ARC Raiders Review

In June of 2020 The Last of Us Part II released in a fundamentally tumultuous time.

Society was ravaged by a global pandemic that threatened to topple the precarious balance of all aspects of our life. In the United States our broken and incompetent political infrastructure constantly fumbled the well-being of millions of people. The Black Lives Matter protests were in full swing after police callously murdered Breonna Taylor and George Floyd while hypocrites weaponized economic and racial prejudice. To put it lightly, the world felt dark… on the brink of full-fledged chaos.

When Naughty Dog’s gut-wrenching foray into the depths of grief, love, loss, and revenge was released, it was almost impossible to ignore the desolate symbolism, the magnifying glass it placed on our present calamity and where a few more wrong turns could lead us. The Last of Us Part II, in my opinion, is a brilliant game. It navigates the human psyche in a tragic way, exposing the player to countless instances of violence and despair. It is relentless at times in ways that few other games can be.

But in the grim, caustic existence that was the summer of 2020, The Last of Us Part II was certainly not palatable to all. Unfounded, hateful rhetoric aside, I knew from personal accounts and numerous forum posts that some simply couldn’t stomach the game’s violent nature. As transcendent as Naughty Dog’s storytelling and messaging was, it could prove too real, almost too joyless in a world where we were constantly clawing at any semblance of comfort.

Personally, I found 2020 to be an apt time for the game to release. In many ways, human nature is ugly and ruthless. Our politics constantly emphasized that those in power would willingly sacrifice the lives of others and lead a blind flock to slaughter, much like the Seraphites and Wolves who were responsible for indoctrinating their followers to different, bloody creeds. Joel, Ellie, and Abby were products of an inhospitable world, dealing with the decades-long fallout of a global catastrophe. As players, we were living through the possible prelude of our own foundational demise. There was a kind of poetry to it and even in that game’s bleak bloodbath, there were shreds of light and comfort.

The Last of Us Part II, like many games that tackle harsh subject matter, often also triggers us to ask the question “is this fun?” In what form do we extract entertainment? Regardless of how dire its narrative was, the game constantly captivated me, finding me at the edge of my seat throughout its 20 hours.

Somehow, in my reflection on ARC Raiders as a game, The Last of Us Part II cropped up in my brain’s discourse and wouldn’t let go.

Though I most always choose to opt out of political discourse in both the act of gaming and the act of writing about games, I don’t ignore that games, like many forms of art, are so frequently political. Whether it be governmental politics or the politics of a cutthroat corporate office, developers and writers and artists and programmers and designers have opinions and thoughts and feelings towards current events and the structure of life.

ARC Raiders is not an inherently political game. But why then am I approaching it with such heady, galaxy-brained premise?

As 2025 makes its last efforts to be forever prominent in our history, it’s impossible to look back at this consequential year without exasperation. My generation exudes the adage of “I’m tired of living through a new historical event.” But where 2020 felt like a coda to the prior four years of abhorrent vitriol, 2025 strikes me as the kindling towards some greater fire, one that will hopefully cleanse rather than engulf us all while the arsonists watch with glee from their gilded palaces.

We are seeing a maelstrom of ideological horror. Xenophobia is populating our streets, masquerading as armed shock troopers. Capitalism is emboldening oligarchies that care little for the minimum wage cogs it grinds down as fuel to keep their machines churning out money and power. Fear and hate and uncertainty are constantly percolating, obfuscating a hopeful future that shouldn’t be marred by constant war and greed. And yet despite all this uncertainty, we persist. Hope has been bubbling at the seams as communities begin to open their eyes and see the disparity laid more and more bare. There’s a spark that maybe, just maybe, we’ll get through it.

Let’s touch one more time on that notion of fun.

ARC Raiders is an extraction shooter. A game where players spawn into a world and scour it for materials and loot that will potentially allow them to survive and grow in strength to plunder more dangerous depths. Central to that loop is the fear of death–whether at the hands of enemies or other players–and losing all that hard work.

