Arc Raiders review

We should not be standing in the open like this. My friends may be chill enough to enjoy rummaging through carcasses of rusted arcs and foraging for mushrooms, but Arc Raiders is an extraction shooter, and I know what happens in extraction shooters. Nothing is sacred and nowhere is safe.

I've found some wires and a volcanic rock. I have no idea how good these things are yet, but I've played enough Escape from Tarkov to know that living long enough to escape with anything is a win. "Just enjoy yourself", they say, but I can't stop whipping the camera back and forth, trying to spot danger before it sees me. I lose the first vote to head back to Speranza via an extraction point, so I continue skulking behind my squad, muttering about lines of sight and being too loud. It's not until we shoot down a couple of flying Wasp arcs that we start the journey home.

Finally, an extraction site. A safe place? Wrong. This is a prime camping spot; we're in more danger than we've ever been in. My paranoia is vindicated when two other players come running along the ridgeline, strangers ready to strip me of all my earthly belongings and call me trash. Prepared for war, I fire off enough shots to take out one of their shields, and then they just… leave. In the end, the extraction lift arrives, we get in, and we're out. No shot in the back of the head from someone lying in wait, no duel to the death over the lift. My amygdala had been working overtime, but it wasn't until the end of my first excursion in Arc Raiders that I realised not all extraction shooters have to be like Tarkov.

Arc Raiders' post-apocalyptic premise is familiar, but the '70s/'80s sci-fi style it casts it in manages to hit the sweet spot of actually being cool to look at. The world has gone to hell thanks to robots and AI, so now all the humans are holed up in small communities underground, with you and other raiders occasionally popping up to the surface to gather resources, create gear, and upgrade the crafting stations inside your base. And remarkably, the confluence of proximity chat and the oppressive overworld have effectively encouraged players to help each other as often as they start blasting.

The game's biggest achievement is that it manages to make the Arc robots that patrol the surface as much of a threat as the human raiders who want to steal your stuff. Unlike other PvPvE games where NPCs mostly amount to a nuisance, the Arcs' pathfinding is as clever as you'd expect from world-ending robots, which spurs tough decisions of your own as you scramble across its gorgeous, ruined maps.

Escaping Tarkov

As Arc Raiders is an extraction shooter, I went in expecting something just as stressful as Escape from Tarkov, but Arc Raiders presents a much more casual experience for players (me) who perhaps don't have the time or energy for a steep and oftentimes unforgiving learning curve.

Tarkov appeals to those who have sunk a ton of time into learning its intricacies from fan-made maps omnipresent on second monitors, and those who thrive in stressful situations that often end with getting shot in the back of the head by some dude perched who knows where.

While Arc Raiders just kind of hands you a gun and some shields, sending you topside to have some fun. You even get a little pat on the back with bonus resources from your ever-resourceful pet cockerel, Scrappy, and XP to work towards skill tree upgrades even when you fail to extract. It's quite forgiving, which may sound like a downgrade, but it's actually such a welcome reprieve for an old battle-scarred Scav.

Sure, PvP can be a big part of Arc Raiders, especially when you're waiting for an extraction point to open, fending off any aggressive raiders who may want to make one last play for your loot. But perhaps as a result of the third-person perspective, even these tense moments feel less gritty and serious, and PvP doesn't feel like the focal point, as the community is still trying to figure out if shoot-on-sight is really the way forward.

Solo play in particular is more peaceful. I've had plenty of matches where I simply don't see anyone, or if I do, I'm greeted with a "don't shoot", and we carefully pass each other like ships in the night. You can mind your own business, go topside, load your bag full of mid-tier resources, fight Arc robots, and then extract without seeing another person. At times the only indication that there are other players on the map is the sound of distant gunfire.

Leaping to conclusions

Arc Raiders does a lot to calm the inherent teeth-gritting that extraction's lose-it-all design provokes. It isn't just great for avoiding stomach ulcers, but it also gives me space to actually enjoy myself. With the pressure turned down, I've found myself engaging in more fights, exploring every bog and desert, and just generally popping my head over the parapet more. It's not just about the destination, getting to the extraction point; it's about having a genuinely enjoyable journey.

The fear of getting ambushed and losing all your stuff hangs in the air, yes, but matches are snappy (you can fill up your inventory and extract in as little as five minutes), movement and manipulating the UI is very smooth, and the maps, despite all the decay, feel variegated and gorgeous, avoiding some of the copy-paste compound design seen elsewhere in the genre.

Instead of Tarkov's brutal kill-or-be-killed PvP cage matches, the focal point in Arc Raiders is the Arcs—who would've guessed? Topside is full of these evil AI robots, some of which are huge, can pretty much one-shot you, and take a hell of a lot of firepower to kill. My squad even had to team up with another random group to take down the towering spider-like Queen Arc.

