After just a few rounds, Arc Raiders completely rewired our shooter expert Phil’s instincts.
Multiplayer shooters have been my gaming home for almost 30 years. Now there’s one that surpasses all the others I’ve played in at least one respect: Arc Raiders suddenly turns me into a real explorer!
Even in my very first game on the release day of Arc Raiders, I immediately notice that this world is more than just a multiplayer map where I battle it out with other players.
Instead, I find a small open world so crammed with loving details, mysteries, and puzzling events that I don’t feel like fighting at all for a while.
It doesn’t sound like me at all, but suddenly I much prefer to explore.
Before the Earth Fell
My first match begins on an ancient battlefield. I walk around, fascinated, among the charred remains of rusty monsters lying around like giant dead spiders. Apparently, there was a dramatic battle with the Arc here.
I salvage a few resources from the craters and wrecks and think about what might have happened here. Was this the site of one of the last battles between humans and machines before the surface of the Earth fell to the robots?
Everywhere I look, I stumble upon mysterious remnants of times past. A short time later, I climb onto the lifeless body of a giant Arc tank, which emits a strange humming sound. Is the monster still alive? Can I activate it? And if so, should I activate it at all?
On the trail of the past
I find a hatch on the roof and pry it open with a crowbar, but the steel monster rewards my attempt to break in by suddenly setting me on fire.
Why? I have no idea, but it was surprising. And somehow totally fascinating!
The Arc bots may ultimately be just AI opponents, but their appeal is almost magical. What’s going on up there in orbit, where many of these deadly machines apparently come from?
And why aren’t the towering Arc monsters, which I’ve been spotting on the horizon since the tutorial, attacking us? Surely no raider, no matter how well equipped, would be a serious threat to them. But instead, they roam around almost peacefully while we engage in fierce battles with their smaller siblings.
While I’m still pondering these questions, I stumble upon an abandoned camp. Small huts welded together from corrugated iron, windmills, and even a small well bear witness to how previous generations may have lived here before all survivors of the Arc invasion were ultimately forced to go underground – in the truest sense of the word.
I am suddenly completely different
Arc Raiders excels at making its maps more than just a backdrop. These are places that seem to have a history and a past, and where ancient secrets lie dormant.
Instead of simply providing an arena where I’m supposed to search for loot and kill other players, Embark has constructed a world with soul and identity. A world that tells me: there’s more to this than meets the eye. Who knows what you’ll find behind the next ceiling?
And suddenly, I hardly recognize my own playing style anymore. I feel like an explorer and abandon my shooter instincts. I’m not interested in the current meta loadout. I actively avoid confrontations. I couldn’t care less about my K/D.
Instead, I throw myself into round after round of Arc Raiders to unravel the mystery of this apocalyptic idyll. Well done, Arc Raiders.
