What are the best games like Escape from Tarkov?
We've been writing a lot about Escape from Tarkov lately. How can we not, it's awesome. But if Tarkov isn't quite your speed or you'd just like to try something a little different for a change, we've compiled a quick list below covering some of the games we think Tarkov players might like. Take a look and tell us what you think in the comments.
15. Insurgency Sandstorm
Insurgency Sandstorm gameplay
A sequel to team-based tactical FPS Insurgency. The game pits two teams of players against each other in a gritty and atmospheric middle-eastern setting as they battle it out in close quarters combat to complete unique objectives. The game focuses on hardcore realism and immersion into modern combat, with authentic weapon ballistics, vehicular combat, modern gadgets, and lethal artillery.
With some of the most realistic modern combat in any multiplayer shooter, Insurgency: Sandstorm sets itself apart with incredible sound effects, attention to detail in weapon models and animations, and impeccable level design. Team play is essential in any of the three game modes Insurgency offers, with map awareness and smart positioning being just as important for winning the match as good aim and reflexes. But even though teamwork is center stage, because enemies go down in just 2-3 shots, a good flank on the enemy team with a full magazine can easily turn the tides of battle, something that can feel really rewarding.
Incredible effects and sounds create an authentic atmosphere of war in the windswept middle-eastern setting. Also, explosions… explosions are always nice.
Playing tactically as a team is key to victory, and with bullets this lethal; good positioning and covering your flank becomes essential for survival.
14. SCUM
SCUM gameplay
SCUM is an open world survival game set on an island prison owned and operated by entertainment behemoth TEC1. TEC1 records their inmates competing in a battle royale style fight to the death, and televise it for the entertainment of the masses. You play as one of the titular inmates (Scum) and must survive the perils of the island, this includes zombies, giant gatling-gun wielding robots, dangerous wildlife, and of course…other players.
It’s the survival simulation mechanics that really make SCUM stand out. From your metabolism, to your conditioning, to the clothes you’re wearing, and the weight you carry, everything effects how your character performs every task asked of him or her. For example; if you’re low on vitamin B12 you’ll be weak, easily fatigued, and less able to focus. But despite this incredibly deep system SCUM doesn’t lack in the other areas either, it more than matches other contemporary open-world survival games in combat, crafting, base building and team play.
Be careful not to get so preoccupied looking at your health monitor to miss the enemy player lining his spear up with your head.
Crafting a shelter and searching for food and equipment should be priority one, don't be in a hurry to fight other players if you don't have the gear to back it up. That is unless you want to be some high-level players second breakfast…or elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, or supper.
13. Hunt: Showdown
Hunt: Showdown gameplay
Hunt: Showdown is set in the dense, cold, and wet swamps of a horror-inspired alternate-version of Louisiana. You play as a hunter tasked with tracking down nightmarish monsters and putting an end to their vile existence; for which you’ll receive experience, gear, and powerful weapons. Any one of the monsters can easily end your life however, and in the Hunt: Showdown, death is permanent and inevitable, only your bloodline survives.
Because both your character and your gear are always at risk, the hunt let’s you team up with a friend to help defeat the horrifying monsters. But other players aren’t just there to help, they can also try to kill you to steal your gear, and a surefire way to hunt down enemy players is to listen for the telltale screams and growl of some ghost or ghoul another pair of hunters is busy dispatching. Hunt: Showdown, is brutal, gritty, and horrifying, but with high risk comes high reward, and this game is as rewarding as they come.
Monster design is suitably horrifying and clearly, at least somewhat, inspired by H.P Lovecraft. If you think they look bad dead, imagine what it was like seeing it crawl towards you at lightning speed...upside down from the ceiling.
Crytek has brought their famous graphical prowess to Hunt: Showdown and the game is oozing with atmosphere and impressive style.
12. RUST
RUST gameplay
Rust is a survival sandbox game in the purest sense of the word, where you’ll hunt, forage, scavenge, fight, build, and craft to survive. From the first moments you wake up as a cold, naked, and alone survivor, you’ll have to contend with thirst and find a source of water, with hunger and hunt animals for food, and with cold and build a house for shelter. But that’s just the start, as you progress through the game, you’ll go from cavemen technology to modern weaponry, robotic gadgets, and massive fortress’ as a home base…now you just need to survive raids form equally well-equipped enemy players.
On the surface Rust looks just like any other survival open-world game, but Rust holds the honor of being one of the first. And that doesn’t mean it has old graphics and outdated gameplay either, the developers have consistently updated and modernized the game, to the point at which it still competes with the best of them in both graphical fidelity and gameplay depth. What makes Rust truly unique though is the incredible community engagement, mods, and sense of light-heartedness and humor; get ready for massive phallic player bases lewd graffiti everywhere.