In my mind, extraction shooters like Escape From Tarkov and Hunt: Showdown are enticing but ultimately fool’s errands because of the thorny nature of loss. How is being stripped of all my hard-earned work fun? Whether I lose a multiplayer match or a life, I truly haven’t had anything taken from me outside of a little confidence. I still earn experience, progression, knowledge. This was one of my core issues that permeated throughout the battle royale genre. Try as I might with the dozens of hours of Fortnite in its original incarnation, I hated the tension of protracted fights. Looting indiscriminately to either be unceremoniously shot in the back or to spend minutes at a time never encountering other players, only to hope that you were the best of the dwindling numbers… I never got the stomach for it.

The fun I had in those games always resulted in the camaraderie with my friends. My Destiny crew, my tiny group who would grind out challenges but mostly focus on getting a chicken dinner. Dying in a solo queue after being in the top 20 was maddening. But teaming up with friends and banding together even without a victory? A more savory meal.

Developer Embark Studios likely didn’t set its sights on making ARC Raiders some PUBG flashpoint in gaming, yet it certainly seems poised to be. But anymore, so many developers, publishers, and games are wrestling for control of players’ attention. Does anything make ARC Raiders particularly special?

Do me a favor. Go back and watch the reveal trailer for ARC Raiders shown off at the 2021 Game Awards right below:

You know what grabbed me about the game immediately upon watching this? While the shots of multiple players storming a gargantuan robot were definitely appealing, that wasn’t it. Rather, my ears perked up when I heard the song “Dancing on My Own” by Robyn.

Do me a favor. Listen to that track. Here it is right below for your convenience:

Now what does a song about a person longingly watching someone they have feelings for dancing with another person have to do with a post-apocalyptic future where humans fight robots that fall from the sky? Nothing, probably. At no point in ARC Raiders have I seen a dance club, though there are a few snazzy dance emotes. The game’s synth-laden score is more 1960s science fiction than dance pop. More convenient and less gaudy is that Robyn’s song is catchy as hell, she’s Swedish, and Embark is Swedish, so why not prop up your own?

But the pumping, upbeat tune of “Dancing on My Own” matched with the action on screen had me hooked. Obviously ARC Raiders smelled of live service, as do most games touting more than a handful of players engaging in an activity together.

More interestingly, however, is that after playing ARC Raiders for over 50 hours, most of what is in that trailer has been preserved minus one key detail: ARC Raiders was not originally poised as an extraction shooter. Two years after its reveal, Embark opened up about the genre shift from a primarily cooperative experience to one where players could fight each other. Apparently just having players tussle against robots wasn’t exciting enough and incorporating the tension of death by the hands of other humans added extra spice to the core loop.

To say that I was disappointed by ARC Raiders‘ shift from a genre I enjoyed to a genre I had no interest in would be fair. I wasn’t devastated, though I had kept my eyes open for any news since the initial reveal, always with Robyn’s song fluttering in the back of my brain. I really just wanted a game where I could kill robots with friends, earn better gear, and not have to worry about it all being ripped away if someone more skilled, toxic, or sneaky came along. How would that be fun for me?

And then two nights ago, already deep into my time with ARC Raiders, I hopped into a match with two members of my old Destiny crew. We spawned into the Dam Battlegrounds, the introductory map for the game which features dilapidated buildings, abandoned apartments, signs of past robotic war, and a false sense of security. We came upon a fight between two opposing teams of raiders. For a moment, we decided to stay neutral and watch from a distance. But the temptation not necessarily for loot but to punish those who would pick fights with others was strong.

I began popping shots off from the rocky outcropping that gave us the high ground. Sparks flew as one player’s shield popped. They hid. Shots from an angle I couldn’t see caused a flair to shoot up into the sky, a telltale sign a raider has been downed by a player or a machine. Someone not on my team had finished my work. My trio pushed in, four other players were duking it out. Likely from the surprise ambush we quickly dispatched two. I was the closest and went down by a player hovering between some stairs and a cement wall. I crawled to my friend as he took shots from behind cover, my other comrade circling around to take care of my rival.

