Extraction shooters, all things considered, are a fairly new genre in gaming. Escape From Tarkov was one of the first and still ranks among the most popular to this day, but it’s also by far the most hardcore and can be daunting for new players to get their teeth into. Gray Zone Warfare is another along similar lines with the same modern, realistic themes, while other extraction shooters lean more into the fantasy realm, such as Hunt: Showdown or Dark and Darker.
Enter Arc Raiders. With a futuristic Earth setting, the latest entry to the genre straddles the line between realism and fantasy by offering plenty of recognizable weapons and loot, but pits you against hostile drones and robots we haven’t quite seen in real life yet. But while the setting is intriguing – especially Speranza, the underground city you return to after each visit topside – it’s how approachable Arc Raiders makes a typically unforgiving genre that has me coming back for more.
It’s somewhat astonishing nobody has managed to nail this approach to an extraction shooter before now. Other teams have certainly tried, but where Escape From Tarkov has the gritty, extremely punishing side of things locked down, Arc Raiders is poised to sit atop the throne for the not-so serious side. Think PUBG vs Fortnite, Battlefield vs Call of Duty, or Gran Turismo vs Forza Horizon.
That isn’t to say Arc Raiders is revolutionary, but one thing quickly became apparent in my four-hour preview session: this isn’t a game where ventures into the hostile environment will take hours. At best, you’re spending 20 minutes, maybe 30 at a push, looting as much as you can, then hightailing it to the nearest extraction point.
While there are plenty of buildings and places of interest to investigate, each map mostly consists of vast, sprawling terrain. Again, to compare it to the slow-paced Tarkov where every footstep could alert the ears of another player. Instead, Arc Raiders encourages movement, sprinting from one piece of cover to the next.
This is partly because you don’t want to be spied by other players scouring their sightlines with sniper rifles, but also because the non-player enemies – Arc robots that patrol the map – are brutal. There are many types, from the flying Snitch that can’t deal damage but will call in backup if it spots you, to the hulking Bastion which sports heavy armor and a minigun.
The way Arc Raiders approaches hostile non-player enemies is a huge part of its appeal. If you want to take on the bigger foes, you need to come equipped; standard infantry-focused weapons and gadgets aren’t going to cut it. When geared up with a Hullcracker — an epic-tier anti-Arc launcher — and a Wolfpack grenade, which explodes into homing shards towards Arc enemies, my squad of three took down two Rocketeers and a Leaper with ease. But with such heavy weaponry, we were between a rock and a hard place when we stumbled upon a firefight between multiple different squads and couldn’t hold our own.
Then we tackled the next match all kitted out with sniper rifles, took position on a ridge, and picked off two full enemy squads before they had the opportunity to fight one another. We moved in, looted their bodies, and escaped down the hatch in under 10 minutes with nary a scratch on us. Had we accidentally stumbled upon the Arc drones we so easily dispatched of last round though? We’d have been toast, lest we managed to run away with our tails between our legs.
Even the seemingly straightforward Arc robots can be a pain though, for a number of reasons. Firstly, their pathfinding is impressive. During our first match, a couple of Wasps — light combat drones that usually travel in packs — followed us into a huge warehouse, then managed to trap us in a doorway, so we had no choice but to fight them. That risks the second concern though: fighting them has the chance of bringing either more Arc enemies, or telling other players exactly where you are. Doing it indoors is slightly less of an issue, but if a squad sees gunshots and flailing drones being destroyed, you better believe they’re going to be hot on your trail.
There’s a lot to love about Arc Raiders, and the fact that it’s easy to jump in and out of is why I’m very excited for it to launch in full tomorrow. I am slightly concerned it’ll fall into the same fate as so many other multiplayer shooters, where it only remains enjoyable until the most dedicated players figure out the inevitable metagame, but if it can avoid that and I can persuade a couple of mates to get in on the action, I’ll be coming back to Arc Raiders for a while.
