Area F2

In the past few years, team-based tactical shooters have become incredibly popular. Of course, they have enjoyed special popular love for a long time - since 1999, when the release of Half-Life: Counter-Strike (also known as CS1.6), the "main sponsor" of walking lessons and small computer clubs in the basement of the nearest House of Culture, took place.

However, since the first half of the 2010s, team-based tactical shooters have literally flooded the market. Almost all companies - from budding indie studios to world-renowned developers - have sought to complement their portfolio with a similar project. Ubisoft, sensitive to market trends, also did not stand aside. In 2015, she released Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, one of her first games, in which, in principle, there was no single-player story campaign, and the entire gameplay was a team-based asymmetric multiplayer.

It would seem that we are talking about the game Area F2. What does Ubisoft have to do with their Rainbow Six Siege? It's just that "Siege" turned out to be so popular that Hong Kong developers from the Qooka Games studio quickly copied it, ported it to mobile devices and once again "threw it out" on the market, only now under the name Area F2.

What is surprising and a little offensive, Area F2 existed on the market for a very short time. Its announcement took place in 2017, after a couple of years a rather large-scale advertising campaign was launched in China and other Asian countries. In mid-April 2020, Area F2 became available for purchase and download as part of an open beta, on May 15, Ubisoft filed a lawsuit against Qooka Games on charges of plagiarism, and on May 20, the project was successfully closed and removed from app stores. Ironic music sounds.

Even the walls won't stop us!

Area F2 is a classic tactical asymmetric shooter to the core. The gameplay is incredibly simple - there are two groups: special forces and terrorists. Only they are called here "storming" and "defenders". They collide in some multi-level location like an office building or an airplane and confront each other. The asymmetry lies in the fact that one group, as a rule, is larger in number than the second. The exact balance depends on the card. However, in terms of strength and capabilities, both of these groups are approximately the same.

A key feature of Area F2 (which they successfully adopted from Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege) is the destructible environment. You can break through walls, move between levels through holes made in the floor with your own hands, and simply arrange a festival of dismantling buildings. This allows you to achieve a tactical advantage, since the environment, as a rule, only interferes with the normal assault on buildings. Terrorists-defenders are sitting there, waiting for the visit of the special forces storming through the door, and you want to go to them from behind through your own “portal”.

There is another interesting mechanic associated with destruction. Defenders may well resist attempts to dismantle the building using special devices to strengthen the walls. Also, some classes in this group have special abilities (no, nothing supernatural and paranormal, since Area F2 focuses on realism), which allows you to quickly erect barricades and other "elements of rough terrain" to resist the storming ones.

Area F2 Multiplayer

Every self-respecting tactical multiplayer shooter should have several multiplayer modes. And the creators of Area F2 tried to achieve this goal too. However, a lawsuit from Ubisoft led to the fact that only one was implemented in the mobile version - a classic multiplayer game with a confrontation between two teams.

There are also few maps:

• Cargo dock. Heaps of containers, warehouses and other elements of the environment of a standard cargo port;
• Mexican mansion. Just a large house, on several floors, with an internal garden and other architectural excesses;
• Russian Railway Station. Of course, it looks a bit like the Kremlin and is completely snowy. In Russia, everything is a bit like the Kremlin and it snows constantly;
• Hot Springs. Spa resort with pools, glass-walled panoramic views and more luxury.

Again, we planned to add a few more. But it didn't work out.

Why Area F2 was closed

According to official information, Area F2 was closed due to overcomplicated gameplay. Say, after beta testing, gamers suffered - and for the sake of their own comfort, it was decided to close the project. And then, perhaps, completely redo it.

In any case, the Qooka Games studio mentioned this as the main reason in their farewell letter. She decided to keep quiet about the lawsuit from Ubisoft. But China, in principle, has its own business atmosphere.