Last night I could hear another raider rustling around, searching for loot. I told my same two friends that I was going to announce my intention with the soon-to-be-memed “Don’t Shoot” emote and call-out. I was shot at. In an attempt to run, a group of three tried to take us down but strangely, one player seemed to ignore my friends and went to knock me out, only to be shot down by my friend who was standing right there. They mopped them up too. I scavenged the body of the one who shot me, asking out loud why they decided to engage. I was in a party chat so my musings went unheard and I caught the mutterings of something angry as I punched his crawling corpse. He had a legendary attachment for a gun–the first time I had seen that rarity. I immediately tossed it into my safe pocket, knowing that if I went down I would at least be taking home that prize.

Was that experience fun for the groups who were gun downed by us? Probably not. Was that experience fun for me? Absolutely.

The ability to successfully “extract” in an extraction shooter is likely the genre’s biggest high. Whether its surviving by the skin of your teeth after constant clashes with other humans or stealthily nabbing a rare item with almost no resistance, you want to survive. When I’m on the receiving end of a death squad, it has the potential to enrage me. The loss of crafted and found loot is excruciating but so is that fact that I’m not actively violent in these types of games, I choose the path of least resistance.

In ARC Raiders I’ve had another human come up behind me while I was grabbing items off shelves or breaking into a container and kill me. Often I had the most basic gear on me. Sometimes this would happen less than five minutes after spawning into a map. It fucking sucks. I hate it. It pisses me off and makes me never want to play again.

Yet here I am mostly itching to dive back in. Certainly I feel compelled to crystallize my thoughts into words, to contextualize my feelings. But wouldn’t it just feel better to play?

ARC Raiders has the distinction of being the first extraction shooter I’ve ever played. While the genre toys around with survival and crafting and shooter mechanisms I’ve played before, they haven’t been compiled in such a manner. Call of Duty: DMZ never hooked me because I would rather be playing TDM, same with Warzone. The Division‘s survival modes are a striking prelude to what something like ARC Raiders has to offer. And I feel notes of The Last of Us‘ multiplayer here as well, wondering if what Embark has accomplished was percolating at Naughty Dog before their live service game was cancelled.

The fundamentals are simple, rudimentary. In solos, duos, or trios, players spawn into a map and are given upwards of 30 minutes to fight, scavenge, and escape to safety.

Matches in ARC Raiders can be completed without firing a bullet. In the fiction Embark has created, mankind has been shattered by the world’s collapse. Mass weather events render cities beleaguered in sand. A promising Spaceport where dreams went beyond the atmosphere houses the husks of rockets. Mysterious androids beep and gurgle in hollow warehouses. Something went wrong. And now machines called ARC drop from the skies and patrol the landscape. These steeled, reinforced machines are simple in their design but terrifying in their efficiency to the point where you should be intimidated.

While players don’t actively have to engage with the ARC at all times, to not do so would relegate them to a life of scraping by, hoping that the dueling forces of luck and persistence will shine on them.

For me, the ARC are the crucial component of ARC Raiders. They are the driving force behind the uncertainty, chaos, and sentimentality of the game. Do you want the best gear to be able to take on the toughest machines? Like most players you will have to start from the bottom of the food chain, peeping into lockers and drawers in hopes of finding plastics, chemicals, metals, cooling fans, rubber, wires, and dozens of other items.

Players should feel on the brink of extinction at the claws of these simple and deadly machines. Ticks are the smallest ARC and soon enough, the telltale sound of their clattering on ceilings and bug-like screeches indicate they will launch at your body and rip away health and shields. And for several initial forays into the game, my nervous and uncertain hand had trouble recognizing their patterns. My guns were pea shooters in comparison, watching my light ammo bullets glance off the armor of nearly every ARC.

My first ten or so hours of ARC Raiders was a whiplash of bitter defeats and serene triumph. Several times I would be murdered in cold blood with worthless gear on me and go into a new run, fill up my backpack with anything I could find and rushing to the exit without bothering a soul and praying no asshole would make quick work of me. Other times I would matchmake into a squad and hope that I didn’t join people looking for a massacre. Once a guy, bitter from being shot down by another player and having a good gun stolen, decided he was going to shoot the first raider he saw. And he did. I tried to help. A stupid decision because that group of three dispatched me and my enraged temporary partner easily. Should have known better. I wonder if he had less fun the second time around or if he learned a lesson?