Just one example of just how crazy you can get with base building, and you'll want to get fairly crazy too if you want to keep enemy player's greedy paws off your loot.
Rust released a visual update early in 2018, which gives the game a snazzy new look and atmosphere. Think less grandma’s basement and more triple-A game development.
11. The Division 2
The Devision 2 gameplay
Set to release on March 15th next year, the Division 2 promises to build on its predecessor in every way, while also improving the critical areas where the first game was lacking. You are an agent of The Division, a secret government group of elite operatives who were placed into the population as sleeper agents, ready to be activated in the event of a national emergency. Like its predecessor; The Division 2 is a loot based, RPG, cover-based, third-person shooter. So in other words it’s the very definition of a genera blender, and all the better for it.
The Division 2 has players traverse the open streets of post-apocalyptic Washington DC while doing missions for the local survivors, gathering intelligence for the government, farming loot in raids with your friends, and competing against other players in special PVP events. The game promises to feature top of the line graphics, fun and engaging shooter gameplay, rewarding character progression, and more loot than you can swing a stick at.
Scoping out a shooting gallery for all the good cover pieces will become second nature if the game is anything like the original, take care not to linger too long though, or that nice concrete divider might just turn to ruble.
Don't be fooled by the smooth shooter gameplay, as you can see from the inventory screen; deep RPG mechanics lie at the heart of The Division 2.
10. World War 3
World War 3 gameplay
World War 3 is a multiplayer shooter that asks what a world war would look like with current modern military technology. The game strives for realism at every turn, even going so far as to re-imagining real world settings dressed up as battlefields, this includes places like Berlin, Warsaw and Moscow. The game is currently in early access on steam and still being worked on, but already shows huge promise.
While Battlefield is revisiting history and Call of Duty is writing alternate history, World War 3 is set during a near-future military conflict. This means that players will finally get to pilot top of the line assault vehicles, armored tanks, and deployed artillery, once again in a modern setting (something not seen since Battlefield 4 released in 2013), all with fine-tuned and satisfying gameplay, smooth graphics, and realistic sound design.
While there is a focus on vehicular combat, the game keeps the action close-quarters and action-packed by requiring players earn points through standard infantry play before being allowed to summon a vehicle. Once you have one though...oh boy!
Despite the relatively small development team, developer The Farm 51 has managed something truly great with the visuals, sounds and atmospheric design of the environments in this game. Realism never looked so good.
9. Totally Accurate Battlegrounds
Totally Accurate Battlegrounds gameplay
What started as an April Fools’ joke has turned out to a be a pretty nifty little game. Totally Accurate Battlegrounds is a battle royale style game where you’re “dropped” (more like shot from a cannon really), into an island and tasked with being the last player alive. On the island you have to scavenge for gear and weapons to kill other players with, while also trying to make it into the ever-shrinking “safe zone”. So pretty standard fare for a battle royale game in other words.
What sets Totally Accurate Battlegrounds apart is the hilarious presentation it packs all this in. Everything really does look like the screenshots you see below, and all the combat, movement and driving is completely physics based, which encourages all sorts of hijinks and hilarity. Sure it’s not as polished as some of its competitors, but at a budget price and with a unique premise; it doesn’t need to be.
While it manages to look hilarious almost without effort, it does have some more deliberate gags in there, take this bendy "sniper scope" for example. Sure looks like a nice birds rest.
Clearly meant to parody other games of its ilk, the cast iron frying pan is front and center. And a bit of Slav- tracksuit humor never fails either. Oopa!
8. Cuisine Royale
Cuisine Royale gameplay
Cuisine Royale is a free-to-play battle royale style game that asks you; just how far are you willing to go for some dinner? It somehow manages to blend Cooking Mama, PUBG, and War of The Roses. You use kitchenware for armor, dress yourself in funny Carnival costumes, and hunt for elusive SMEG fridges. Yet despite all these ridicules elements, it’s still somehow a very competently developed and fun shooter set in a beautiful French environment.
It’s free to play, it’s hilarious, it’s unique, and unlike some other parody battle royale games, it’s actually a well-developed title with realistic ballistics mechanics, a large loot table, and an active community. With some of the more ridicules gadgets you can find in the game it becomes a very unique experience as well, take for example the jump boots that cause you to do bounce 5 meters into the air every time you jump. Is it ridicules? Yes. Is it also incredibly fun to play with? Hell yes.
Spaghetti strainers as shoulder pads, bunny slippers as jump boosters, a pan skillet as a backpack and a waffle iron as a leg-plate. Save for the guns, every item in this game is ridicules...and we love it!
Despite being free to play, the landscape and villages of beautiful Normandy is brought to life with surprising fidelity and attention to detail. Now let's go destroy it all!
