REVIEW – Extraction shooters first made themselves known almost a decade ago via a mode in the first The Division. Since then, the “loot and scoot” concept has grown up, with several well-known titles built on the seemingly simple idea — just think of Crytek’s Hunt: Showdown and Escape From Tarkov, which after many years is finally headed to Steam. If not many other examples spring to mind, that is no accident: up to now, extractions have only tried to speak to — or managed to reach — a fairly narrow audience. So despite having two better-known games, the niche already feels saturated. Embark Studios — the team behind the up-and-down The Finals — clearly set out to change that with ARC Raiders: democratize the genre and lift it to the mainstream. Let’s see how much of that worked.

ARC Raiders was originally announced at The Game Awards 2021 with an impressive gameplay trailer, but at that time there was no sign of PvP or extraction elements — the team was building a straightforward looter shooter. Even then, though, the so-called cassette-futurism visual style caught a lot of players’ eyes. The project was forced to change course — resulting in a roughly two-year delay — because, according to the developers, it was simply boring and needed something to add color to a loop that was flattening out fast. Hence the decision to extend the PvE backbone toward PvP. That development path also explains why Embark’s new game became highly visible and popular even during pre-launch server tests.

Below the Surface

It’s straightforward enough: while Hunt foregrounds the past and a fantasy wrapper, and Tarkov focuses on contemporary militaristic realism, ARC Raiders sits on the third point of the triangle with its robot-driven sci-fi approach. Its main differentiator is not this, however, but the traits inherited from its former looter-shooter identity. First, the explorable locations are more convincingly realized and feel like actual places rather than multiplayer arenas sprinkled with loot — whether that’s a city of half-buried skyscrapers in the sand or an abandoned space station serving as a memorial to humanity’s former ambitions. That’s one core ingredient of the formula. The other is that machine enemies can often pose as much — sometimes more — danger than other players, especially if we venture out from the safety of the underground refuge with starter gear.

Speranza, the city that connects the explorable areas underground, is humanity’s last refuge after surface-level environmental collapse, climate change, and the threat of ARC machines that turned on their makers. The shelter plays a narrative role — unusual for the genre — because it’s where we pick up and turn in missions and watch brief cutscenes that offer a slightly deeper look at the world. Beyond that, Speranza is the main hub for progression: here we interact with various vendors, advance our skill tree, manage and expand our inventory, craft weapons and equipment, and build or upgrade purpose-specific workshops. There’s even a chicken that rewards us with scavenged resources after each run so we have something to show for it even when we return from the surface empty-handed.

It’s worth diving into these systems a bit before heading up top. The skill tree splits into three main branches: general conditioning, mobility, and survival. Considering that climbing the tree should be one of the key motivators, it feels rather bare-bones. The left and middle branches are almost entirely filled with near-useless nodes — aside from basics like more stamina or reduced movement penalty from shield weight — and it’s practically only the survival branch that’s worth investing in. There you can unlock new functions — e.g., the ability to craft on the surface — increase carry weight, and raise the potential amount of loot found. Making matters worse, the game does not provide exact information about the magnitude of skill bonuses, so you can mess up your character long-term, as respecs are tied to the bimonthly server wipes.

Inventory management and overall menu clarity also warrant criticism. Despite all the surface firefights and looting, a hefty share of playtime is spent inside the shelter’s submenus. It hurts, then, that — true to looter-shooter “tradition” — flashy design has been prioritized over functionality and usability. The game offers little meaningful guidance on item categorization, so it’s easy to dismantle something into components only to learn later it could have been used as-is to craft a higher-tier weapon. There’s also no way to filter by what breaks down into, say, mechanical components, wire, or other materials, forcing you to tab through every single item whenever you need something. On top of that, base inventory space is extremely limited. You can expand it with in-game currency, but only up to 280 slots, which is painfully low even for beginners.

Still, there is a certain satisfaction to time spent in Speranza: bank your haul in safety, build or upgrade workshops (medical, scientific, weapons, etc.), and unlock access to more serious gear. The missions available here, however, boil down to the classic trio — go there, kill this, fetch that — while their associated dialogues and occasional videos act mostly as flavor. Do not expect substantial narrative payoff. What you can expect is a noticeably different experience depending on whether you step onto the post-apocalyptic surface alone or shoulder-to-shoulder with others. Either way, you cannot avoid other players. Helpfully, you can enter with a free loadout — avoiding the risk to your hard-earned kit or the alternative of running in unarmed.