In ARC Raiders you will wish for an emote to spit in the face of other players as they prepare to wind-up punch you in the face to knock you out before you can surrender your life.

But last weekend I had the pleasure of randomly grouping up with two guys who were friends just having a good time in ARC Raiders. We traded items–a possibility if you bring the desired junk into a run and drop it for another player to pick up. We tackled scores of ARC, something I never felt comfortable doing solo or in a quiet squad with randoms. One of the guys was constantly smoking weed, having coughing fits that thankfully weren’t echoing through the game’s useful proximity chat. After about four or five runs, we parted ways having exchanged several laughs, one defeat, and a decent story or two to relay to anyone when talking about ARC Raiders writ large.

Like so many games of the past decade that have been built on the emergent player stories crafted by simply playing and interacting with the mechanics, ARC Raiders is about the moments. I’m certain over half of the reviews–whether professional or from your friend who has been playing–will start with a specific moment or memory. That tense exchange where your squad ran into another group of raiders and you silently extracted, wondering if anyone would fire the first shot. Or that time a bunch of randoms in the lobby made a guerilla squad and tried to tackle the current ultimate ARC but were trounced when a nearby Rocketeer blasted everyone to hell.

While I admire the slow-burn peeling-off of the layers for ARC Raiders‘ narrative, it is a game so obviously reliant on the stories players create inside of its sandboxes. The spaces created by Embark are intelligent and lived-in, spreading a tangible sense of “people used to live here” across its four available maps. Shockingly, the maps are legible because their points of interest are often are based off real-world structures. Hospitals, shops, office buildings are easy to pull off but they exist in this space to provide meaningful places to loot and fight.

I can tell what happened in this space before the world went to hell and the ARC ripped through. But that visual identity also helps players become acclimated to these loot hotbeds easier. With enough runs and exploration, you’ll know how to beeline to the Dam Control Room or the top of the Launch Tower. You’ll know the best sight-lines to snipe from and how to stay out of harm’s way.

Embark avoids making ARC Raiders look too dreary and dusty. Though decades of wear, tear, rust, and stripped paint have blotched out much of the former glory of what is known as the Rust Belt, it’s still quite striking. The Blue Gate, the final map opened up for players at launch, is the most “green” with a few rolling hills and trees, each of the four pieces craft an identity that ARC Raiders exemplifies. Imagine if Concord kept everything realistic. Retro-futuristic. NASA-punk. Whatever sounds best in your mind. So far, none of the outfits players can earn or buy strays too far from the mission statement. Sure, there’s some silly touches here and there but thankfully the game doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Just as important are the mindful designs Embark makes to translate information to players. I mentioned the raider flares being used to signal when a player goes down. Well, those can also be items and give you the opportunity to mess with observant players. ARC have easily identifiable lights and parts that help players be aware of when they are alert and when they are attacking. Not only do landmark locations become familiar, so do points of interest like field depots and supply drop beacons. It might be easy to second-guess what players are looking at for a few hours but trudging through the world eventually becomes second-nature.

Sound is one of the most vibrant aspects of ARC Raiders‘ design language. It should come as no surprise that Embark consists of people who worked on the Battlefield franchise, known for its bombastic explosions and its attention to aural detail. Actions like footsteps and searching cabinets and breaching ARC couriers make noise and can be heard by other mindful players. Gunshots echo far off in the distance and it’s easy to tell when those bullets belong to a player or an ARC. These strange robots also seem to mutter in their own foreign language but still make sounds that indicate levels of alertness or how close they are to winding up a taser that will melt your shields off.

Even those players who aren’t attracted to the idea of contending with other humans for a place on the food chain are likely to enjoy the aesthetic ARC Raiders has to offer. I was astounded to watch the reveal trailer and easily identify the same sights and sounds remain four years later and are just as creepy and notable.

The structure of enjoyment for ARC Raiders can be as hands-off as a player may wish it to be. Ultimately, the only “goal” for a player is to reach the precipice of their satisfaction. It’s just a matter of how long it takes to get there.

Despite having not scoured every notable building and crafted the best weapons in the game, I could never return to ARC Raiders and feel that I accomplished a great deal of zany matches and had an entertaining experience. But also I don’t want to stop.

