This one time in ARC Raiders, while scrounging around for resources, a regular rooftop stroll turned into a battle with ARC and a squad wipe at the hands of another team who used our own zipline against us. Another time in ARC Raiders, we ventured into the forest and went up against a Leaper – unprepared, it promptly wiped two of us out before cleaning up the third in their desperate bid to revive me. Yet another time in ARC Raiders, we engaged in a tense sniper shoot-out – I went down in a lame attempt to flank them from below, but a timely rez on an ally before my escapade contributed, however little, to our team ultimately escaping.
I’m not the biggest extraction shooter aficionado on the planet, but Embark Studios’ latest, which should be available by the time this is live, had me thoroughly engrossed. Even while releasing among titans like Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 – a venerable repeat, if you will, of the Great Titanfall 2 Tragedy – I can confirm: You need to play ARC Raiders.
Naturally, I need more time, especially on live servers, to truly outline everything that I like (and the few things that I don’t) about the experience. A recent preview event helped put those thoughts into clearer focus, however. Solo practice runs through Dam Battlegrounds were strangely not to be – our first game as a team took us to The Spaceport, all abandoned shuttles and decrepit launch facilities. Massive sightlines collided with elevated structures that required ascending and descending for extended periods via ziplines. If you weren’t coveting the high ground of neighboring buildings, using their corridors and pillars as cover against the ARC (and hostile players), you were rummaging through extended tunnels. So be it, I thought. Rats can survive the apocalypse.
However, the two other maps that I experienced – Buried City and Blue Gate – offered fundamentally different experiences. The ruins of a city amid the dunes – it sounds so simple on paper. And yet, ARC Raiders made it feel like so much more. Ageing, half-buried windows led into houses where families seemingly developed (and probably died together). Rooftops hid potential ambushes from other players navigating the sands for that coveted supply drop. Even a trip down the metro was harrowing due to the Fireball ARCs running around.
Blue Gate, the scene of my failed flanking play, is almost as deceptive at first glance. Its sprawling mountainous terrain catches you off guard with its serenity. Then it starts raining and all pretense is thrown out the window with the thunder, as we desperately try to survive a sniper ambush (with the ARC, of all things, buying us some time by targeting our enemies first).
And that’s one of the many things that I enjoyed in my time with ARC Raiders. In any competitive multiplayer shooter, but especially battle royale and extraction titles, figuring out the map is essential for gathering resources and gearing up. Then you weigh the risks of certain locations, especially since other players may have beaten you to the punch. Make no mistake – it’s downright essential, especially in a game like this where you can lose pretty much everything on your person. Survival is gamified, which both adds to and detracts from the overall experience.
In ARC Raiders, however, the maps feel less like competitive battlegrounds and more like once-living, once-breathing spaces. Echoes of a humanity long past, replaced by an ecosystem that’s as fascinating as it is deadly. Layers upon layers of details to unravel, either in service of your objective or just a cool discovery that could help somewhere down the line.
The usual tenets of the experience remain, for sure – gather materials to complete quests or have something better than your current loadout, and extract with all limbs intact – but there’s this carte blanche on exploration. Danger can easily find you – not a single other team was keen on mercy during the preview event. But there’s a certain atmosphere in those moments of calm where it feels like anything can happen, for better or worse, and it kept me coming back, again and again, even after all the failures.
Granted, those failures can be frustrating, especially for players who aren’t used to the extraction shooter format. To that end, I’m equally impressed with how Embark Studios addresses this. In Speranza, the last bastion of humanity (that we know of), different vendors sell ammo, weapons, and even resources. You can also make a crafting bench and churn out your own weapons and supplies. But what if you don’t want to risk losing it all in the next expedition? Say hello to Free Loadouts, which populate your inventory with a weapon, healing items, and ammo.
It’s enough to get you started, but not nearly enough to PvP with the best of them. If you’re looking to learn more about the map, or just extract enough materials to advance your quests, however, it’s simply fantastic. Of course, that’s not all. Scrappy, a mysterious yet loveable rooster, hangs around in Speranza and will provide various resources after every round (which increase in quality as you train him further).
Then there’s the skill tree with various passives – like not being slowed down as much with a shield, or revealing loot faster when searching containers, or simply consuming less stamina when moving. The fact that you get XP for looting, fighting ARC, and so on all contribute at a fairly strong clip towards advancing your build, and providing even more of an edge in subsequent expeditions. You might not be downing several enemy players or destroying the biggest machines that the ARC can throw at you (and based on the launch trailer, even bigger threats than The Queen await), but these systems ensure that you’re making progress. Gaining knowledge, and maybe, ultimately, getting better at the game as a whole.
There’s so much about ARC Raiders that I could rave about. The feel of the weapons, especially the Anvil – a hand cannon which hits like a truck, each round chambered realistically before letting loose. The ARC, which goes above and beyond the typical PvE threat, offers a real challenge. If you don’t know the difference between a Hornet and a Wasp, it’s all too easy to find yourself incapacitated and gunned down. Their overwhelming threat means that stealth is extremely viable, but their vigilance also creates opportunities to turn them against other players.
Just be careful when moving around abandoned cars – some of them have enough battery power left to start honking and potentially attracting ARC if you get too close.
All throughout my time with ARC Raiders, I kept coming back to the term “extraction adventure” and how much it really fit the experience. For once, it didn’t feel like the end goal was to enter a match and leave with the most loot (that is, after getting over the hump of being able to extract at all). The thrill of discovering what each map had to offer, pushing against boundaries but still working towards something, felt perfectly in sync with the overall tone of the universe. Hopeful, even among overwhelming odds, and excited at what each new day could hold, even if it meant risking it all.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
