Bodycam is a brand new first-person shooter game that has been released on the 7th June. Since its release it has taken the Steam world by storm with over 16k online players. This ultra-realistic title which runs on Unreal Engine 5 puts players in the perspective of law enforcement officers on a mission. And while the photorealistic graphics of the game are stunning good they are also sparking debates about ethics and the portrayal/interaction with violence.

Blurring lines between real and game world

If you haven’t seen footage of the game let me summarize it like this: sometimes real life has worse graphics. Jokes aside the realism this game provides comes close to the early UE5 Unrecord game teasers we have seen one year ago. And while Unrecord has not been released yet Bodycam is right now available on Steam for everyone to download. Similar to the idea of Unrecord the players navigate tense situations, need to make fast decisions and utilize really good tactics. As the name implies the perspective of the game is from a bodycam, a growing technology in actual law enforcement, situated on the shoulder of a police officer. While this whole experience is incredibly immersive and may early reviews praise the game for it there are also other voices questioning if game can not be too real. The ever old discussions if the violence in video games can be differentiated enough from real life (especially from younger players) rises to new levels when the game increasingly looks like the reality.

Morality and use of Force

The in-game scenarios place players in morally difficult situations. When to use force? How to de-escalate tense encounters? These are complex decisions real police officers face daily. Critics argue that games like Bodycam simplify these ambiguous situations, potentially giving players a wrong perception of police work and the appliance of force. In the end nobody knows if people even want their video games to be so realistic or if a bit of distance to the real life might be desirable…

Round up

Despite the controversial takes on this new game it is safe to say that from a graphics standpoint this truly is the future of photorealistic games. An while the game is currently still more of a playable tech demo of Unreal Engine 5 it shows what is possible with these new technologies. Additionally it should also be noted that this game is made by two very young developers (17 and 20). Big respect to them for creating such a innovative and interesting technology demo. It will be truly fascinating what kind of realism levels UE5 will be able to accomplish.

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This article is not advertisement for Bodycam and neither are these links affiliate links.

Counter-Strike fans, are you ready for some big news? There is a strong possibility that Counter-Strike 2 (CS2), the long-awaited sequel to the legendary first-person shooter, will be released tomorrow, on September 27, 2023. This is not a joke. There is some solid evidence that supports this theory, and we are here to share it with you. In this blog post, we will tell you why we think CS2 is coming next week, and what you can expect from the game.

Update 20.45 UTC: CS2 just got released. Restart your Steam client and update CSGO to play!

Update 20.15 UTC: All CSGO servers as well as the matchmaking server infrastructure is currently down. It is likely that Valve updates these currently. Due to this, the current ESL Pro League Match also needs to play on local servers resulting in no weapon skins and no M4A1 for CT.

Update 18.50 UTC: We still have no confirmation but with the recent activity on the CS2 X account and a few speculations based on the past launches of Valve games, CS2 or a Open beta of it could be released around 21.00 UTC!

What points to a CS2 release tomorrow?

Posts on X/Twitter

There are multiple small signs showing that a release on 27.09.2023 is very likely. The main reason coming from the original source itself is a cryptic post from the CS2 account on the platform X (formerly Twitter):

What are you doing next Wednesday?

— CS2 (@CounterStrike) September 20, 2023

With this post, Valve the company behind the Counter Strike genre, is probably teasing something quite big for coming Wednesday and lets be honest what else than the official release of the follow up to one of the most well known E-Sport titles could it be. They also shared a video of the CS:GO logo being painted over by the CS2 logo.

Update 18.45 UTC: Valve also updated the banner on their CS2 X account. It now displays “Dawn of a new Day” implying that something big is going to change today!

Twitch Update

But that’s not all. There are other clues that point to the same conclusion. For example, Twitch has removed CSGO from its library of games and replaced it with a new category called Counter-Strike. This category includes both CSGO and the CS2 limited test, which is a beta version of CS2 that some players have access to. Twitch also shared a video on X showing the same logo transition as Valve’s tweet. This suggests that Twitch is preparing for the launch of CS2 and that CSGO will be replaced by CS2 soon.

Data miners

Another piece of evidence comes from data miners who have found more codes related to CSGO hidden inside the latest Dota 2 update. Dota 2 is another game by Valve that uses the Source 2 engine, which is the same engine that CS2 will use. The data miners found codes that refer to maps, weapons, skins, and gameplay mechanics of CS2. These codes indicate that Valve is testing some features of CS2 in Dota 2.

In the end all these clues point to the same direction: Counter-Strike 2 is coming on September 27, 2023.

