Arc Raiders makes for a genuinely enjoyable extraction shooter experience, words that I really wasn't prepared to utter, given how painful I've found games like Escape from Tarkov in the past. But here I am, after a press preview and the beta weekend, increasingly convinced that Embark Studio's third-person PvEvP has hit the nail on the head.
I haven't had as long as I'd like with Embark's new extraction shooter, so this review is indeed in progress, with the final version coming sometime in the future when I've had a chance to properly experience it in all of its intersocial beauty.
Escaping Tarkov
As an extraction shooter, Arc Raiders is going to have to contend with the ultra-popular Escape from Tarkov—until now, the extraction shooter I've spent the most time with. And like I said, I found it pretty stressful. Expecting more of the same, I went into the Arc Raiders beta weekend nervous.
Thanks to this, my first game in Arc Raiders was way more traumatic than it needed to be. I couldn't stop looking over my shoulder, muttering to my team about how every place we found ourselves in had too many entry points and blind spots to be safe. I was bracing myself for confusion and death, as some sweaty player stripped me of all my earthly possessions and then called me trash. But my fears never came to pass.
Sure, PvP is an important 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 all in all, PvP here doesn't seem like the focal point.
You can definitely mind your own business, go topside, get some loot, 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.
I vibe with this. It presents a much more casual experience for players who perhaps don't have the time or energy to get too hardcore with learning maps or strategies. Tarkov clearly appeals to those who have sunk a tonne of time into learning its intricacies and enjoy its realistic, stressful situations. 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 skill tree upgrades when you fail to extract; it's quite forgiving.
PvE threats is what saves the action in Arc Raiders from being too dull.
If you want to focus on PvP and hunt other players down, you can definitely do so, but it just doesn't seem like the priority the game wants you to take. All the missions I've had so far encourage players to collect items topside or kill Arcs, not go after other players.
For this reason, Tarkov and Arc Raiders are actually quite different, both in vibes and execution. And I reckon it's for this reason that some more seasoned extraction shooter players may not feel like there's enough challenge or high stakes present in Arc Raiders and bounce off it. I think balancing the difficulty and stakes in this game may be a weak point going forward. So far, I like what I see in Arc Raiders, but that's not coming from someone who loves Tarkov.
Instead, 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 just take down a Queen Arc in the preview, and that's the smallest of its kind.
Apart from these monoliths that you occasionally see roaming around, 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 popper 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 being too empty.
Going topside
Dam Battlegrounds was my first taste of Arc Raiders, and boy, was I blown away by the scale and beauty. Rolling green hills with derelict buildings scattered, 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.
Moments where my team and I would be peacefully stripping a location of all its resources, like wires and plastic that can be fashioned into new gear, were often interrupted by the chilling sound of gunfire. It could be an encounter between two enemy squads or a huge battle between some poor souls and a gigantic Arc robot. Usually, we'd never know. This feeling isn't unique to Arc Raiders, but as I said before, because Arc Raiders can be quite forgiving, I think it's important to at least try and up the tension at times during games.
I'm happy to say that this uneasy vibe seems to have carried over into the other maps: Spaceport, Buried City, and Blue Gate. Out of all the maps on offer, 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. But I'd still like to see how these new maps will work when more players drop in.
Part of what makes the maps so cool to look at is the art direction in Arc Raiders that manages to pull off space-age retro, with bright colours and cool sci-fi suits that look like they jumped straight out of an old-school comic. Tonally, the whole game follows this lead of being colourful, fun, and in your face in a pretty charming way, whether that's how the guns look or what kind of quirky fun gear you can craft. You can also put little hats on Scrappy—absolute cinema.
Suit up
Then there's all the gear to be found and crafted. Everything I've seen so far really fits into the postapocalyptic, cobbled-together vibe that Arc Raiders is giving off. You can make 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 made, all you really need to bring with you is a gun, some ammo, a couple of grenades, and a shield to give you a bit of extra health—enough to protect you from the smaller, more finicky bots, like poppers or those damn face-hugger things. Sadly, your average shield won't do much against the biggest Arc threats.
I was also given a bit of a crash course on the guns during the short playtest, which allowed me to get my hands on the top-range shields and guns, which I didn't come across during the beta weekend.
The best guns include the Hullcracker, a gun that launches projectiles which will explode on impact with an Arc, the Bobcat, which was my favourite short-to-medium-range/all-round weapon, and the Arpeggio, which was the best gun I found for medium-to-long-range skirmishes. It did take some time to figure out which weapons worked best for my cowardly style of fighting, which just involves me staying really far away from people, but once I did, it made fights way more entertaining as I was quickly swapping between guns and making full use of my grenades. But there's still much more to discover, so I'll be looking into this aspect alongside Arc Raiders' progression more over the coming days.
I'm having way more fun with Arc Raiders than I'd expected to have, and I think its focus on being a more casual, vibey extraction shooter is a really great angle that will likely make it more palatable for a wider audience. My only reservation so far is whether Embark can find that sweet spot between fun and challenging, and it'll be interesting to see whether priorities change depending on what kind of playerbase it gathers.
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