Escape from Tarkov 1.0 review in progress

When I first played Escape from Tarkov in 2018, I remember being captivated by its sluggish and challenging structure. Like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is to the battle royale genre, this promising prototype of an escape shooter has a lot of unique elements that make me absolutely convinced it's going to be the next big thing, even if it's sometimes completely ruined in its early access state. Now that we've finally reached 1.0 after all these years, it's shocking how much has changed, but it's still just as annoying as I remember. This hands-off approach to onboarding forces new players to fight for dozens of hours against unforgiving mechanics before they can claim even a single win, which is the kind of relentless challenge I've always loved, while other frustrations like persistent bugs, poor technical performance, and the inability to deal with legions of cheaters remain more disappointing than ever. I've only spent 30 hours playing version 1.0 so far, which (as any veteran gamer will surely tell you) is not time at all, but it now feels like this ancestor may have been left in the dust of the genre it spawned.

Escape from Tarkov is not only an original indie extraction shooter, but also one that most fervently adheres to the genre's brutal principles. Not only are you thrown into a deadly hell filled with deadly NPCs and ruthless human opponents, but you're also given absolutely no guidance as you seek to survive and loot. There's literally no progression system explained to you, no map for you to look at while out in the wild to indicate where extraction points are, and you could easily spend dozens of hours researching weapon attachments and ammo types just to learn how to use the tools of death you discover along your travels.

In some ways, I really admire Tarkov's tenacity – its beautiful and precise game design, and the sense of discovery gained from hundreds of hard-fought lessons are incredibly rewarding. But sometimes, it's all just too frustrating, like how poorly organized the UI and menus are, as if they were designed specifically to offend you. Whether the reward of finally feeling comfortable enough to whip out your best equipment and try to extract it correctly is worth it ultimately depends on a few things: your tolerance for pain, and your motivation to master something designed to truly test your expertise in a system that Tarkov refuses to teach you. At least in the early stages of 1.0, I found myself being charmed by its rough edges and completely disgusted by its outdated design choices.

Unfortunately, the intentionally punitive design is marred by completely unintentional issues, making this full release even harder to enjoy. So far the servers have been very unreliable, disconnecting frequently, waiting times over 15 minutes to enter a match, and cheaters are very common as accounts and items can be sold on the gray market for real money. So, to keep my sanity, I decided to spend most of my first week in PvE mode.

There's also the issue of how terrible this thing looks and performs by today's standards. I remember when I last revisited Escape from Tarkov I thought it wasn't looking that good anymore, and returning to it a few years later didn't do it any favors. Objects in the environment are blurry and low-resolution, and aside from the vendor you'll chat with when completing a mission, faces look like they were modeled using Monster Generator, the character creator for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It's going to take a while for me to play enough to call this review final, so hopefully developer Battlestate Games can iron out the worst of these issues before they drive me crazy, but it's an incredibly rough start.

Anyway, I should get back to the point – between PvE mode, PvP mode, and Arena, I still have a lot to see and do before I can make any recommendations. Now, returning to this influential, cringe-worthy game is both fascinating and tiresome, but I'm looking forward to going as far down the rabbit hole as I can.