What can we expect from Counter-Strike 2?

We already did a first look review of the CS2 beta on here but lets summarize the most important features shortly:

• Source 2 engine: CS2 will use Valve’s latest game engine, Source 2, which offers better graphics, performance, physics, sound, and modding capabilities.
• Sub-tick updates: CS2 will introduce a new technology called sub-tick updates, which will make the game more responsive and accurate. Sub-tick updates will let servers know the exact instant that motion starts, a shot is fired, or a grenade is thrown.
• Smoke grenades: CS2 will overhaul smoke grenades with volumetric smoke technology, which will create realistic and dynamic smoke effects. Smoke grenades will also have different properties depending on their type and location.
• Maps: CS2 will feature revamped maps that will take advantage of Source 2’s capabilities. Some maps will be unchanged or slightly tweaked (such as Dust II), some maps will be upgraded or overhauled (such as Overpass or Mirage), and some maps will be entirely new (such as Inferno or Cache).
• Furthermore Audio and UI will get a reworked and refreshed look.

How can I play CS2?

After the release Counter Strike 2 will be available on the Steam store. The same as CSGO it is expected to be free and available to everyone. However, it should be noted that with better graphics quality comes the need for a more powerful graphics card.

Conclusion

Counter-Strike 2 is the most exciting thing to happen to the Valve game lineup in years. It is a massive upgrade that will bring new life and innovation to the classic shooter. It is also a game that fans have been waiting for a long time, and it might be closer than we think. Based on the evidence that we have gathered, we believe that Counter-Strike 2 will be released on September 27, 2023. We can’t wait to see what Valve has in store for us with this game!

Get the original CSGO:

DISCLAIMER: There will be some story spoilers in the mission summaries.

The missions are given to the players by Martin Madrazo, a powerful business man, that tasks the players to assassinate some targets in different locations all over the map. Most mission involve a driving part around 5km and only have one target to be eliminated.

1. Dispatch 6

The players each have to eliminate a police officer that was affiliated with Madrazo and is transported in an armored truck. The trucks are protected by police cruisers.

This mission was the easiest of all as you just have to drive towards the vehicle convoy, take out a weapon of your choice and make quick work of the targets.

2. Dispatch 3

The players have to eliminate a translator that has interacted with Madrazo in the past. The IAA is preparing to transport him with a armored plane from LSIA. After arriving there you can either stealthy eliminate the target or wait for them to enter the plane and use rocket launchers to deal with the plane. Another option would be to steal one of the two jets that are situated inside the hangar to take out the plane mid-air.

All in all a very cool mission as the way to get there is pretty fast and you don’t have to do much to complete the mission. In addition to that you can also practice your flying skills.

3. Dispatch 4

Madrazo tasks the players to eliminate one of his dealers that is meeting with a rival gang at the recycling plant in La Puerta. After arriving at the plant you’ll have to take out multiple enemies outside and some more inside, while making your way up towards the room with the target.

This mission offers a cool environment to actually use a shotgun as the rooms are pretty small. The only annoying part is the fact, that you most likely parked your car near the open stairs at the marked point on the map and you’ll have to walk the whole way back there, as the target is situated at the complete opposite side of the building. So maybe think about moving your cars to the front of the recycling plant.

4. Dispatch 1

The players are tasked to take out one of Madrazo’s friends as he’s afraid of them cooperating with the police. You’ll have to enter the Mission Row Police Station in the middle of Los Santos to find the target. After eliminating all the police officers inside and getting in the prison area, you’ll have to open a door to get to the target and escape either through the front door or with a helicopter on the roof of the station.

The mission’s end is pretty annoying as fleeing the station with a car can be quite hard because there’s lots of police waiting outside. Another problem we ran into when first playing this mission was to actually find the prison cell the target is held in.

5. Dispatch 2

Madrazo tasks the players to infiltrate the Merryweather headquarters on Elysian Island to take out an undercover FIB agent that wants to buy some records. You can get to the office where the meeting is taking place in stealth mode or shoot your way through the security guards. After eliminating the target you can either go out the same way you entered the building or make a spectacular escape with a helicopter. Either way you’ll have to fight security that was alarmed.

From our experience it’s pretty annoying to get to the office in stealth as the guards most of the time spot you when entering the building. Finding a simple entrance is also pretty hard. We would recommend either taking the boat on the right side of the building and traveling to the back or just swimming around to the nearest ladder on the left side.

6. Dispatch 5

Madrazo orders the players to take out 5 targets of a crew that is laying low between jobs. Multiple helicopters are provided to travel across and around the map. You have 7 minutes to eliminate the last 4 targets once you got the first one.

