‘Warface Breakout’ was a Tactical Shooter Spinoff Game for the ‘Warface’ franchise. Same as the main Warface game it is also a FPS. Breakout released in March 2020 exclusively for console on PS4 and Xbox One. While the main Warface Game also had, for example, a ‘Plant the Bomb’ Gamemode (aka a Counter Strike Gamemode), it additionally featured many other modes like Team Deathmatch, Free for All, Domination, Battle Royale or the PVE based Special Operations. Breakout instead was, according to the developers, specifically optimized for Controller play and tactical gameplay.
You have to keep in mind that at the time there was less competition for Tactical Shooter Games on Console and there wasn’t really anything like a Console version of Counter Strike. Admittedly, there were PS3/Xbox 360 ports of CSGO, but those hadn’t been supported for many years at that point.
Due to the Console focus, Breakout did not release on PC and it also didn’t get a port for Nintendo Switch, which the original Warface had. I assume this was due to the weaker Switch 1 hardware requiring more time to do a competent port of a multi-platform game.
Breakout received 4 Seasons of Live-Service Support between summer 2020 and summer 2021. After this Breakout was due to lacking player numbers put into maintenance mode for another 3 years before it finally shutdown in April 2024. At least they didn’t immediately shut it down and still gave it a couple more years. That being said, between 2022 and 2024 the servers were so dead that you could often queue for 30 minutes without finding enough players for a lobby. You could say that they finally put it out of its misery at that point.
While I have seen some people praise the focus on the Plant the Bomb Gamemode in Warface Breakout, it also came with a big downside: Lack of content. The game released with only one gamemode and two versions of it. The regular Plant the Bomb Gamemode explains itself (One team has to plant and detonate a bomb; the other team has to prevent it. Teams switch at the half point and you can alternatively also take out all enemy players before the bomb has been planted). The hardcore version increased the amount of rounds per match, the money being earned per round and enabled Team-Kills. So essentially there was only a single gamemode and 5 maps for the first 3 months in Warface Breakout. Asking people to pay 20 Euro (the regular price of Breakout) for this limited amount of content, if you could get 5 times the amount of content in the regular Warface completely for free, was a very tough sell.
Warface Breakout did add Team Deathmatch as a second regular gamemode and time limited modes like Gungame or Domination during their live-service. They also released Slum Districts and Outskirts as additional maps during Season 2 and 3, which brought the total map-pool to 7. You could give credit that all those 7 maps were actually Breakout Originals and not just ported over from the main Warface game, but it honestly would have made much more sense to just port some of those over to get the number of maps to at least double digits. The maps were all decently designed, but the live-service over those 4 seasons was ultimately too lacking to save Breakout from a rough start.
Another big problem with the launch version of Warface Breakout were the massive framedrops in the first couple of months. Players got these performance issues at seemingly random times and regardless if the players were using base PS4 and Xbox One’s, the more powerful PS4 Pro and Xbox One X models or even the later released next-gen consoles. It took the developers way too long to fix those issues in Breakout. Once they did, large parts of the playerbase had already moved on.
The main reason why Breakout released as a buy to play game was that it, in contrast to the main Warface Game, was supposed to have no P2W elements. In regular Warface you could buy ridiculously overpowered weapons and armour for real money, which gave massive advantages and were the worst aspect of that game for sure. Breakout delivered in that regard. There were no P2W weapons or items at all in Breakout. While you can’t directly blame Breakout for it, but this constellation still rubbed me the wrong way. The plant the Bomb gamemode was also in Warface, so you were essentially paying the developers for not actively having P2W elements ingame. Paying money not to get ripped off is just not a good feeling for players. Had they released Breakout without the Warface brand recognition, then it might have been perceived differently. Despite the asking price, Breakout was also selling additional cosmetics in the shop. A practice that has become commen nowadays, but used to be frowned upon.
Let’s also take a minute to talk about the Gameplay in Warface Breakout. Breakout did some adjustments, but at the core this was still very much Warface. Movement got nerfed to create a more tactical approach. The movement speed overall was reduced, the slide function was completely removed and recoil was increased on all weapons to force players to take their time with aiming. Positioning therefore took a bigger emphasis in Breakout than it did in main Warface, where your movement and equipment played a bigger role. These adjustments were overall decent, but not really enough to give Breakout a strong own identity. It very much still felt like Warface, a game that in 2020 was already quite dated feeling, if you consider that it originally released in 2012 with only small adjustments over time. Breakout overall played well, but it’s also fair to say that it didn’t really set the world on fire.
The same could be said about the Visuals. Breakout might have looked minimally better than the original Warface, but it did look quite dated in comparison to other games released between 2020 and 2024. I can’t blame anybody for looking at the graphics and gameplay and having doubts about spending money on Breakout, if you consider the more modern looking free games it was competing with.
Result:
Warface Breakout ultimately ended up being a good, but not great, game. It unfortunately didn’t start that way. The idea for a more tactical Warface Spin-off game might have been commendable, but the execution at launch left too much to be desired. Lack of content, massive performance issues and an asking price in a competitive market derailed the start of Breakout. The game noticeably improved with additional content and performance fixes. Even with a good launch it would have probably been an uphill battle, but with the bad launch the game robbed itself of any chance of success. The improvements came too late and the live-service might have helped, but was overall nothing impressive. Despite the nasty P2W issues, there was simply not enough incentive for people to prioritize Breakout over the much more content rich, free main Warface game.
6.5/10
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