Extraction Shooters have historically been a difficult genre for casual players to break into. The likes of Escape from Tarkov need dedication to learn, patience with their game play loop and acceptance of tough losses. These games can be impenetrable if you’ve only got a few hours a week to indulge. Arc Raiders, the third-person extraction shooters from Embark Studios, offers something a little different then. As equally accessible if you’re playing alone for 20 minutes, or if you’re teaming up with friends for a whole night, it’s an extraction shooter that’s built to accommodate the casual and the hardcore devotee alike.

Raiders of the lost Arc

In Arc Raiders you play as one of the titular ‘Raiders’, set in a post apocalyptic world where machines called Arc have taken over and driven humanity into underground cities. These raiders are the few, the brave and the bold that dare to tread upon the surface of the world. Up there, they’re tasked with a). survival and b). brining back resources to keep humanity alive and thriving.

It’s not the most original of premises, borrowing from the likes of Terminator and The Matrix, but there is enough individual flair to make it feel fresh. That flair is most prominent in the style of the game, leaning into a retro-futuristic vibe that makes this game feel funky rather than grimy.

When first starting Arc Raiders, you’re treated to a tutorial level that sets out the basic premise and rules of the game play. Here it teaches you the general objective – enter a map, loot as much as you can, and get out alive using one of the designated exit sites – as well as a more important lesson: everything can be dangerous.

Don’t Shoot, Friendly…

That’s because Arc Raiders is a PvPvE shooter. The Arc enemies you’ll encounter are predictable, some of which are weak, defeated with a single gun shot, and others that’ll take the best gear and teamwork to destroy. You know where you stand with those NPC enemies. You can hide from most of them as they telegraph their vision cones, with some only engaging in battle if provoked. They’re predictable. Dangerous, but predictable. Stumble into one when you’re unprepared and you’ll still have to fight for your life.

It’s the PvP element that adds the real heat to Arc Raiders however. Every round lasts around 30 minutes (or shorter if you spawn in part way through a match) and in each round, a number of other raiders are out there, somewhere, on a large map. They might be solo, or they might be in a group of 3, but regardless, they’re out there. Waiting. Looting.

Some will be friendly, trying to get some gear and get out alive in 10 minutes flat. Others play the game like it’s a Battle Royale, aiming to kill any other player they see just to pick through whatever loot the corpse leaves behind. Some wait by the extraction points, aiming to kill you and steal your hard earned loot when you think you’ve almost made it. Every encounter with another player could be a fight to the death, the start of a beautiful friendship, a trauma bonding experience or a heart breaking betrayal.

All of this is played out thanks to proximity chat if you have a microphone (and you feel like unmuting) or a rudimentary chat system. Get close to other players and you’ll be able to hear what they’re saying, in either sense. Voice lines like “Don’t Shoot”, “Thank you” or “Danger” can be triggered from an intuitive system or button presses and pings. For those willing to chat on a mic, they might plead for peace, or gloat as they knock you out.

Because of the variability of player behaviour, every round on Arc Raiders will be different, forming its own story. You might spawn, walk for a while and loot some bits without ever seeing an Arc or other human face, then successfully extract. On the other hand, you might stumble across an aggressive team that repeatedly say “Don’t shoot” before shooting you in the face and stealing everything you’ve found. You never know what you’re going to encounter, or whether you’re going to return to your home base in the unground Sapienza draped in valuable loot or totally empty handed.

Prepare For The Worst, Hope For The Best

While each individual round on Arc Raiders can tell its own tale, the game is driving its own over-Arc’ing narrative. Played out in the occasional cutscene, this story isn’t complete just yet, but suggests a depth we’ll be exploring in the future as the game continues to grow.

Accompanying the cutscenes are a series of quests, granted by the traders of Sapienza. These quests serve two purposes. The first is to build up the world, put flesh on its bones, and give agency to your place in it. They take the form of simple fetch quests or shopping lists, but come with window dressing that inflates their importance. “Repair this communication station to help humanity speak to those on the surface”, a description will say. In reality, you’ll be searching for a specific place on a big map where you’ll have to hold a button for a few seconds.