This mission was a pain in the a** to play solo because you don’t have much time and one of the targets is located on top of a building. Also if you’re not good at flying helicopters this isn’t the mission for you. I would recommend playing this with 2 or more players to actually have a chance a completing it or checking out the locations prior on the Fandom Wiki site.

Conclusion

As the missions only reward up to, and sometimes even less than, 20000$ we don’t recommend doing them as a way to grind money but more as a fun experience with friends.

Feel free to let us know your personal rating of these 6 mission in the comments below!

DISCLAIMER: There will be some story spoilers in the mission summaries.

The missions are given to you by Dax, the leader of the Fooliganz gang. You can find their HQ, the Freakshop, at the yellow D near the east highway of Los Santos after completing the first mission in the First Dose series. You as a player are working with the Fooliganz to fight against a group of rival drug producers. Dax also offers some other variable, repeatable missions that reward 50.000$.

If you play through the missions chronologically this is the correct order:

• Last Dose 1 – This is an Intervention
• Last Dose 2 – Unusual Suspects
• Last Dose 3 – Friedmind
• Last Dose 4 – Checking In
• Last Dose 5 – BDKD

1. Last Dose 5 – BDKD

This is the final mission of the series. The players are flying a plane towards the LSIA (airport in the city) with the goal to steal goods from Friedlander cargo plane mid air. After you’ve successfully taken over the plane you’ll have to land it at the Sandy Shores airfield. After landing and while loading the goods into a truck you are confronted with police forces arriving and need to hold the position for a while. The mission ends with a chase over the highway back to the Freakshop.

I really enjoyed this mission because of this typical GTA unrealistic way to get something done. Flying such a huge cargo plane was also a nice challenge but I can imagine this can be annoying if you aren’t used to flying in GTA. All in all a nice way to end this mission series.

2. Last Dose 1 – This is an Intervention

The players joins Dax and Labrat, a psychedelics researcher working for Dax, who are having an argument over the drugged state Labrat is currently in when a group of white suited man kidnap Labrat and escape. The players have to fight of multiple waves of enemies on foot, in cars and even in helicopters to complete the mission.

This mission is pretty simple and also fun to complete as you can train your aiming skills and it can be completed pretty fast if you played it multiple times and know where and when the enemies appear.

3. Last Dose 4 – Checking In

Dax sends the player to a rehabilitation center where Isiah Friedlander is testing his new drug. The players have to fight against a few enemies alongside their Fooliganz friends. After defeating all of the enemies and opening the door to the center they are hit with a wave of drugged gas. You experience a drug trip and have to fight against 4 waves of enemies.

The mission is very similar to the first one as you’ll just have to drive to a destination and eliminate targets. During the drug trip part it was harder to hit enemies as the gun was very shaky and it was hard to hit. Other than that I would say the trip was more enjoyable than the one in the first series of missions.

4. Last Dose 3 – Friedmind

The players use the keycard from the last mission to access the FriedMind HQ. You first need to search for clues of Labrats position and are then guided towards the basement. Throughout the HQ you’ll have to deal with security. They find Labrat in the basement but are stopped by Isiah Friedlander, the leader of FriedMind before escaping. After a little cutscene the players need to escape in a stolen car back to the Freakshop.

This mission was cool because you can even complete some parts in stealth. The cutscene was well made and the escape at the end was actually pretty easy as you can avoid most of the fighting.

5. Last Dose 2 – Unusual Suspects

After Labrat was kidnapped, Dax tasks the player to find clues about his location. Dax first gives the players 2 locations where they should interrogate two low-level group leaders to get clues. As neither of them know more about the whereabouts of Labrat, Dax decides to target a higher level Hippy Boss. This time the players are guided towards a warehouse on Elysian Island. There they need to search for 5 clues while defending themselves against enemies. The clues show that the FriedMind Pharmaceutical Corporation is responsible for taking Labrat. The players steal a keycard that is used in the next mission.

I don’t like the concept of having to complete 2 events that are basically pointless. The whole mission took way longer than for instance the first one and the payout sadly doesn’t represent this. I did like the little minigame when the players are hacking the door of the warehouse.

Conclusion

Each mission pays around 20k for completing it on normal difficulty. For some of them this is definitely worth it (the first one for instance can be completed in around 5 minutes if you are playing with a 4 player squad.