But I like it that way. Some players have called for the robots to get nerfed, but they're wrong. Having powerful PvE enemies scattered around the map not only encourages strangers to work together to take the beasts down, but it also presents a great challenge for players to work towards overcoming; otherwise, why are we levelling up our guns and collecting more resources?

Apart from these monoliths, most Arcs are relatively small, but not exactly harmless. Different variations pose new threats to raiders, meaning you can't count any of them out. The number of times I've been caught off-guard by a sneaky Pop or Fireball jumping at me and exploding in my face, depleting me of almost all my shield, is quite frankly embarrassing. But navigating all of these PvE threats is what saves the action in Arc Raiders from being too dull and the maps from being too empty.

Going topside

I really can't overstate how key a role the maps play in pulling me back to the surface for run after run of opening desk drawers and rusty car trunks for metal scraps. Dam Battlegrounds was my first taste of Arc Raiders, and boy was I blown away by the scale and beauty. Rolling green hills peppered with derelict buildings; it's oddly pleasant to see an apocalyptic world that is still nice to look at. This map is also big enough for it to seem as if there's always more to see and scavenge, while also being small enough so that every threat seems too close for comfort.

I'm happy to say that the uneasy vibe carries over into the other maps: Spaceport, Buried City, and Blue Gate. Buried City offers the most unique experience, as I spent most of my time jumping across the roofs of abandoned houses, avoiding all the Arcs lurking on the ground, instead of rushing through open fields, which take up most of the space in Dam Battlegrounds and Blue Gate.

Part of what makes the maps so cool is the art direction in Arc Raiders confidently pulling off space-age retro, with bright colours and cool sci-fi suits that look like they jumped straight out of a pulp comic. Tonally, the whole game follows this lead of being colourful, fun, and in your face in a pretty charming way, expressing it through the gun designs and the quirky fun gear you can craft. You can also put little hats on Scrappy—absolute cinema.

Suit up

There's so much gear to be found and crafted, and Arc Raiders' cobbled-together vibe is exactly what the magpie that lives inside my head wants. Rummaging around for rusted tools (surprisingly valuable) or toasters (needed to upgrade a workbench) should not be this fun, but it is. The randomly distributed loot compartments mitigate the tedium of combing the same map. With all the trinkets you pick up, you can make helpful gear like sound grenades, grappling hooks, and a photoelectric cloak that can hide you from Arc enemies—this one really comes in handy.

But if you're like me and are terrified of losing all the cool gear you've just scrounged, all you really need to bring with you is a free loadout. This is another kind feature from Embark that means players can take even more of the stress out of losing their haul on death by playing with gear that didn't cost them anything. It's a smart way to make Arc Raiders more accessible for everyone, no matter how much extraction shooter experience you have.

The best guns in Arc Raiders are unsurprisingly the rarest, and naturally lured me away from the free loadout as I progressed. My standouts so far have been the Hullcracker, a gun that launches projectiles which will explode on impact with an Arc, the Bobcat, a fully-automatic SMG that'll quite literally melt the competition away, and the Arpeggio, a three-round burst assault rifle that does great damage considering how cheap it is to craft.

With guns like these in your inventory fights can get a lot more chaotic, in the best sense. Controversially, I love the slow healing and recharging shield; it gives me the opening I need to push teams and confirm kills.

It's now become second nature to rush an enemy as soon as I hear 'shield broken' from any of my friends. Oftentimes I'm running into a close-quarters fight with not a lot of health, but the risk is as high as the pay-off. Being coordinated and aggressive puts you ahead of 80% of the squads you'll encounter in Arc Raiders, but even then, you're playing on a knife's edge. This is the kind of pressure and the right amount of adrenaline I want in extraction shooters, and a big reason why the fights in Arc Raiders succeed in being thrilling and not frustrating.

So far, the matchmaking has worked well enough, separating squads and solos. But I'm still a little apprehensive of how the power gap may widen between casual and more serious players over time as high-level gear becomes prevalent. One moment sticks out when I fought someone wearing a heavy shield. Armed with a simple single-shot, slow-loading Ferro rifle, I felt like I was throwing grapes at a rock. I didn't stand much of a chance, and the player in question didn't hesitate to tell me that before knocking me out.

That being said, I'm having way more fun with Arc Raiders than I expected. This is a live service game, so what works now may well not work in even a few months, but I'll make myself dizzy trying to predict the future. So I'll put the bad thoughts of players turning Arc Raiders into a sweatfest to the back of my mind. For now, I'm happy enjoying Arc Raiders for what it is, and what works: the art design, the maps, and the guns (most of the time).

Arc Raiders Field Depots: Where to find 'em
Arc Raiders Field Crates: How to use 'em
Arc Raiders dog collar: Train Scrappy
Arc Raiders best skills: Survive the surface
Arc Raiders Expeditions: Retire your Raider