Arc Raiders is finally coming into its own. Yes, what that is may be disappointing to some, as it’s not the co-op game it was originally pitched as. But, if you can set that aside for a moment, you’ll find an incredibly satisfying extraction shooter designed for people who don’t obsess over modern firearms, and don’t want the game to hold that against them.
There’s a lot of pedigree behind Arc Raiders developer, Embark. It’s a team of former DICE and Battlefield folks, after all. It also has the advantage of being the studio’s second game, after it shipped free-to-play shooter The Finals in late 2023, and evolved the game so much in the years since.
That’s all well and good, but I when I got my hands on Tech Test 2 as part of a recent preview event, I was mainly interested in seeing whether this is going to be an extraction shooter I actually want to come back to.
The term extraction shooter has recently come to carry a lot of negative connotations. I know many who love multiplayer games who are just about as tired of hearing it as they were about battle royale, five or six years ago.
It seems everywhere you look, every multiplayer game in development either has extraction elements, or wants to be the extraction shooter that finally does for the genre what Fortnite and Apex Legends did for battle royale.
I don’t really believe there’s such a thing as “cracking the extraction shooter code.” The nature of the genre inherently goes against that, but that also allows for a wide range of interesting and unique takes on the experience. Having now played a decent chunk of the early Arc Raiders game, I can confidently say that it’s a winner.
Everything feels coherent. The post-post-apocalypse setting balances the grim overtones of its harsh world really well with the undertones of opportunistic hope. Much of the general vibe is inspired by 70s and 80s sci-fi; it looks and feels like the world ended in 1982. It’s synthwave-meets-NASA in a Wild West wrapper; making for a sort of space age gunslinger aura, if you will.
If that introduction gave you the impression that this is not a world of ultra-precise machinery and decked-out combatants, you’d be right. The only properly armed and well-equipped faction in this game are the Arc machines; various drones of unknown origin and varying sizes and roles that comb the surface world to eradicate anything that moves.
That put-together, makeshift state of everything nicely justifies the slow, methodical gameplay that the rest of Arc Raiders’ systems facilitate (and demand). Almost every action consumes stamina, makes noise and takes time to do. You’re always on a bit of an edge; whether it be because of the animation you’re locked into or the time it takes you to switch between weapons and throwables mid-fight.
Encounters are characterised by a general lack of clarity and immediacy. You’re rewarded for taking your time, gathering intel, and picking fights you think you could win – or, more often than not, avoiding them entirety.
The most useful piece of kit I found was a pair of binoculars. Mind you, these aren’t magic Far Cry binos that tag enemies through walls or anything like that, they just… let you see quite far into the distance. Outside of one scoped sniper rifle, I didn’t come across a single optic. Encounters have this killer combo of taking place at longer distances, but without everyone flipping between 4x and 6x sights.
Even when you’re in the thick of it, if you don’t pay attention to the effects your shots are having on your enemy, you may not know which of you is actually faring better. There’s a clear pop when characters’ shields break, just as it is easy to tell whether your shot penetrated shields or was absorbed entirely. Keeping with that ethos, the game won’t warn you about grenades’ damage radiuses, and won’t auto-reload your weapons. If you’re not on top of it, it’s going to be a very short round.
Arc Raiders does contribute to the genre in a couple of key ways, but I found the red flare mechanic to be the most interesting. Whenever a player is knocked down, a red flare is shot up automatically above them. If you see that, you can be sure someone is having a fight, but you don’t know if they got unluckily stuck between Arc drones or got ambushed by a group of players. You’re free to investigate (third-partying beleaguered opponents is fun in a sick sort of way), or taking it as a sign that you should avoid that area.
My only real complaint has to do with the game’s third-person perspective. If you played any one of those with even the tiniest competitive element, you’ll know what I’m talking about: wall/cover-peeking is an element you’ll need to be okay with.
This is also an extraction shooter, so some of the genre’s most brutal characteristics are unavoidable. I couldn’t get the developer to comment on their approach to regular character wipes. This remains one of the most controversial components of any extraction shooter, and no one game has arrived at a perfect solution.
Seeing how Embark has dealt with some of the genre’s existing challenges, I am hopeful it’s going to arrive at some sort of compromise. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though, because none of that matters if you’re simply not invested enough to play, and therefore care about any future wipes.
Everyone will be able to decide for themselves when Tech Test 2 kicks off tomorrow, April 30 – and on consoles for the first time, too! All I can tell you, though, is that this is not one to miss.