The missions are defenitely worth a first playthrough as you a receive a 100k bonus for each mission you complete for the first time (so around 600k for completing all missions). The Freakshop in itself is also worth a look as it offers a weapon shop that is free to use. In addition to that you can also claim the Friedlander’s sportscar, an Ocelot Virtue, after completing the final mission.

As always feel free to let us know your personal ranking of the First Dose missions in the comments below.

Lost Light

Lost Light, developed by the Chinese company NetEase, is an extraction shooter game that bears a striking resemblance to Escape from Tarkov, though it has a simpler game design. In this game, players can choose between four maps and their objective is to gather as much loot as possible and complete various quests before successfully extracting at designated extraction points.

As players venture through the Operation zone, they may encounter other players known as “fireflies” or AI-controlled bots called “marauders.” The marauders are generally easy to defeat and serve as a good source of starting loot. However, some of them, especially boss bots, can present a tougher challenge.

Moreover, players have the option to enter a match as a marauder themselves, equipped with preset gear. This approach is advantageous for money farming without the worry of losing one’s own gear in the process. The mode is especially fun because you can train to fight without the risk of loosing your equipment.

Quests grant money and items and are given to you by various NPCs. Items can upgrade your shelter or be used to craft new gear. Money becomes more important if you aim for the ranked mode and leaderboards.

The game offers a wide array of weapons that can be customized to suit your playstyle. Some attachments are rare, making loot from defeating other players valuable

I’d recommend this game for playing with friends, especially the pc mobile crossplay team function after you reach level 5. Cheaters are still an issue, despite developer efforts. Nonetheless, the game holds great potential for the future. I do hope that the “pay to win” aspect with the premium subscriptions for more storage space, etc doesn’t take overhand.

Arena Breakout

Arena Breakout is a mobile first person extraction shooter published by Level Infinite (part of chines mobile game giant Tencent Games) and developed by Morefun Studios. This is, atleast for me, the best extraction shooter for mobile devices at the moment. There is just nothing that’s so similar to EFT and so realistic to compare it to.

In Arena Breakout, your goal is to extract with maximum loot while taking out enemies. Plan your gear, raid duration, and playstyle – stealth or full confrontation.

Choose between Tactical Ops or Militant in Covert Ops mode. Tactical Ops allows gear from storage, while Militant offers preset gear with no risk of loss (similar idea to Lost Light). Covert Ops has a 15-minute cooldown, providing risk-free looting and potential encounters with real players.

There are 4 maps, each offering unique raid environments. Snipers excel in open maps like Valley or Northridge, while SMGs shine in Farm, the smallest map. Some maps have a “Lockdown Zone” mode with entry fees, valuable starting gear, and better supply spots.

The game also offers a detailed weapon customization feature, storage system and a quest system. The only downsights are the missing skill based matchmaking brackets. This can lead to frustrating skill differences but most of the time you just end up meeting people with better gear.

Pubg Mobile

After venting my frustrations about the PC-version of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds due to cheaters, bugs, and skill issues to my friends, I decided to revisit the mobile version another try. That was around 1 year ago. Surprisingly, I had a lot more fun there. PUBG: Mobile, being one of the most successful mobile shooter games with massive esport-tournament prizes, is impressively optimized and runs smoothly even on older phones. Especially the fact that the basic game installation doesn’t require much space and all gamemodes can be optionally installed is really good for older phones.

The game offers classic multiplayer mode, various versions of the Battle Royale experience, and an extraction shooter mode. Like many mobile games, skins can be purchased, but you also receive cool-looking clothes or chests as free rewards for completing weekly events.

Compared to the PC-Version, the mobile version is much more accessible for newcomers. For advanced mobile shooter players, ranked matches provide more challenging gameplay. Playing with friends enhances the experience and allows for better strategy coordination.

PUBG: Mobile can also be played through emulators on Windows devices but you won’t get matched into the same ranked brackets as mobile players.

Call of Duty: Mobile

CoD:M is, as the name suggests, an adaptation of the popular console and PC games. The game offers different multiplayer modes such as Search and Destroy, Team Deathmatch and Domination but also has a battle royale mode and a time limited zombie event mode.

Unlike the game mentioned above Cod:M has a very simple weapon customization feature but because of this is a game for the average mobile player. If you want more of a challenge, both multiplayer and battle Royale offer a ranked mode where you can play against players of your skill level.

The game is regularly updated with new seasons. They offer a battle pass (BP) with skins for both characters and weapons, ingame currency and other rewards. The premium BP can be purchased to earn more rewards. In addition to the BP there are also seasonal events that reward free skins. Skins can also be acquired by just playing the game through the completionist skin system.

