Originally written March 2026
Clearly the folks at Embark Studios, many of whom worked on the incredible Battlefield 1, know how to make a great multiplayer game. After debuting with the excellent The Finals in 2023 the team has completely invigorated the mystifying extraction shooter genre with ARC Raiders, one of the best games of 2025 and an irresistibly compelling playground for any kind of social or antisocial player.
In the world of ARC Raiders, humanity has been driven into an underground society called Speranza after hordes of ground and air robots, collectively called ARC, brought about an automaton apocalypse. The world above is abandoned and rusted over, patrolled by flying machine gun drones and enormous arachnid-like mechanicals. But there are still loads of valuable resources that have been left behind and are ripe for the taking by intrepid Raiders, who venture to the surface to brave the bots and bring home what they can. It’s a natural setup for a run-focused extraction shooter, wherein you venture to the surface, loot what you can, fight back or flee from attacking drones, and return with what you’re carrying. If you die you lose everything in your backpack, save for whatever item or two you might have stashed in a “safe pocket.”
There is, of course, a PvP component as well. Other players you encounter may or may not be friendly according to their own whims. They may fire at you on sight, or ask if you’d like to team up. Sometimes you’ll pass one another without a word, both parties going their separate ways to pursue separate objectives. More deviously, you might encounter someone who pretends to be friendly at first only to betray you unexpectedly later on. Or maybe you’re waiting for the elevator to reach the surface so you can extract with your goods, and someone executes a perfectly orchestrated ambush just as you’re about to escape, absconding with everything you worked hard to acquire. Maybe you are the one pulling these stunts on other people, filling your stash back home with ill-gotten goods.
It’s all valid in ARC Raiders, but what’s especially surprising is just how friendly the community has been. This is in large part driven by the enormous danger posed by the ARC robots patrolling each zone, incentivizing players to perhaps look after themselves and each other first before turning guns on one another. Naturally this has evolved over time as players have gotten more comfortable with the combat, and there’s certainly a bit more PvP behavior now than there was at launch. But the social dynamics at play in ARC Raiders are a blast, and the game does a terrific job of facilitating these moments.
Balance is a huge component of this. There’s a large selection of weapons, gadgets, throwables and deployable traps and nearly all of them are fun and beneficial to engage with. The weapons themselves vary drastically, but Embark made the decision to make the lowest end weapons still powerful in their own right. This has had a couple different effects on the game. For one, it’s made it far more approachable, a big point in its favor as it gives new players a solid footing and lessens the power gap between veteran Raiders and newcomers. On the other hand, the rarer, higher end weapons don’t feel as vital to use, expensive as they are to craft compared to the more common weaponry. I would love to see Embark do a weapon balance pass soon to make the tiers feel a bit more distinct from each other, but without making the game totally unplayable for people without the best gear.
The combat in ARC Raiders is fantastic. The weapons feel phenomenal to use, with satisfying sounds and levels of impact that are noticeably different between each ammo type. Picking away at a flying drone with a light ammo weapon is a drastically different experience than sending it spiraling towards the ground with a well-placed heavy ammo round.
More importantly, the game’s AI behavior is revelatory. Each of the enemy types are adept at tracking you down should you try to hide, peeking through broken rooftops and sending well-placed missiles through open windows. Knocking a rotor off a flying drone will force it to re-learn how to fly, if it’s even able to do so. Sometimes a well-placed shot can throw a flyer’s equilibrium off enough that it crashes straight into the ground, exploding on impact. Battling a Leaper is frequently jaw-dropping, as it’s spider-like frame hurls through the air to reach your vantage point—and sometimes it can’t quite make it, crashing into the side of a ledge and falling comically to the ground, legs flailing as it tries to right itself.
Even after a hundred hours every fight against the ARC feels intense and unknowable. I’ve grown much more confident with handling the game’s weapons, but I still need to carefully place each shot and avoid taking damage as much as possible. The ARC hit really hard, and the machine learning-driven behavior keeps you guessing where they might flank you or how they might dodge your attacks. Practically nowhere is safe. Outside you might attract the attention of a patrolling Hornet and Wasp, the former locking you down with stun-lock taser darts and the latter melting your shields with machine gun fire. Indoors you might be jumped by the face hugger-like Tick while a Fireball rolls up and sets you ablaze. Maybe a Snitch spots you outdoors and calls in reinforcements to ruin your day. If you’re really unlucky you might attract the attention of a Rocketeer while darting across open ground to get to an extraction point, which may as well be a guaranteed game over.
The sandbox allows for so many ways to navigate these scenarios in every run. Maybe you’ve got ARC-seeking grenades at the ready just as the Hornet and Wasp descend on you, and you shatter them into pieces with dramatic flair. Maybe you use a grappling hook to zip up to the top of the Rocketeer and plant an explosive mine that destroys it in one big boom. And maybe you kill that Snitch before it calls in reinforcements, take the scanner from its metal husk, and then throw the scanner at another player to call in ARC reinforcements on them.
I say maybe because in ARC Raiders it never feels like there’s only one solution to any particular problem. There isn’t just one way to take out a specific kind of enemy. There might be better and worse methods, but with some cunning and enough supplies you can work your way through a lot of scenarios. It’s immensely satisfying putting your gear to good work, and it’s equally satisfying to both cooperate with other players in these moments and to screw them over with some clever gadget and trap deployments. Sometimes it’s as straightforward as barricading and mining a door to a room you’re looting, forcing curious players to waste time breaching and then getting themselves blown up when they come in. Other times it means throwing a lure grenade at a couple of players talking over proximity chat, then hiding behind a tree and cackling as nearby ARC home in on their location. “I think someone threw that at us! What the hell!”