7. ARK: Survival Evolved
ARK: Survival Evolved gameplay
The island of Ark is big, beautiful, and full of Jurassic dangers. As a survivor you’re trapped on the island and must hunt, harvest and craft to survive, but beyond survival you can tame dinosaurs and other creatures, research new technology that will help you go from the stone age into an age of science fiction, and build massive player bases alone, or with your friends.
While you have to worry about standard survival game aspects like food, water, cold and diseases, the dinosaurs are what truly make Ark: Survival Evolved stand out among the pack. From good traveler mounts like the Raptor or the prehistoric giant bird Argentavis, to warrior dinos like the Carnotaurus or the T-rex, or collector/farming dinos like the Ankylosaurus or the giant frog Beelzebufo; there’s a dinosaur for every purpose and they’re all fun to control and command. Once you’re advanced enough, you’ll have your base looking snazzy in full metal walls, upgraded your wooden spear to a laser rifle, and have enough dinosaurs to start a small zoo. Just take care so the rival base over the river doesn’t get too tempted to raid you, and if they do, striking first might just be a viable option.
Did we mention you can trigger major world events and fight (or in some cases tame) really difficult bosses? We call this one Scortchy...he didn't like that name.
There is no limit to just how grandiose and complex you can build your bases, here you see some players who've stuck to the medieval period, but you could just as easily create a Mecca of robotic gadgets and laser-shows.
6. DayZ
DayZ gameplay
The ex-soviet country of Chernarus has seen better days. Infected by an unknown virus, the majority of its population have been transformed into ravenous flesh-hungry zombies. Meanwhile the few surviving humans have taken to fighting each other over precious resources, rather than banding together to weather the storm. DayZ is an open-world, horror, survival game with a big focus on PVP and the desperation a scarcity of resources can produce.
One of the original open world survival games, DayZ has gone from a janky ARMA 2 mod, to a fully featured standalone game. Zombies are now much deadlier, the weather is a real enemy, hunger and thirst are more unforgiving than ever, and deadly infections and animal predators pose a whole new threat. But throughout it all, it’s the other players that provide the game’s main source of tension. Get it right and kill an enemy squad and the rewards can be immeasurable, fail and you lose everything. The atmospheric setting, authentic gun-play, deep simulation, and active modding community; sets Dayz apart as one of the stalwarts of the survival genera.
One of the things that makes DayZ so special is the sense of community a server can build over time. Players who kill others indiscriminately are known as "Bandits" and sometimes the whole server can band together to hunt then down and execute them.
The Zombies have gotten a serious upgrade since the days of the mod, both in visuals and lethality. As a fresh spawn without any projectile weaponry, they can be a real danger, and you're better off avoiding them.
5. Survarium
Survarium gameplay
Survarium is a free-to-play multiplayer RPG-shooter on Steam Early Access that’s set in a post-apocalyptic version Ukraine, filled with dilapidated industrial buildings, cosmic anomalies, and terrifyingly disfigured and mutated creatures. The game currently offers a standard set of multiplayer-shooter offerings, but developer Vostok Games promises a more open-ended survival experience to be added in the future.
With the multiplayer shooter currently available the developer is proving that the gun-play is solid, visceral and realistic, while the RPG mechanics and loot/gear system is comprehensive and unique. Also, the environmental design and graphical fidelity is simply incredible (especially for a free-to-play game), and they’ve really cracked how to make a post-apocalyptic setting that doesn’t just look drab and grey. The supernatural elements and special powers you can unluck as your character levels up is an interesting addition that keeps Survarium fresh. It’s early days still, but the future looks bright for this one.
RPG mechanics run deep in Survarium, with special abilities and passives, unique gear, and temporary powerups. Once this is applied to an open-world survival experience we think it'll be something truly special.
The environment design is simply breathtaking, with unique supernatural elements complementing the post-apocalyptic landscape where nature has reclaimed the planet. Also ghost trees...there are ghost threes.
4. Miscreated
Miscreated gameplay
Miscreated takes the traditional open-world, zombie survival experience and applies a nice layer of polish and well executed core gameplay mechanics. As one of the last survivors of humanity you’ll have to scavenge old world ruins for resources, fix up broken down vehicles, defend yourself against mutants and other players alike, build a defendable base, and stockpile food and water for long term survival.
While no one part of Miscreated is unique when compared to other survival games on the market, it successfully brings everything together into one package. You get the crafting and base building from Rust, the player-versus-environment gameplay from DayZ, the smooth and thrilling gun-play from PUBG, and the deep character customization and simulation from SCUM. And it does it all in a cohesive and polished way that makes it feel like a complete and finished product, despite being a game still in Early Access.