Another way to get rewards is through the clan system. Each week you play against other clans and compete in challenges to see who can earn the most points. The winner earns more of a clan currency that can be later used to purchase weapon skins in a special store.

In general CoD:M is one of the best, if not the best performing shooter on market at the moment, especially because they earn so much money from gambling like ingame chests or lucky draws that are basically rigged against you. If you ignore this huge money aspect of the game, the gameplay is really fun and won’t get repetitive if you play with friends.

Disfigure is a rogue-like shooter game which is played in a top-down perspective. You can choose between multiple melee and ranged weapons to survive against endless enemies. The more eliminations you have, the more perks and upgrades you can unlock for your character. Today I’ll share my opinion with you on if the game is worth a try and what you can expect.

Basic Gameplay

You start with a weapon of your choice (at the beginning just the pistol) and have to eliminate spider-like monsters. Your character is standing in the dark and can either see an area in a circle around him or a cone view in the direction the mouse cursor is facing. Every time one is defeated they drop a ball of EXP that you have to pick up in order to level up your character.

Once you level up you are able to choose one of 5 upgrades or to reroll the selection. Upgrades improve stats such as bullet speed or weapon damage but can also decrease stats like fire rate but reward you with other improvements. In addition to the upgrades you can unlock one of nine weapon perks every 10 levels.

What I enjoyed

The little tutorial right at the start of the game was enough to get started and saved time to look into the keybindings in the settings.

I really like the fact that you’re able to change both the player and the cursor color. It’s small things that bigger titles don’t allow their players to change.

The artstyle of the game really finds the small border between a simple 2d polygon style and pixelart. I really like the way the upgrade images ingame and the store page background on steam are designed.

I was able to earn the money needed to buy another weapon in a run that took me around 15 minutes. The cool things about Disfigure is that it can also be enjoyed by casual players because of the short grind time and the option to play on normal instead of hard difficulty.

What can be improved

What I missed at the beginning of the game was the epilepsy warning. Especially towards the end the visuals get to a point where there are so many bullets flying around and effects going off that you really need to concentrate to spot the player in all the chaos.

Feel free to leave your highscore in the comments if you decided to try out the game or already knew about it. Let’s see if you are able to beat mine. (Score: 635500)

Get Disfigure here

Organize your storage asap

After every extract try sorting out magazines for weapons you don’t usually use. Keep in mind to unload the ammo if it’s good quality ammunition. Do keep a few weapons that don’t cost much to use in “naked runs”, basically a raid where you go into the raid with only one weapon and hopefully extract with full gear.

Check how much space a backpack takes up: Sometimes backpacks take up less space than they offer inside. This can be used to gain more storage slots.

Fold the stocks on your weapons! Some weapons, especially SMGs have foldable stocks that can be folded to decrease the storage usage of a weapon. Same goes for unloading magazines from guns. Some DMRs take up two rows of storage with and only one row without a magazine in them.

If you have too much healing items just use them in the health screen instead of paying for your health treatment like you would normally do.

You can purchase storage expansions: Check the Buy option at the contact “Evita”. She offers multiple trade options for expansions of all size and type. Just click on the “Fill” button to purchase all needed trade supplies from the market. Note that this means the price of an item is going to change over time.

Use the right gamemode

If you don’t want to risk loosing your gear on a solo run don’t do it. Try the cover ops gamemode that provides you with premade loadout to fight your way through a raid. You spawn disguised as a militant and don’t get shot at by other militants as long as you don’t enter a hotdrop or you engage in battle first. If you get real luck you can scavenge all the player loot lying around and extra with a fat stack of new items.

To summarize: Dress appropriate for your goal. If you just want to loot play covert ops or go into the raid with low end gear and no expectations. If you want to grind missions equip good armor but also invest in good ammunition and mags to reload.

Same goes for the lockdown zone gamemode. Don’t play this if you aren’t at least in a two-man team as you’ll have no chance against bigger squads if you’re going in solo. Enemies here have even better gear than in normal raids but the loot is also way better. AI militants do more damage as well but also reward you with plenty new rigs and armor.

Think before acting

Arena Breakout is a realistic shooter. That means that in most cases you aren’t able to push in, shoot everyone and extract alive. You will have to carefully make your way into a better position, plan your attack and hope the enemy didn’t spot you. It takes just a few high level bullets to end your run.

We recommend sticking to the areas outside the hotzones at first to get a feel for the game and to only explore the very player active areas once you got a good sense of the game and are confident in taking fights.

