Grey Zone Warfare loos great in its debut gameplay video.

Credit: Madfinger Games

The first gameplay footage for Grey Zone Warfare has been released, with a 23-minute video showing off a mission featuring four players searching for intel and then extracting. While it is still early days, this first glimpse of how Grey Zone Warfare actually plays shows us that it has a real shot at challenging Escape From Tarkov in the hardcore extraction FPS genre.

Tarkov is one of the biggest PC games in the world, and while others have tried to mimic its style none have quite had the same level of success. However, since its reveal a few months ago many fans have been hailing Grey Zone Warfare as a contender to dethrone Tarkov, or at least put up a good fight, and this first look only furthers that idea.

That’s not to say it’s a direct clone of Tarkov, in the footage, which was released by IGN, we can see there are some big differences, from a lack of looting gear to having to arrive and depart the area in a helicopter instead of just magically spawning in and then disappearing when you reach an extract as is the case in Tarkov. But there are a lot of similarities, from the slower and more tactical combat style and the large open space to operate in how you see fit.

Obviously, the Grey Zone Warfare footage is being shown as the developers want you to play it, so there is no guarantee that in practice going for this slower tactical approach is the best way to play. But if it does end up being close to this version then I’m sure there will be a lot of people who are looking for a slower-paced game who switch from Tarkov to Grey Zone Warfare.

Grey Zone Warfare also promises one big improvement over Tarkov, and that is being in a giant open world and not just smaller individual maps. While it wasn’t shown in the gameplay footage, Grey Zone Warfare all takes place on a single, giant, map with you and your team travelling to different parts to complete missions and then heading back to base. If you don’t manage to make it back to your base and stash your loot from the mission then it is lost.

I’m hoping that the lack of looting was a choice made for this demo and in the final game there will be lots of opportunities to grab valuable items to take back to base, as finding rare loot in Tarkov and having to get out alive with it is one of the most tense experiences in any game. Grey Zone Warfare could mimic that with a solid loot system and the extra steps for extracting with the loot, but it remains to be seen if that is the case.

Hopefully, it won’t be too long before we can get hands-on with Grey Zone Warfare, which should give us answers to a lot of the remaining questions about the game. But from this first glimpse of footage, it’s safe to say my excitement levels have been raised and I’m now expecting Grey Zone Warfare to be a real challenger to Escape From Tarkov.