They're not Zombies, we swear...they're Mutants! Miscreated features a wide variety of creatures that attack you, they're mostly zombie-like and can be compared to the enemies of Left 4 Dead in function and mechanics.
The base building is robust, and you can make some truly unique and interesting looking bases with the tools available. More so than any other survival game on this list, they've really put some time into making this system painless.
3. Mist Survival
Mist Survival gameplay
Mist Survival takes the classic formula of a multiplayer zombie-survival game and flips it on it’s head by removing the multiplayer and adding onto the survival. Find ruins to reinforce into bases, craft weapons, equipment, clothing and gear, farm the land for food and water, cultivate a stable of farm animals, manage NPC companions, fix up vehicles, explore the world, defeat bandit AI camps, and defend against roaming monsters and zombie hoards.
Because Mist Survival is just single-player it can do things it’s multiplayer contemporaries would simply never be able to. There is a large variety of scary monsters, AI bandits, hostile animals and other threats that play a much larger role in the game. NPC management and survival mechanics are reminiscent of State of Decay, while the first-person perspective brings you closer to the action and turns the tension up to 11. If you want to experience deep survival gameplay, without necessarily constantly being harassed by other players, Mist Survival is the ideal pick.
There are worse things in the mist than the living dead, this is just one of the many special monsters found in the game, and they pose a real threat. They're also great pin-cushions though, so that's nice.
You can choose to either build upon an existing building for a base or start one from scratch. Populate it with other NPC survivors for special bonuses and help with the daily chores.
2. Hurtworld
Hurtworld gameplay
Another entry in the open-world survival category, this one featuring a cool cell-shaded visual style, unforgiving player-versus-environment challenges, deep base building mechanics and customization, responsive and twitch-based PVP combat, and a vast open world featuring a large variety of different environments.
Hurtworld is still in early access and many of the systems featured in the game are placeholder and constantly in a state of change and improvement. It’s been out for a few years now and the sheer amount of changes and improvements is quite impressive. Couple that with the extremely smooth gameplay experience that could run on virtually any rig while still keeping the crisp and nice-looking graphics, and you’ve got a budget title that’s hard to beat, this one is definitely worth keeping your eyes on.
Despite the massive map size, you might find that it gets a bit crowed with buildings and player structures dotting the landscape, not to fear though, you're given plenty of destructive tools to tear them down.
Early on it might be better off to steer clear of other players, no sense fighting when there's so little to gain and you're better of farming for materials...he does look juicy though, perhaps just and arm and a leg?
1. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG)
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds gameplay
If you haven’t heard of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (or PUBG as its colloquially known), we’re very much interested to know what it’s like staring at the underside of a rock for so many years. The quint-essential battle royale game, PUBG has players parashot from a plane onto what is now one of four different maps. They must then scour the map for gear and weapons they can use to fight the 99 other players. The last one to survive is the winner and gets a nice juicy chicken dinner (in-game), as well as the admiration of the masses. The habitable zone of the island decreases over time, pushing the players into a smaller and smaller area and inevitable conflict.
PUBG has an extremely large player base, a well-developed and proven gameplay-loop, gorgeous visuals, fun to use weapons, and a frying pan based meta-game that has saved our behinds more times than we care to tell. The high risk and tension of every match is balanced nicely with the knowledge that the next match is just a few short clicks away with minimal waiting time due to the massive community. PUBG is one of the few entries on this list with such a universal appeal and stable framework that it’s routinely played in e-sports tournaments all over the world.
A Molotov cocktail is a good way to flush your enemy out of their hidey-hole. The firefights in PUBG are fun, dynamic and at times very chaotic. Just make sure you leave the area as soon as possible once the shooting stops, so you don't get shot in the back.
The original map the game first launched with still looks good and has one of the highest player-numbers among the four. You know a game is good when it stands the test of time.
BONUS: Battlefield V
Battlefield 5 Gameplay
Battlefield 5 is a multiplayer shooter with an unparallel focus on vehicular combat, destruction, incredible visuals (now with RTX technology), and a gorgeous World War 2 setting. And in March 2019 it will also have its own battle royale mode.
Little is known so far about “Firestorm” (what DICE is calling its battle royale mode), but we do know it will introduce something never done before in battle royale; vehicular combat, at least in the form of tanks and other ground vehicles. We’re not sure how this will play out, but to say we’re fascinated and looking forward to finding out with eager anticipation would be an understatement.
Take special note of the player jumping off the edge of the tower, the tank near the edge of the fire, and the house being destroyed as it's enveloped by flames. A BR game with all these dynamic features? Yes please!
While this image is from the single player, we can easily imagine sitting perched on top of some elevated point of the map, waiting for players to pass by as they're escaping the encroaching ring of fire.
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