More than 350,000 players have piled onto Steam’s newest hit. I joined for a different reason: it delivers the The Last of Us vibe that PlayStation kept from us. Arc Raiders shows how easily The Last of Us Factions could have been essential. The bring-it-home loop creates unscripted stories that finally pulled me in.

Truth be told, a week ago Arc Raiders barely registered. At best, it was a professional curiosity while the Fortnite × Simpsons crossover dominated the chatter. I had not watched demos or trailers, and I filed it under another swing at a genre I rarely enjoy. Then my feeds filled with gameplay clips on Friday, and the switch flipped.

“Grab your haul and get out alive”-shooters were never my thing. Clip by clip, though, it became clear there was more here: tight action, sharp tension, surprise alliances, ruthless betrayals. Big spectacle pairs with on-the-spot storytelling in a way that actually feels new.

Arc Raiders Is More Than Hype

The day-one crowd on Steam was quickly joined by waves of newcomers. In the last 24 hours, the game peaked at 354,836 concurrent users, and the snowball of wild clips keeps rolling. Players are jumping in on Steam, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5. One match was enough for me to understand the enthusiasm.

Slick animation, unpredictable encounters, and a striking post-apocalyptic world that runs smoothly even on older hardware opened the door to something I had been missing: the shelved The Last of Us Factions. Replace Arc Raiders’ towering machines with Naughty Dog’s infected and the gameplay loop lines up.

Cities reclaimed by nature, tight corridors and airless rooms full of salvage; action that rewards planning and smarts over bloated stats; crafting that turns junk-drawer scraps into last-second lifesavers. Most importantly, player interactions generate stories. The systems set the stage, but they do not dictate the script.

Every run becomes its own tale as you chase your initial goal. You head out for one material to upgrade your base and build better weapons, yet the real plot is everything that happens along the way: hard fights against enemies and encounters with players who can be generous one minute and merciless the next.

The Last of Us Factions We Never Got

It is rare for a game to overturn a first impression this completely. Ten hours with Arc Raiders revealed an Embark Studios spark that I did not find in The Finals.

Small, smart design choices — from map structure to enemy routines — add the depth that keeps you curious and pushes you to experiment. What will the next run reveal, and how far can you go with yesterday’s lessons?

The way the action swings from whisper-quiet stealth to full chaos recalls The Last of Us at its best. Arc Raiders provides the tools and the stage, but you and the people around you — allies or enemies — make the game. That interdependence, paired with carefully tuned progression, is genuinely addictive.

I cannot say what PlayStation intended for The Last of Us multiplayer or how closely it would have resembled this. Arc Raiders feels like the path that project might have taken before caution — and likely Bungie’s guidance to avoid overlap — shut it down. With luck, the reluctance toward long-lived projects fades, because Embark has shown another flavor of multiplayer can thrive.

Our full Arc Raiders review is coming soon from Daemon-X.

Source: 3djuegos