Search for teammates

Playing the game solo is possible but not always the best idea as you for instance have no additional cover while looting. Another advantage of playing with teammates are better tactical possibilities during a fight. One player can flank around the enemies while others face them head on.

Teammates are also a great way to prevent loosing gear as any of your lost gear they extract will be send back to your storage.

The best gun isn’t going to win a fight

Ammunition plays a huge role in Arena Breakout as higher tier ammo has a better piercing effect than lower tier. Let’s take 7.62×39 ammunition as an example. This ammo is used by the SKS or the AKM and you can see why good ammunition is important here: the gray, tier 1 piercing ammo does 60 damage while the golden tier 4 piercing ammo does 80 base damage. Keep in mind that the higher the piercing tier, the higher the final damage output will be. A militant inside the lockdown zone can be taken down with around 5 tier 3 piercing (purple) ammo while it takes a good half magazine (~15 bullets) to eliminate them with the tier 1 ammunition.

Get to level 18 as fast as possible

At level 18 you unlock the weekly quests from Joel. These reward you with lots of experience points for basically just playing the game. Most of the time it’s about eliminating a certain amount of people, going into raids, extracting and selling goods on the market.

At the same time always keep track of your dailies. These daily quests are a great source of experience points, especially at the beginning of the game.

If you have any other useful tips or feedback for the provided ones feel free to leave a comment below this artice.

Sniper Elite 5 is a third person sniper shooter that can be played on any skill level. As the last parts of the Sniper Elite series this one also comes with the slow motion detailed kill cams that can be quite disgusting to watch. Sniper Elite 5 is mainly focused on the campaign (9 missions + 1 DLC mission) but also includes a coop mode, some multiplayer gamemodes and the new “Axis Invasion”, a feature where you can switch into the role of a German sniper hunter and join another player in their campaign missions to take them out.

Every mission requires you to complete a main target but also offers multiple side targets that can be completed. At the end of every mission you have to extract to get back into a safe space. Throughout your mission you are equipped with a sniper rifle, a submachine gun and a pistol. Take out enemy soldiers in a preferably stealthy way to make your way towards the targets on the map. If you get spotted it can get uncomfortable really fast as more German soldiers will make their way to your last know position.

NOTE: As the language of Sniper Elite 5 is set to the system language all screenshots are in German. Sorry about the inconvenience.

Campaign

The story takes place after the events of Sniper Elite 4. You’re playing as Karl Fairburne, a special forces sniper that is tasked to help the Americans land in France. Later he is asked to stop “Operation Kraken”, a German submarine project that poses a risk at the safety of the Allies.

As mentioned above there are 9 missions that can be completed and 1 mission that can be purchased with a DLC. The main goal of each mission is to stay undetected as getting spotted basically means death, especially on higher difficulties (there are 5). To avoid getting spotted you either need a silenced weapon, subsonic ammunition or you shoot during another loud sound from a cannon or a generator that can cover up your shot.

Enemies can be spotted via binocular or just by hearing them walking around you. If you’re sneaking around they don’t instantly notice you until an attention bar fully fills up. If that’s the case, they start shooting, alerting all other enemies in the area around you. Some enemy soldiers can even activate an alarm that calls even more backup.

If you eliminate enemies you can loot them for ammunition, keys and other items or take their weapons. If you want to avoid any suspicion you should place their bodies inside tall grass or boxes around the map. The German soldiers have different equipment and also different ranks that reward different loot.

You can switch between 3 weapons: one primary sniper rifle, one submachine gun and one pistol. The last ones are best used inside or when sneaking around. The sniper rifle is best used for long range shots when no one is around or you have enough environmental sound protection. In addition to those weapons you also get access to multiple explosives like grenades or mines and medical supplies to regenerate health points.

By completing missions, earning medals and generally eliminating enemies you earn experience points that unlock ability points. These can be invested into a skill tree that improves your character in multiple aspects of the game.

Axis Invasion

This feature enables you to join another player’s campaign mission. Your goal is to eliminate the player. The more eliminations you get in this mode, the more equipment options you have.

I enjoyed this mode as it adds an additional layer of pressure for both the sniper hunter and the sniper as you never know where each other is unless you use an “invasion phone”, a gadget which let’s you and the enemy sniper know where each other is on the map.

Multiplayer

Sniper Elite 5 offers a multiplayer with modes similar to Call of Duty. I tried playing Free for All, a mode where you fight alone against other players and the first to reach a certain number of eliminations wins. Although I quickly discovered the enormous skill gap I had against the other players I think this is a cool way to practice fast aiming and situational awareness for the campaign mode.