The second, and perhaps more important reason for these quests is to guide players to more challenging, and often more enjoyable accomplishments. At the start of the game, these quests will guide players through the basics and point out some less obvious mechanics. Tasks like “Destroy an Arc by using [A piece of a different Arc machine]” establishes the fact that the looted pieces of destroyed foes can be as weapons themselves, in a pinch.

I have to hand it to Arc Raiders; the way in which the quests are designed essentially offers a very cleverly camouflaged elongated tour through everything the game has to offer. It build upon itself, asking players to use bigger and better weapons on bigger and meaner enemies. This means the looting cycle continues to expand what you’re looking for, and keeps it relevant to your overall aims.

In Every War, There’s Looting

Talking of the crafting and loot cycle, the system in Arc Raiders can be daunting at first. During your first few matches, you’ll be picking up things without any realisation of their importance. Loot is classified by the now universally accepted colour scheme – grey/white = common, Green = common etc, so you could at least pick up as much colourful gear as possible. A Toaster? Sure. A battery? Sounds important. An air freshener? I’m sure there’s need for this in an underground city. You’ll get on the map, rummage through everything you can and if you get back alive, you’ll have a stash of random stuff that’ll look like a Car Boot sale.

As you progress through the game however, and you follow the quests that Arc Raiders lays out for you, you’ll learn what you need, where to find it, and what it can be used for. Everything you find will have a use, whether that’s selling it for some cash, recycling it into parts more useful for you right now, or for use directly into crafting or upgrading. Blueprints for more complex weaponry or gadgets can be looted from the surface arenas, and your own crafting abilities can be improved by upgrading your work stations in your base. You’ll just need to find or build the right components.

To get the most out of Arc Raiders, you’ll need to spend some time exploring the crafting systems yourself. Not everything is explained clearly, and you can quickly get ahead of what the quests are asking of you. Still, it’s a relatively intuitive system once you get the hang of it. i.e. If something looks like it’s made of metal, you can almost guarantee that if you recycle it, it’ll give you Metal Parts, which are essential for almost everything you need to take with you to the surface.

Raiders, Rats and Recon

Deciding on your load out is where the risk reward loop begins with Arc Raiders. If you’ve got enough storage space, you can enter any of the maps with a free loadout that’ll maybe get you through the run. The gear you get in these free loadouts are always the most basic, which means you’ll have a hard time fighting your way through the Arc and Raiders alike if you want to reach the richest loot locations.

To increase your chances of getting good loot and surviving until you can extract, you can take in your own loadout. Picking your own weapons, gadgets, ammo and modifiers will give you an edge, but if you die, you’ll leave it all topside. Thus, the risk cycle begins. Even with the best gear in the game, you can and will experience a bad beat or unfortunate moment every so often. On the other hand, if you want better gear, going in with common weapons and a light shield will give you the lowest chance of success.

Your gear will determine how you might play a round of Arc Raiders. Sound plays an important part of the game play, both with other Raiders as well as the Arc that are immediately drawn to the sounds of your looting or breaching things. When you’re packing poor gear, sneaking around and being quiet is a totally viable strategy, but it’s slower, so all the best gear might be gone by the time you get where you want to go. When you start to build up an arsenal and have upgraded weapons, you might go in all guns blazing in order to beat others to the punch, but will attract a lot of attention doing so.

Arc Raiders is full of smart design choices that make a massive number of strategies viable, but with a double edged sword. You can go in armed to the teeth, but you’ll move slower and attract more Arc foes. Go in lighter and sneakier and you might avoid some fights, but if you wander into a trio of other Raiders and you might lose anything you’ve collected. Some builds allow you to distract or even spawn Arc foes – hang around too long however and you’ll find yourself the target. You can also be a trapper if you have the inclination, setting up deadly devices around exfil sites, waiting for other raiders to do the hard work of finding the loot and you taking it from their body they’ve fallen foul of your traps. This’ll feel dirty, but it seems quite successful. No matter how you decide to play, Arc Raiders can be a massive amount of fun. Especially when you chew threw an army of Arc enemies.

