Arc Raiders plays like a serviceable extraction shooter still in search of its own unique identity

Arc Raiders makes surviving and extracting an increasingly tense affair. But there's a lot of work to do to make it appealing to the multiplayer masses.

The PvP multiplayer shooter space is crowded right now. continues to dominate, leaving others like and to fend over its scraps, while any new, budding live-service title merely hopes to avoid the same result as ’s ill-fated by carving out its own niche.

Unfortunately for developer Embark Studios, is a sci-fi extraction shooter that falls into the latter camp, starting from scratch by setting players off in a desolate world full of rival players and enemy robot NPCs and tasking them to survive. Fortunately for Embark Studios, though, it seems like it's leveraging the experience gained by working on The Finals to hopefully make it a success, even if Arc Raiders feels a tad light on variety judging by the three hours I recently played.

Before I delve into my impressions it’s worth noting that the server on which I played Arc Raiders was closed-off and kept exclusively for press, causing maps to probably not be as populated as intended – despite Embark Studios’ best efforts. This meant when initially playing Arc Raiders as a solo player the act of shooting, exploring, and surviving felt especially sporadic, with very little to do on these giant open maps outside of plundering and extracting.

Whether it was running across the edges of a crumbling dam or investigating an abandoned spaceport, doing all this certainly looked beautiful. But at first, I was worried that the rather basic loop Arc Raiders sets you on was almost too repetitive.

Fortunately, things picked up when setting off in a squad of three later in my demo session, where for a good hour me and others quickly got to work engaging in shootouts, covering each other when trying to complete different objectives on the map, and just generally trying to avoid the gaze of the titular Arc enemies. The point is obviously is to raid them for the best components needed for making better gear – its right in the title, after all – but aside from a few, smaller model types, Arc Raiders has done a good job in making the act of taking down these cybernetic baddies feel like a real mammoth task.

As it stands, they can attack from all angles, and rarely did my team stand a chance at defeating them using the standard weapons we could craft prior to jumping into a session.

Knowing that these various types of Arc machines from rolling flame-spewing balls to giant arachnid-like tanks – are forever roaming the lands makes traversing them always especially tense, and does well to break up general the bullet vs bullet action that occurs when enemy players turn the corner.

My only real problem with the Arc machines as they stand is purely the design of them. Because while metallic robots are intimidating to fight whether they're flying or hulking across the dunes, I couldn’t help but feel I’d seen similar enemies before in the likes of, say, The Terminator.

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Rise of the machines

Luckily, between bouts, I was pleased to see that Embark Studios has cut out much of the noise by making your main hub of Speranza a series of menus as opposed to its own mini open-world city. While likely disappointing to some multiplayer fans who like getting deeply invested in lore (and there’s a lot of it here), I preferred the approach since it made taking on challenges, speaking to traders, and then crafting better materials quick and easy. From what I could tell, getting better gear means either crafting them using components and then improving them, or gradually upgrading to better crafting tables themselves, which appears to be a more taxing yet worthwhile affair.

All the usual extraction shooter hallmarks are present and accounted for, then, which leaves the main obstacle facing Arc Raiders right now being to carve out its own identity. Sadly, this is where the game is more of a mixed bag. Because while firefights with real-life players and robot NPCs are appropriately frantic, and the pull to plunder components to then gain better gear is certainly there, I fear that four maps at launch, however diverse, won’t do enough to keep the typical Arc Raiders loop all that interesting as you gradually learn the best and worst places to loot.

I’m happy to be proven wrong, but it all comes down to how the pace of play feels when the servers are fully populated and the perks of completing your objectives can be fully felt.

Another barrier Arc Raiders will be challenged to break through doesn’t even have anything to do with the actual game itself. Having first been revealed as a free-to-play title way back at the end of 2021, Embark Studios has since made the decision to make this a paid-for title, no doubt hoping to piggyback off the back of other recent premiere multiplayer-driven success stories such as and seemingly the upcoming Rematch.

While I’m definitely in support of this strategy since it most certainly ensures Arc Raiders will feel like a complete package at launch, it’ll only pan out if prospective players see the value in the extraction experience the game provides from afar, and currently Arc Raiders plays it a lot straighter than the bug-crushing satire of Arrowhead Studios’ game.

Arc Raiders’ position as a perfectly okay PvPvE shooter is more frustrating than it is fruitful. Sure enough, I enjoyed my time raiding and plundering alongside a group of allies, but I’m not sure if the core gameplay loop has the variety required to keep me coming back for more.

The good news is Embark Studios has a great track record for supporting a live-service game, and I’ve no doubt that following its release there’ll be plenty of limited-time events and new content to enjoy. The question is whether fending off Arc machines and rival squads is enough to encourage players to stick around long enough to see those times come.