Conclusion

In comparison to Sniper Elite 4, the game offers fewer starter weapons but shows a much simpler entry to the series in my opinion. Although I really enjoyed the Axis Invasion mode I didn’t noticed many new features in comparison to the older game (not talking about graphics or story). I would recommend picking up Sniper Elite 4 from a third party vendor like MMOGA (~8€) to try out the experience before you spend a bit more money.

If you really want to play Sniper Elite 5 I would high recommend purchasing it during a steam sale as the base game only offers around 50 hours of gameplay if you stretch the missions out and collect every little item. You can of course invest many hours into the multiplayer.

Get Sniper Elite 5 here

Arena Breakout is a mobile first person extraction shooter published by Level Infinite (part of Tencent Games) and developed by Morefun Studios. We already covered the game some days ago with a first look article after its release on July 14.

Since then, I’ve played for 19 hours, both in duo and solo sessions, completing 49 raids. So far, I’ve reached level 18 and visited the first 3 maps to complete various missions.

Game Appearance

Arena Breakout can be played in multiple graphic quality settings and FPS configurations but it still offers a good map appearance on lowest settings compared to other mobile shooters like COD: Mobile or Lost Light.

The audio quality is really crisp and you can hear every move of your enemies, if you turn the volume up. The gun sounds are realistic and it’s easy to differentiate the type of gun someone is using.

Gameplay

In Arena Breakout your goal is to go into a raid and extract with a much loot as possible while taking out enemies. Because the game is a hardcore extraction shooter, meaning that it’s very realistic and you have to plan what gear you’re taking and how much time you want to spend in the raid, what your goal is and if you want to go stealth of full on confrontation mode.

You can either enter a raid as a tactical ops or as a militant in covert ops mode. While in tactival ops, the “normal” mode you can take gear from your storage into the raid. As a militant you get an assigned set of gear and therefore have no risk to loose any of your items. The covert ops mode has a 15 minutes cooldown and offers a risk free looting experience. Sometimes you can even eliminate real player and leave with a fortune of loot.

At the moment there are 4 maps in the game that each offer a different sized and difficulty raid environment. That means that some kind of weapons like snipers are more suited for open maps like Valley or Northridge while SMGs are best used on Farm, the smallest map at the moment. Some maps even offer a “Lockdown Zone” mode that requires you to pay an entry fee and to carry more valuable starting gear but also has better and more supply spots.

Valuable items can be acquired either through looting other players or militants or more commonly through chests and other storage items such as jackets, medical cases or even fridges. Opening one of these will take a certain amount that increases, the bigger the storage gets. After that you also need a certain time to identify what items were found. This most of the time leaves you exposed to enemies and you’ll have to listen very carefully while looting.

At the end of each run you have multiple extraction points marked on the map that can be used to get back into the main menu with all your acquired gear. Some points are always open while others have a chance to them if they’ll let you extract. Others even require you to leave with no backpack or other requirements.

After each raid you’ll have to organize your storage to fit all the new loot. This gets a tedious, especially in the beginning. After some playtime you’ll be able to expand your storage to fit more items. All items take over a certain area of squares inside your storage and can be moved around to your liking. The game also offers an auto organizing features which I highly recommend using as it groups all items into categories, making it easier to search for a specific item.

Progression and Grind

You can learn lots of features from the ingame explanation screens and from the tutorial at the beginning of the game. More advanced game features and play techniques can be learned via youtube videos.

At some point, you’ll unlock the gunsmith feature, which allows you to modify guns to your liking using various parts. You can for instance switch sights, equip a new magazine or even put a longer barrel and place it on your gun for more range. The possibilities are endless but I found myself rather left alone figuring out how to build weapons and would like a more in depth ingame tutorial for that aspect of the game.

The game offers a more or less steady increase in difficulty with different maps offering more and better loot but also stronger geared AI soldiers and better equipped players. On your leveling journey you’ll unlock better quality ammunition and weapons that can be purchased at the different Contacts (quest + merchant npcs) through trading. This sometimes offers a cheaper alternative to the market as some players like to take advantage if an item isn’t broadly available. The market is a communal economy space where players can sell and buy items such as weapons, armor or even miscellaneous items that are required for quests or contact trading.

Contacts also offer the main source of experience points: Missions. These are tasks that need to be completed to earn XP and most of the time even money and gear. Some require you to visit a point on a certain map or to place an item at a designated spot. Others task you to go retrieve certain items from a location or to eliminate an amount of enemies in a certain area. Some of them are challenging but they always somehow manage to make them challenging but not impossible.