Whether you’ve simply filled your backpack and left, gone big game hunting against the larger ARC enemies, or hunted down other players, a successful extraction takes you back to Speranza with your gains. It’s here where you can customize your appearance, spend skill points, and engage with the crafting. Once you’ve built all of the game’s basic workbenches you’ll have the ability to craft many types of weapons and gadgets and healing items, though you’ll need workbench upgrades and blueprints to craft the higher tier stuff. Your stash inventory can be upgraded but it does reach capacity quickly, necessitating that you continue crafting and repairing your gear rather than simply hoarding everything. There is a lot of stuff to pick up topside, and it’s really satisfying seeing the stash fill up with bits and bobs from your travels, even if I did bristle at my stash being repeatedly full until I could upgrade it again.
There are some vendors in Speranza you can purchase gear and materials from with coins, obtained by selling things you don’t need. These vendors also give quests and little bits of dialogue to fill in some backstory. The quests do a decent job of getting you to explore different parts of the game’s maps, but the dialogue is all delivered flatly due to the game’s usage of text-to-speech tools. It’s certainly not Microsoft Sam levels of robotic, and they did base it off real voice actors with consent, but it absolutely robs the game of whatever narrative intrigue it may have had otherwise. (Note: Embark has since replaced most of the narrative dialogue with actual recorded voiceovers.)
At the present moment the game’s longevity is driven by an optional wipe that players may undertake, similar to Call of Duty’s Prestige system. Where other extraction games might deal with “gear creep” by wiping everyone’s inventory and progress at the same time, ARC Raiders makes it voluntary in exchange for some minor bonuses like additional skill points and extra crafting resources gathered by the rooster that hangs out in your shop. The Expedition Project, as it’s called, will very likely be tweaked over time. As it stands, it’s a smart mechanic that allows players without a lot of time to play to maintain everything they’ve worked hard for, and because the power gap between someone with a hundred hours and someone with ten hours is so minor there isn’t any obvious incentive to hang on to all your stuff forever outside of not wanting to gather it all again. But getting the maximum number of skill points from the wipe—currently five—requires you to have millions of dollars of gear and coins in your stash at the time of the wipe, meaning these players are directly incentivized to not use their most high value gear for a long stretch of time. I imagine this will need to change over time to avoid negating large parts of the game’s item economy.
As to be expected from a studio with this much DICE pedigree running through its veins, ARC Raiders looks and sounds incredible. The sound design is an immediate standout, as each environment hums with weather effects and the unforgettable whirs and blips and whines from the different ARC robots. Breaching into an ARC probe emits the kind of electronic alarm that makes you want to stop and hide, lest you attract the attention of everything in sight. Locked metal containers and cabinets break open with a wickedly loud clang. Guns sound powerful and are especially loud indoors, and there’s a lot of intel to be gained by listening to someone’s footsteps as they explore a room, rummaging through junk, or hearing the sound of someone recharging their shield, leaving them in a vulnerable state for a few seconds. There are some great effects with the proximity chat too, applying realistic modulation to voices depending on distance and the environment—chatting to players underneath an overpass sounds very different than a conversation held over open ground or indoors.
ARC Raiders is also visually resplendent. At the present there are five maps, each with their own distinct identity and layouts. Dam Battlegrounds takes place in a ruined dam and the surrounding area, with lots of forested and industrial buildings to get lost in. Buried City is a sandy urban map, with lots of smaller residential buildings to traipse through, windows to poke out of, and rooftops to scramble across. It has an almost Assassin’s Creed feel to it as you sprint from one roof to the next, leaping across side streets and alleyways to get around. Spaceport is set in an abandoned space launch facility, with lots of patches of open terrain between large structures and a launch tower that you can zip to the top of to loot. The Blue Gate is a mountainous grassy environment, open enough that it’s not uncommon to have stray rounds zip past from far away, another player’s missed shot against an ARC enemy. And then there’s Stella Montis, an entirely indoors map where getting lost is practically part of the design. There’s just enough signposting to help you navigate its twisting hallways and varying levels, but you need to be prepared to round a corner and come face to face with someone out for blood. Every map feels well-realized and lived-in, and the lighting across the board is terrific.
Differing weather effects, whether its rain or dust storms or even just a setting sun, make subsequent runs on each map feel different, not to mention the rotating map conditions that bring higher value loot like electromagnetic storms, where frequent lightning strikes can knock you out in an instant, and “night raids” which shroud the map in total darkness. Each map is also impeccably designed, with so many places to explore and loot and pathways to navigate. The game’s movement also makes moving through these spaces feel great. You can slide, scramble, roll, and catch yourself on ledges as you fall—intentionally or not—not to mention the zip lines and grappling hooks you can craft that give you even more options for getting around.
The types of extraction points also differ from map to map. Dam Battlegrounds and Spaceport make use of elevators that take you underground to Speranza, while Buried City uses subways that require you to descend into darkness, hoping to not get into a last-minute close quarters battle with another player. Stella Montis has you extracting through large air vents that feel like they take an eternity to open, necessitating a defensive posture while you wait to escape to safety.
I had practically sworn off the extraction genre until ARC Raiders came along. What exactly was the appeal of deploying into the same area over and over, the threat of losing everything I’m carrying ever-present, with the goal of just doing it all over again immediately after? But then my friend and I made a mad dash for an elevator as the ramps were about to close, ARC swarming us with guns firing. I made it in and turned around to see him dive roll through the narrow opening as the ramp closed shut and blocked a Rocketeer missile that would have surely downed him, and the random player who initiated the extraction chirped over proximity chat: “That was crazy.” It was here that everything clicked and I realized the possibilities ARC Raidersoffered for emergent storytelling, one of the ultimate examples of a game that you constantly want to tell your friends about.
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