There are plenty of times in ARC Raiders where I bristle at defeat and want to gnaw at the bars of my cage of anger. But I began to notice the deeper I plunged into the depths of this game, the more confident I felt. I could take a shitty level 1 gun into a run and get the jump on Pop ARCs before they exploded on me, or land shots on the weakpoint propellers of Wasps and Hornets. Hell, I even considered taking potshots at distant raiders.

My familiarity with stamina management, ARC manipulation, safe routes, and trying to be okay with losing gear that I found or made helped me become a better player. But it simply made the game more fun as well. It’s easy to look at the map and hunt down a laboratory because you need things classified as technology or industrial loot. Players can give themselves goals and tag what’s needed to upgrade crafting benches or build specific items. Embark doesn’t want to cloud its rules or how to progress.

The power crawl in ARC Raiders is likely one familiar to those who have played multiple extraction shooters. But Embark has fine-tuned all the sharp edges and made them more accessible. Don’t want to lose anything? Go into a run with a free loadout, make it out alive, and that backpack can be traded in for one with a safe pocket that guarantees the item survives, even if you don’t. Stockpiling loot is incentivized for players who want to delve into the “Expedition” Prestige system that resets progress but earns an experience buff by literally sending your current raider off into the unknown–you just have to accumulate an obscene amount of stuff to fund the journey. But there’s also a need to just focus on finding blueprints around the world and expanding the crafting capabilities for cooler weapons.

Shooting guns in ARC Raiders intentionally feels kind of bad at first. Weapons in this universe are cobbled together with crappy plastic, found items, and metal. It makes sense that they have poor rates of fire, take forever to reload, and kick like a horse. But even investing some resources into the most common guns improves their performance drastically. Healing items, shield recharges, grenades, and other utility items are always within reach, waiting for players to claim them and experiment with them.

For a player like me who hoards wheels of cheese, ARC Raiders was an anxiety minefield at first. But you’re simply meant to acclimate your gaming senses to what this genre requires of you. You’ll earn that sixth sense of when it’s best to break things down for lesser parts or to save them for a rainy day. Every new run feels like dipping your toe deeper into the water and it progressively getting warmer and more welcoming.

And while I like how pared down a lot of ARC Raiders can feel, I do lament how heavily menu-based it is. A lot of time is spent in menus cycling through loot and crafting tables. And I get it, there’s not an entirely elegant way to do all this, one that doesn’t make everything more complicated than it needs to be. On a controller it can be a bit of a pain, especially knowing how easy a mouse and keyboard can move around the pages of things.

Menus also dominate the quest system of ARC Raiders. The five vendors players can purchase things from also assign quests. While these quests aren’t the most exciting thing ARC Raiders offers, they do provide an opportunity to give the player focused tasks that show them how to experiment with weaponry and explore certain parts of the four main areas. But again, these are all done through menus and they can sometimes be confusing to tab around, regardless of what you’re playing on.

Though looting can be gamed through luck or persistence as mentioned, static progression exists. Players earn experience for nearly everything they do. Taking on other raiders, killing ARC, looting, and spending time on the surface all count towards experience. Skill points granted upon leveling up can be invested across three branches of the skill tree. Players may not notice significant gains to power but it’s easy to see the utility in revealing loot faster, crawling faster when downed, recovering stamina while under healing effects, or simply raising stamina caps and equipment loads. Trials that ask players to complete certain tasks will grant reward drops at certain thresholds while also incorporating leaderboards and rewards for placements.

The clean UI in ARC Raiders mainly acts as a balm toward the menu-heavy presentation. And there’s this nagging Destiny-player part of me that truly wishes that the hub of Speranza actually had a hub where other players could walk around in, potentially acting as a mild LFG entry-point or showing off how limited the character creator is by having everyone with similar faces and hair. That being said, I understand that most players just want to get into the action and not have any additional friction between rounds.

