Arc Raiders has been out for a full week now, and its popularity has been nothing short of monumental. It’s going toe to toe, player-count-wise, with Battlefield 6, and has broken the top 40 on Steam alone for concurrent players, peaking at 354,836.
It’s not difficult to see why. The extraction shooter from Embark Studios, previously of The Finals fame, is surprisingly delightful to play as a solo raider, while playing with friends results in some of the most intense gunfights you can experience in gaming, especially since all of your hard-earned loot is on the line if you die.
As a result, social media has been inundated with Arc Raiders clips, plenty of which have been going viral. Some display ridiculous levels of skill, while others are hilarious fails, not to mention the moments of awe when the game’s dynamic nature results in truly unexpected encounters.
So we’ve put together this list of the best Arc Raiders clips from the first week of the game, in case you’ve missed any, or as an example of why you need to be playing the biggest multiplayer hit of the year.
When you’re out of ammo
If there isn’t an Arc Raiders achievement for taking down one of the game’s tougher enemies — Bastion, Bombardier, Leaper, Rocketeer, or even a Queen — with a melee attack, there certainly should be, and NotaFTCAgent absolutely nailed it. The zipline into the flying hammer swing is absolutely glorious.
You’re never safe from a Leaper
It’s no secret that Leapers can jump pretty damn far. Once you get their attention, you’re not safe unless you can either kill it, someone else takes the aggression, or you can hide for long enough it loses interest. Turns out being practically halfway across the map isn’t even enough, as OpTic 6lake found out when he started sniping at one in the distance.
Seven wasp drivers and a dream
Speaking of Leapers, you’d be forgiven for thinking the best way to take them down is a launcher of some kind, maybe some wolfpack grenades, that sort of thing. BromanJozy proved that actually all you need is to take down seven Wasps, loot their drivers, pile ’em up, blow ’em to smithereens, then finish the Leaper off with a single Arpeggio shot. Bravo.
First solo queen kill
Enormous kudos to the content creator JGOD, who uploaded footage of the first ever Queen kill entirely solo. While the 14-second clip only shows the final few Hullcracker rounds being shot, he explains in the replies that it took around 180 shots, and its durability went from 125 to under 20, with the full fight taking more than 20 minutes. Unfortunately, he didn’t have enough time to extract, but the achievement is commendable.
Hello karma, my old friend
While being friendly in solo play often results in other players being friendly back, you do encounter the odd hostile raider, and some of those players love to camp near extraction points, waiting for unsuspecting players to try and get the heck outta dodge. Getaloaf’s clip shows exactly that, with them going down, but karma is truly, genuinely beautiful sometimes. We’ll let you watch what happens, because it’s so worth it.
What power does to a person
Myth, a popular Twitch streamer with 7.2 million followers, killed a host of raiders in a building, then when the next unsuspecting fellow came along, Myth decided to take advantage of his position of power. “There’s a lot of dead bodies in here, what the heck!” exclaimed the unfortunate player put in this situation, “that’s sketchy.” “Don’t say it’s sketchy, you’re mine now,” Myth replied, shotgun aimed at his head. “We’re gonna extract together, do you understand?”
“I’m just looking for the medical room…”
HutchMF, another content creator, took a shot at a player who was “just looking for the medical room to complete a quest”, but missed. He apologized in proximity chat, then led the player to the room they were searching for… but as it turns out, trusting a raider in Arc Raiders is one of the worst things you can do.
A+ for effort
We were unable to find the original source for this video, but it’s too funny not to share, because the intentions were correct, and in fact, somewhat heroic, but the timing couldn’t have been more unlucky. Player RedTerror161 leaps off a concrete beam in an effort to land atop a Rocketeer, but the drone moves with perfect timing to let our wannabe hero fall between the rotors.
Directed by Michael Bay
This 30-second clip of Hithlum86 fighting a Leaper with just a Renegade and an Anvil is nothing short of epic. During a night raid, they slide down the side of a dam, Leaper flying through the air in pursuit, turn around, one shot, bam. Absolute cinema.
Don’t get cocky
DaveBeatsGames calls this his “biggest hero to zero moment” that he will ever experience, and it’s pretty clear to see why. He manages to solo an entire squad of three, but when they’re down, whips out the recorder in celebration. Rule number one: Do not get cocky.
Need some help in Arc Raiders? Read up on our guide to the best skills in the game, or find out how to complete tricky quests such as “A First Foothold,” “Reduced To Rubble,” and “With A Trace.”
