piece of equipment you’ll use has its own respective item to consider; reloading is not just about how many bullets you’ve got, but how many physical magazines you’re carrying, and how much ammo is present within each one individually. When your magazines run dry, you’ll need to individually pack each round into them, that is if you even have loose ammo on your person.

Speaking of ammo, there are tons of different kinds. Each caliber has a huge variety of ammo-types, which excel in either penetration (to get through enemy armor), flesh damage (destruction to limbs), effective range/accuracy/recoil, or simply the price. A magazine of the best ammo will probably cost more than most guns, but cheap ammo is cheap for a reason; unless you get a headshot or go for people’s legs, you’re not getting through good armor. Because of the amount of variety there is here, you never know what you’ll be up against, and must balance your budget accordingly.

As alluded to just now, enemies have individual hitboxes for limbs, stomach/thorax, and the head/face. All it takes is one well-placed shot to an unarmored face to drop anyone, but even with poor equipment, going for leg shots can disable any opponent you come across, making follow up fire that much easier.

On the left hand side of this image, you can see the individual health pools for each limb. Your character’s remaining health is a combined total of your limb HP, but should the head or chest drop to zero, you’re done for.

If you are a victim of such a tactic, but manage to come out on top, the medical system in this game is one-of-a-kind and a mini-game of sorts. You have to deal with injuries on a case-by-case basis. Bandages stop light bleeding, tourniquets stop heavy bleeding, splints mend broken bones, surgery kits restore “blacked-out” (0-HP) limbs, and all-purpose medkits to heal HP to limbs with some life left. When a leg is blacked-out, you are forced to limp slowly; when an arm is blacked-out, you’ll struggle to aim effectively; when your stomach is blacked-out, you’ll cough and wince loudly while quickly dehydrating, and if either the thorax or head drop to zero HP, you’re a goner.

When you die (and trust me, you’ll be dying a lot in Tarkov), all your gear is lost. There is, however, gear-insurance; if you spend currency upfront to insure your equipment prior to a raid, and nobody in-raid loots it off your corpse, it will be returned to your stash within 24 hours if you claim the insurance in time. This system really helps provide a cushion for players who die often, as those players are likely to be using poor equipment that more experienced players will likely pass on by.

Being part-RPG, there’s plenty of skills to level up, as well as your character’s total level, too.

Being an RPG, your character’s ability to perform is based in your level and skill-development. Skills increase based on how often you use/train them; strength allow you to throw grenades farther, jump higher and carry more gear, while charisma will help net you better prices with traders, recoil mastery improving weapon handling, etc. There’s plenty more, of course, but the main thing to note here is that skills are leveled passively more than anything, and you’ll accrue experience points as you play normally. The biggest boosts to your character will come from the gear you use and the stimulants you take, which vary in price and availability.

Raids are timed and you have to escape within said time limit or you’ll go MIA, losing everything you brought in as if you died. PMCs (your main character) always enter a raid when the timer first begins, and generally, you’ve have anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to get out alive. However, you also have the option of entering a raid as a scavenger, a third-party faction consisting of a mix of players and AI who can work together or betray each other depending on how things go.

Having a friend along for the ride helps a ton; 2v1 scenarios are likely to play out in your favor.

Scavengers spawn with random gear, in a random location, at a random point in the raid. Doing scav-runs is a risk-free way to learn the maps and increase bankroll as a new player when you’re broke financially and struggling to survive as a PMC. Generally, starting the raid after the first ten minutes or so have gone by means the early wave of PMC PvP has already come to pass, leaving you with less conflict to worry about, and more corpses around the map. Playing as a scav is best done with a vulture mentality, taking what you can off of corpses and picking up leftover loot from various buildings already traversed by PMCs earlier in the raid.

While not currently implemented, a karma/reputation system is planned, which will provide greater incentive for players of the same or opposing factions to work together. With extremely powerful bosses roaming the maps alongside trailing bodyguards, teamwork is a valuable yet heavily underutilized asset outside of Discord groups, though this will likely change with time.

Escape From Tarkov is definitely simple in premise, but by no means easy. While you don’t need to kill anyone or be the last man standing, surviving and escaping a raid is no walk in the park. In your first dozen hours with the title, you will likely lose about 95% of the raids you enter, which is discouraging to newer players. Bear in mind, however, that the average person only survives about 40% of their raids, with the best-of-the-best only making it out about 60-70% of the time. This is okay, though, as one good raid can pay for countless failures if you know where to look for loot.

The shopping mall of “Interchange” is filled to the brim with loot to score, but its vast size and dark, claustrophobic hallways make it a hard map to get out alive.

If you want to survive, you need to know where the extraction points are, and depending on which map your playing and where you spawn, these extractions can vary in location and availability dramatically. Not every extraction is open, and some have special requirements. For example, if you want to escape via a hole in the wall at Interchange, you can’t wear a backpack. If you want to use the cliff descent on Woods, you’ll need some paracord and an ice-pick. If you want to use the bunker in Reserve, you’ll need to open it up by flicking the power lever on in an underground control room. The biggest barrier to entry in this game is map knowledge, and the only way to attain it is to watch some YouTube guides and play the game to practice.

Entering raids at night has its own set of challenges, but can be extremely rewarding. Just be sure to bring at least a flashlight, or you’ll be stumbling around with no clue about where you are!

There is no other game on the market right now that hasn’t ceased to stimulate adrenal production in myself. You seriously never know how each raid is going to play out, and you’ll never be able to cover every angle. That fact combined with the extremely immersive sound design puts you constantly on-edge for the entirety of your raids. I find I’m always on high-alert, and even though I know it’s a game, and have been through most of the maps dozens of times at this point, my body can’t tell the difference. Your blood will definitely be pumping, win or lose.

At the time of my writing this, Escape From Tarkov is currently still in development, having been this way for four years now, so things are bound to change, but already, EFT has shown great promise and has proven to be extremely entertaining in my time with it, bugs and general frustration aside. Nothing out there is quite like it, and that alone makes it worth a try.