This past week, I and droves of others have been sucked into the addicting sci-fi dystopia of Embark Studios’ ARC Raiders: a PvPvE (Player vs. Player vs. Environment) extraction shooter whereby you must venture to the robot-ruled surface (solo or with friends) to collect resources and exfiltrate with your vitals still stable and treasures intact.
Blending first-class combat with a detailed sandbox and totally out-of-this-world audio-visual design, it’s obvious to see why ARC Raiders is succeeding in the days since launch. Not many shooters this decade have scratched that immersive itch, the kind that’ll have you replaying awesome moments in your mind; the kind that’ll keep you hooked for seasons to come.
And, more importantly, the game feels like something priceless, so one-of-a-kind in an industry of regurgitated duplication and hero shooters, battle royales and the like. Sure, ARC Raiders isn’t inventing a new genre or anything – games like Escape From Tarkov or Hunt: Showdown have paved this way in the modern era – but it is bringing a new way to play: one that adheres to the casuals and the tryhards alike.
Largely unlike its genre contemporaries, this game provides safety cushions to ease the frustrating miasma that the extraction shooter genre can be; lose all your loot, and you’re back to square one. Here, casual-friendly ‘free loadouts’ and various other systems give everyone a comforting way to play, whether you want to risk it all or be a hoarding, stealthy hermit who never brings their shiny valuables topside.
What’s so dangerous about the surface? That’s where the ‘ARC’ part comes in. While not too much is known about the story of this live-service title yet, it is clear the ARC and whoever (or whatever) created them has brought devastation and retreat to the lives of the once-surface dwellers who now bury their heads deep within the world’s nadir.
Foes vary in scope but always pack some punch if you’re not careful. Ranging from explosive rolling balls to flying drones to a walking ‘Bastion’ tank that will erase you from existence on sight, it’s safe to say that the safer option is simply to lay low.
Unfortunately, the game’s most electric moments will force you into confrontation with these automaton-like monoliths, hopefully arming you with a decent arsenal to take them down. You’ll start your ARC Raiders career using pitiful single-action pistols that can barely make a dent in anything, though becoming an expert raider will reward you handsomely with some epic treasures, from energy rifles to grenade launchers that conflate those ARC with the difficulty of a mechanical Goomba.
Good loot or not, the real beauty and excitement of this game is the other pesky raider or two lurking topside, willing to hunt you down and scrap your corpse for parts. Death means total failure and loss of all belongings, opening up your treasured spoils to be thieved by your soon-to-be nemesis that betrayed your trust, reneged on a promise or simply won the fight. This is where the PvP dynamic takes centre stage, though ARC Raiders is often best navigated with your voice as your primary asset.
Proximity chat is always a fun time in any game on the modern market, whether it be some co-operative hijinx like Lethal Company or, in this case, a survival-means-all wasteland. While many warmongering raiders will simply fight on sight, weaponising your voice to bring you home and reasoning with other players is one of the most fun gaming experiences of the year. Voices echo in a vacuous building; scrape you narrowly out of a pinch; help you make new friends (even if it’s only for a ten-minute expedition), and give the game some exciting variety in a genre where being a ‘shooter’ is the main draw.
I personally scavenge the lands as if I’m playing a talky barterer in Fallout or a communications savant in The Outer Worlds, only resorting to combat if the player I’m facing behaves less with a brain, and more with bull-like hostile instinct. Waging war against the ARC forces is the real hook, always an omnipresent, machine-learning foe that certainly won’t listen to the sanctities of reason.
2025 has brought us many a great shooter, from the recently released Battlefield 6 to the PvE experiences in Borderlands 4. Amid these acclaimed releases that are continuing franchise legacies, nothing has yet felt as refreshing, immersive, year-defining, and simply mystifying as Embark’s ARC Raiders, a brazen and visible passion project coming off the exhilarating heat of their game-show shooter THE FINALS. It’s empirically clear that they know how to make something brilliant, and we can only hope they will maintain its massive launch success and keep the engine running months, maybe even years, down the line. If they can pull it off, keeping ARC Raiders among the shooter space’s contemporary crown jewels for a while to come, it’ll surely be remembered as one of the year’s superlative outputs.