On November 12, 2025 as I write this review, ARC Raiders has been out for almost two weeks. While the game feels relatively complete, it’s obvious that Embark has big plans for the game in the future. Currently, there’s a lack of substantial public events that unite the community. Each map has a “Night Raid” version that takes place without the sun shining. Here, ARC presence in increased, loot is more valuable, there are less extraction points, and players can’t use easy-out Raider Hatches to escape. Electromagnetic Storms are an alternate condition that pops up at certain intervals, where deadly lightning can strike. These modifiers can be separately accessed from the main maps, which also can have small events going on like increased ARC probes or more plants and fruits spawning.

On November 13, 2025, a community event will begin that will allow players to works towards unlocking a fifth map of which very little is known. It seems like it can be accessed by tunnels, possibly forgoing the “surface” of the currently available maps. This update will also introduce new quests, equipment, and two new ARCs. Down the line, more content will be expected, like snowy conditions and the first Expedition window.

Momentum is a hard thing to gauge, especially with a game that hopes it will keep players engaged for months and months to come. Right now, the temperature on ARC Raiders is boiling. It’s blatantly obvious that this title has struck a chord with a vast player base. And it certainly makes sense. Extraction shooters were once a niche genre, just like battle royales. And I think ARC Raiders is giving players a generous curve to become acclimated to.

Yes, I would be remiss to ignore the topic of AI being implemented to build some parts of ARC Raiders, namely voice lines. And in a game that does touch on the folly of man relying too much on machine, leading to humanity’s downfall, it’s a bit cavalier to play host to AI when it is so heavily derided. But in my experience with ARC Raiders, it does feel more like a tool to ease a development pipeline, one meant to help a smaller team realize their goals. Should the game be dismissed based on that? Well, that’s up to you, dear reader.

As for me, I look at ARC Raiders in the full scope of what feels like a hellish year, one that has the potential to domino into another historical event after another. That notion exhausts me, makes me want to retreat into another world, a game perhaps.

At the culmination of The Last of Us Part II as Ellie collapses to her knees sobbing, I felt her unyielding grief. The thing she had loved and lost, flashed before her eyes and she was left disarmed, a wounded child. Months into 2020, those virtual tears spilled and clutched at my heart. Naughty Dog had exhausted me, brutalized my soul. But it was a kind of catharsis only a piece of art could evoke in that moment. All that violence and pain and uncertainty, it scorched a path just like the scars of 2020 are still being felt to this day.

As 2025 sunsets, I watch the news. I see families crying out in pain. Scared of being disappeared or not being able to afford food on the table or the basic rights to healthcare. And I wonder, how did we let this happen? But the grave errors that we have made in the past don’t have to define us. And as the weeks have gone on, I’ve noticed a change. People opening their eyes, recognizing the importance of community, of hope, of recognizing who the enemy actually is.

When playing ARC Raiders I would become endlessly frustrated at the people who slaughter and kill me, even when I literally have nothing of significance to give them. “That’s part of the game,” I could think to myself but usually don’t. How would they even know what I had on me? And then I get grouped up with generous strangers who just want to kill some time on the weekend, who are stoned and exclaim how badass the game is after killing some robots and finding some stupid virtual treasures.

No, I am not ascribing such lofty ambitions and significance to ARC Raiders. No, it does not color my judgement of the game. Standing on its own, ARC Raiders is an incredible point of entry for anyone curious about games like this. In the grand scope of the last decade, the game is merely a blip on society. But I can’t help but appreciate how for the first time in years, I’ve logged into a game and heard so many people be kind, cautious, and welcoming. “Don’t Shoot!” echoing over multiple strangers’ microphones. People chatting in an open server about grouping up. Strangers guiding you to quests. Yeah, those people who shot me suck. Yeah, it’s just a game. But somehow, ARC Raiders has inspired this kind of hopeful tone that has resonated with players, almost like teaming up with another person in Journey all those years ago. We’ll never meet but we chose to be kind and to have a little fun and rip ourselves away from the madness frothing around the edges of our lives.

ARC Raiders exemplifies the strength of games where players craft their own narratives, taking advantage of the systems provided to foster pocket communities of robot-killing looters. While it is rife with complexity, Embark Studios uses smart onboarding, a striking visual identity, and tight third-person action to ease players into a budding sense of progression and growth. Though time makes fools of us all, it’s likely that ARC Raiders is here to stay.