Above the Surface

Once topside, a 30-minute timer starts. That’s how long you have to stuff your backpack on one of the four currently available maps — Dam Battlegrounds, Buried City, Spaceport, and Blue Gate — and preferably extract safely before rockets rain down as the round closes. While most of your opposition is the ARC ground and air machines — which track your movement with alarming skill — you will often bump into hostile players. Thanks to proximity chat, temporary alliances are not out of the question — whether to create a sense of safety or to bring down a giant robot — but broadly speaking, in trios most of these encounters devolve into mutual bullet storms. Somewhat ironically, that makes solo play — where on paper you’re most vulnerable — the safest option, because everyone is so protective of their own loot that they tend to approach others amicably to avoid confrontation and losing their haul.

Both approaches have their strengths. Trios are more dangerous but also more predictable due to the generally aggressive stance of other players, and you have less to fear from ARCs. In solo, you can never be 100% sure of another party’s intentions, and ARCs are a much greater threat — it’s easy to end up downed with no teammate to help. The developers planned for this: while you cannot self-revive, you can still extract before you bleed out if you called in a lift in time. Many of the game’s most memorable moments happen around these beats — for instance, when three squads wipe each other and then all of them abandon the fight to scramble back to the safety of the shelter.

How much you enjoy the scavenging, skirmishing, and the attendant risk and setbacks depends on temperament. The third-person view, the free-loadout option, and the ability to extract while downed are all quality-of-life tweaks that make ARC Raiders more approachable than its peers. Still, it is an extraction shooter, where a single bad call — or an external event — can set your progress back by hours. Some players chase exactly that adrenaline rush, and it is true that without the PvP component the experience would feel bland. The looting procedure can often seem glacial — especially when you have been hunting one item for hours — and while the ARCs are cool, their variety is fairly limited.

From one perspective, then, ARC Raiders is a long-term monotonous looter shooter that tries to mask — or spice up — that monotony with nerve-wracking, somewhat bolted-on PvP, slowing an already deliberate progression even further once you tire of constantly chipping robot armor. From another, Embark’s new game is an unending thrill ride that, like gambling or roguelites, can surprise you continuously — enough not only to pull you in but also to make you forget every moment that might feel unfair. Personally, depending on mood, I found myself on both sides of that coin. It’s worth noting that the creators have not ruled out making the maps available in different forms and modes later on — which could settle whether a PvE-only mode would truly be as monotonous as the developers once implied.

Finally, ARC Raiders runs on the notorious Unreal Engine 5, which for years has soured PC — and often console — players’ days with poor optimization, habitual stutters, and general visual quirks. In spite of that, the game sails along on my machine with high average frame rates and no noticeable frametime spikes — presumably because the engine has been heavily customized here, whereas many teams these days use it nearly plug-and-play without specific tuning, leaving players to bear the consequences. Even so, the usual problems are present: for example, ground foliage exhibits brutal ghostly halos with DLSS, and it’s worrying that Low settings virtually eliminate bushes — a massive competitive advantage on PC over console players when cross-play is enabled.

Conclusion

ARC Raiders takes confident steps toward making the extraction-shooter genre enjoyable for everyone, and early Steam player counts might even suggest it succeeded. Defying those numbers and popular opinion, I still maintain that the genre’s DNA — its very premise — is so antithetical to mass-market tastes that it’s impossible to make it broadly digestible without stripping the work of its essence. That’s why I also believe player counts will drop sharply once the early honeymoon period wears off. We saw this with Battlefield 6: immense fan enthusiasm and a powerhouse launch followed by deep lethargy and a wave of negative reviews. Of course, potential popularity is irrelevant to quality, so the real question is whether Arc Raiders is a good game. At its best, it delivers adrenaline-soaked, almost cinematic, nail-biting moments. In most matches, though, it’s little more than a slightly-above-average time killer — ultimately a time sink. That, however, is not necessarily a knock on ARC Raiders in particular, but a broader critique of multiplayer titles when we try to view them not merely as products but as works of art.

-DaemonX-

Developer: Embark Studios
Publisher: Embark Studios
Genre: Extraction Shooter
Release Date: October 30, 2025