Arena Breakout Infinite Season 2 makes big, divisive changes to the Tarkov rival

Realistic FPS games should be tough, slow-paced, and quick to severely punish you. Escape From Tarkov remains one of the purest examples, where a single bullet can end your raid, costing you bags of hard-earned, precious gear. It's a thrilling dynamic, but also, compared to Battlefield and Delta Force, inaccessible and potentially offputting - a lot of mainstream shooter fans might be turned away by the steep learning curve of ultra realism, meaning games like EFT and Gray Zone Warfare are stuck with limited appeal. Arena Breakout Infinite Season 2 makes major changes to Morefun's FPS. In combination, they make the game a little less punishing and intimidating, but by that token, perhaps threaten to undermine its original identity.

Arena Breakout Infinite Season 2 is officially called Crimson Edge, and it arrived on Thursday July 10. While a Steam version of the free PC game is yet to appear, ABI has nevertheless gained significant traction, and is now competing for the Tarkov throne alongside Gray Zone Warfare and the less-well-known Incursion Red River. While it's not ready for the best FPS games pantheon just yet, Arena Breakout Infinite shows promise. Season 2, however, may throw it off balance.

The most significant change is the new in-raid storage system. If you meet certain criteria during a mission, you can unlock special boxes that let you safeguard the most valuable gear you've found and send it back to your permanent storage. You don't have to survive the whole raid; even if you die, you'll still keep everything you put in the box. While that makes ABI a little more forgiving and, potentially, less frustrating, it's also contrary to the uncompromising difficulty and all-or-nothing gameplay that is part of its trademark.

Similarly, there's a new ping system - like in Call of Duty and Battlefield, you can hit a key to send a location marker to everybody on your team. Again, it's a useful concession to usability, but undercuts the groundedness for which ABI has so far been known. Yes, if you're on a random team and don't have voice comms, it's going to help. But it also streamlines the analog navigation and communication that is fundamental to the Arena Breakout experience.

The Farm map has been expanded and there are some useful extra cover points at the Artificial Lake. This is definitely a welcome change. Until now, if a player got a good vantage point between the cemetery and the south loading area, they could dominate pretty much the entire western half of the map. Adding some more defilade at the lake (as well as some wider back routes to the cemetery itself) makes The Farm more balanced.

It's also bigger, with a new village in the southeast and a farmhouse in the wheatfield. But watch out for Hectate, Arena Breakout Infinite's new boss who stalks The Farm and is liable to attack you on your flank. She carries a customized MPX and a lightweight chest plate, so if you're feeling prepared, she's worth facing down.

Duos mode is coming this season and Solo Ops have had an upgrade: they're now a permanent fixture, and you can play them on Forbidden Zone difficulty, with loot to match. Another new event mode, Arsenal Shuffle, feels more on the casual side, and not dissimilar to CoD's Arms Race. Every time you get a kill, your current weapon is swapped for another, random gun from the ABI armory. Speaking of guns, Arena Breakout Infinite's new weapons are the AUG assault rifle, the MK14 battle rifle, the PCC9 SMG, the ML lever-action rifle, the iconic G3, the SG550 assault rifle, and the T79 sub-machine gun.

We'll have to see whether the new season of Arena Breakout Infinite pushes it too far from its realistic roots, or finds the right balance between punishing and playable.

In the meantime, you might want to try some of the best free Steam games. Otherwise, boost your PC's performance with our guide to the best gaming CPU.

You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We've also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.