Arc At You

The design and implementation of the NPC enemies is a real high point of Arc Raiders. These robots come in various shapes and sizes, each with their own abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Take the Snitch, for example. The weakest of the Arc enemies, these tiny drones fly high above the battlefields and have no offensive capabilities of their own, but if they spot you and survive long enough, they’ll call in a bunch of their more dangerous buddies. The Leeper is a different prospect all together. While it has no ranged attacks, this ball with legs can propel itself across massive distances and land on you before expelling a ball of energy to down you. The current top of the food chain is The Queen. A massive, heavily armoured spider-esque monster, it can take a mammoth amount of damage and doles out just as much. The visuals and audio design for each of these foes is top tier, making it clear why humanity decided to retreat underground.

The maps themselves are also incredibly well designed, accommodating the myriad play styles available. Every map has high points for snipers, claustrophobic corridors for those handy with a shotgun, and everything in between, for every weapon or gadget in between. They’re all visually impressive too, complete with layers upon layers of environmental storytelling. From wandering through decade old battlefields that have lost a more recent battle to nature through to individual rooms that tell their own self-contained story, the world of Arc Raiders has had a lot of thought poured into it.

All of this is brought together by super slick gun play, well considered movement mechanics and a level of polish that’s rare for extraction shooters. For the most part, Arc Raiders is an incredibly high quality game.

Arc-ing Out

I’ve been almost universally positive about Arc Raiders so far in this review. There are however a few negatives it would be remiss of me not to mention. The first is a rarity, but is still something I hope gets fixed in the future. A few times during my time with Arc Raiders, I have ended up getting trapped in the environment. The first time was when crossing some rocks. My character looked as though I was running and falling, but I was completely unable to move. Thankfully, the game recognised this and give me an option to reset my character.

The other times I’ve got stuck in the game, that option hasn’t worked. This is when I’ve breached and searched through a container, and inadvertently got myself stuck in a corner. You see, when a container is opened, its doors will open in the physical world. Hiding in a corner to try and avoid being spotted while searching for loot has meant that when this door opens, it has trapped me in the corner. I can still turn around, but I can’t actually exit the level. The last time this happened, I had all of my best gear on me that I’d spent more than a few hours crafting and collecting. I could do nothing but wait until the time limit for the round ended and I was killed in the level. I don’t mind losing all of my gear to a better Arc Raider, but to a glitch? It was infuriating.

The second con that I need to mention about Arc Raiders is the voice bites that can be triggered. In a game where so much care and attention has been paid, these stand out as being flat and uninspired. They lack the personality that is present in every other facet of the game. That might be down to the fact that they were created by generative AI, but even before I knew that fact, I thought they stood out as uninspired in a world dripping with panache.

A Future For Arc Raiders?

Arc Raiders feels like its at an important crossroads. The current content and the RPG element that will keep casual players coming back to level up their traits will certainly last for a few months before it runs out of steam. The road map of content looks promising, and a monthly optional reset (Expeditions, with the first coming in December 2025) aims to keep things even. Time will tell whether this game has legs beyond the next few months.

Ideally, Arc Raiders will introduce something to flesh out the ‘end game’ for the most hardcore players soon. I imagine spawning in and breezing through dozens of raiders and Arc with an stash full of the best gear will get boring soon enough. By making the monthly resets option, there is the potential that the game could become unbalanced quite quickly, freezing out new players. Again, only time will tell.

Right now though, and especially if you’re a casual player who has limited time to sink into a title like this, there’s very little out there on the level of Arc Raiders. It isn’t perfect, but with a few patches and a heavily populated future roadmap, Arc Raiders has the potential to be the best extraction shooter on the market.

Arc Raiders is available now on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S (review platform) and macOS.

Developer: Embark Studios
Publisher: Nexon

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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