There is also a Battle Pass in the game that rewards you with items and which levels up with the same experience points as your normal player level. The only difference is, that you are only able to level up the battle pass 10 ranks each week unless you have purchased the second premium variant for around 15€. The first premium variant of the battle pass costs around 6€ and grants you access to additional items and appearance items.

Another very important point for me are the events which are currently taking place and are announced for the future. These event tasks in combination with missions introduce you to every aspect of the maps and game principles over time.

Frustration and other problems

As I want to provide an honest review that’s true to my experience, I also want to briefly mention the problem with skill differences in the game. There is no skill based matchmaking (SBM), meaning that you don’t always play against other player on your level of experience. Sometimes you are even matched against teams of multiple players. That results in sometimes unfair and even impossible to avoid situations that lead to frustrating moments. Especially when you loose good gear or can’t complete certain quests. Don’t get me wrong: I do understand that players with better gear are more likely to extract but I would love to see SBM at least in the ranked mode.

What often killed my mood during playing this game are the campers that literally occupy a single building for 5 minutes straight, waiting for you to loot your teammates or to extract. In addition to that, people have apparently figured out how to hack in Arena Breakout as we’ve met some players that for instance lock on to your head while your sitting in a bush 150 meters away.

In the future of the game I also hope to see a more balanced and mistake-friendly looting experience. At the moment there is close to no opportunity to get medical supplies that can fix broken bones once you’re inside a raid. Other medical items such as Medkits are also hard to come by so you have to rely on other players carrying them around. Another aspect of this is the frustration you get when opening a enormous weapon case only to find one empty magazine.

On the other hand new weapons and low level armor are pretty easy to come by as you can go into match with only a knife and sneak yourself towards the nearest AI soldier.

Conclusion

Get Arena Breakout here

Arena Breakout is a first person extraction shooter made for mobile devices. The game was developed by Morefun Studios and publish by Level Infinite. It was released to the wide public on July 14 just a few days ago. Today we share our first impressions and opinions on the game with you.

First Impressions

The game has a rather long introduction tutorial that helps you with the basic game mechanics. You get introduced to contacts, that give you access to missions with goals that need to be completed and reward you with gear and items. The game gives you a good idea of inventory management and how to collect and sort your gear and materials. You also get thrown into your first “real” match before the tutorial ends. At the beginning the controls feel a bit snappy but they can be easily configured to your liking.

Your goal for each run is to gather as much loot value from materials and dropped gear of defeated enemies and to extract successfully. Throughout the match you’ll meet other players and AI soldiers that you can either avoid by going stealth and trusting the game to mark any noises on your compass. On the other hand you can take them out with a well placed shot or two. Just watch out that you keep enough ammunition in your inventory

Every time you extract you earn experience points that contribute to your level. The more you level up, the more features and contacts you unlock. This adds a smooth development and also prevents a new play from being overwhelmed by the amount of possibilities.

Check out some screenshots from the first hours of gameplay we went through below:

Take a look at the official global launch trailer on youtube below:

Things we enjoyed

Many things feel such as the character creator or the lobby feel similar to games like PUBG: Mobile or Lost Light. This allows the average mobile fps player to quickly configure the controls and find all the important settings. On the other hand in the beginning this made me question the quality of the game. After some playtime I was pleasantly surprised, that the game is well made and fun to play. Unlike the games mentioned above Arena Breakout pulled of an amazing and a bit simplified mobile version of the popular pc extraction shooter Escape from Tarkov.

The cool thing about Arena Breakout is that it’s an actual mobile game that can be enjoyed on the go as it uses pretty much no mobile data (around 80mb for 1h of gaming).

Another important points are the amazing graphics. At some point I wasn’t able to distinguish between a low performance pc game or a mobile game. Along the graphics the menus are well designed and logically constructed.

There are lots of events in the game that provide a great way to earn well built weapons and gear like backpacks if you died inside a raid. In general the game is pretty forgiving at the beginning.

What parts of the game can be improved

As the game run pretty well and I enjoyed myself I don’t really see any major negative points to mention here. My minor issues include a pretty bad battery usage to performance optimization. Arena Breakout used around 2 times more of my battery compared to playing games like PUBG: Mobile.

Another luxury would be a slower approach to the complex magazine and ammunition management. Being introduced to basic game mechanics first and getting to know the different kinds of materials slowly would feel more natural to me. Maybe I’m just spoiled by simple shooter games I do want to add, that there are multiple ways to learn about features inside the game like the Instructor Q&A.

Get Arena Breakout here