Warface: Breakout
Forget its free-to-play sibling; this is an enjoyable and challenging take on the 5v5 formula
Two objective points per map. One team attacking, trying to plant a bomb; the other team trying to stop them. It’s a setup with all the imagination of ready salted crisps, but wait! Against all the odds, this is not the cookiecutter experience you’d expect.
Thanks to each match consisting of either 14 or 22 rounds, Breakout has both speed and tension.
No matter how well you know Warface, put all thoughts of the daddy game out of your mind. Breakout is an entirely different cabinet of guns. It’s a 5v5 objective game with no respawns or revives, so you could be forgiven for expecting a game of careful creeping around and plenty of camping. Although these things do happen, the number of rounds per match (22 for ranked) generally encourages players to be more adventurous. If you die, you’re out for the round – but it won’t be too long before you’re back in the action. It’s a clever mix of deathmatch and attack/ defend mentalities.
You ‘buy’ weapons and, in ranked, armour at the start of each round using credits earned during play. This means that a) everybody has pistols at the beginning of the match, and b) the better you and your team do, the easier it is to keep yourself well-prepared. This never feels unfair, though we certainly curse each time we lose our loadout after death and find we can’t afford to fully stock up our arsenal again.
HIGH FIVE
There are only five maps at time of writing, but they’re all superbly designed. Each one contains a good mixture of tight corners, open spaces, and sniping spots. Their small sizes mean that they won’t take too long to learn,
THE NUMBER OF ROUNDS PER MATCH GENERALLY ENCOURAGES PLAYERS TO BE MORE ADVENTUROUS.
either, allowing you to exploit the advantages and disadvantages of your favourite positions.
There are some quirks. It’s not possible to slide while running, or even to go prone, which seems odd for an FPS in 2020. We’d also argue that weapon balancing could do with a tweak here and there. Allods Team is doing an excellent job of listening to community feedback, however, and is being transparent about what it is and is not working on. Where the game shows its F2P roots is in the loot crates, and the outrageous prices for cosmetics in the store. That said, this isn’t intrusive, and you can ignore them, so we can forgive the developer.
Kills are hard-won, and matches are tense for both teams throughout. With bustling servers at the time of writing, Breakout is a little piece of paradise for shooter fans.
VERDICT
Leave your cynicism at the door and tool up. A surprisingly successful take on the 5v5 formula at a reasonable price, Warface: Breakout is well worth giving a shot. Luke Kemp