ARC Raiders Might Be the Perfect Introduction to Extraction…

From the initial preview event for ARC Raiders back in April to now, a lot has changed. On the one hand, ARC Raiders lost its biggest competitor with the indefinite delay of Bungie's Marathon. On the other hand, Battelstate Games has since revealed that Escape From Tarkov—one of the games responsible for the genre's popularity—is set to arrive on Steam just two weeks after ARC Raiders' launch. But even with an incredibly busy Q4 release schedule and plenty of other new extraction shooters on the horizon, ARC Raiders' final preview ahead of its October 30 launch only helped to double down on the sentiment from hands-on impressions earlier in the year: that ARC Raiders is set to be one of 2025's best shooters and a perfect introduction to what can be an incredibly intimidating genre.

Following ARC Raiders' recent "Server Slam" event on Steam, The Best War Games went hands-on with the final build of the game in anticipation of its launch this week. Having now spent roughly 4 hours with the final build of ARC Raiders, I can confidently say that its addictive blend of looting, shooting, and extracting is fleshed out enough (and different enough from the heavy hitters, games like Hunt: Showdown or Witchfire) to make genre veterans happy, but also balanced to a point where newcomers should feel welcome to join up and venture out into the post-apocalypse. ARC Raiders ticks a lot of boxes that will make shooter fans happy, and it does so with a level of polish that one would expect from the studio behind The Finals.

Whether Solo or In a Squad, ARC Raiders is a Fantastic On-Ramp to Extraction Shooters

In comparing ARC Raiders to other games in the extraction shooter subgenre, the most obvious difference is its perspective. ARC Raiders is a third-person shooter, and the necessity of that perspective shift becomes apparent when you start playing and realize just how vital observation and listening are to your success. Similar to the use of noise in Hunt Showdown: 1896, keenly aware players will often have an advantage by being able to get the drop on computer-controlled ARC or human PvP enemies by simply listening to what's happening around them. A nearby "clunk" could be a fellow Raider breaching a container, but it could also be the sound of a massive ARC patrolling the area with the intent of wiping out anything that moves. When playing solo, using audiovisual cues to identify nearby threats is crucial for survival. But when playing in a squad, it's just one layer of a multipart strategic approach that rewards coordination, teamwork, and aggression.

Playing in a squad is where ARC Raiders really shines because it frees up each member in a three-person team to fulfill a specific role: the lookout, the looter, and the shooter. Each of these prescribed actions has its place and time during ARC Raiders' moment-to-moment gameplay, and it was surprising to see how both aggressive and cautious approaches to conflict (whether PvE or PvP) resulted in being victorious and escaping to live another day. Best of all, though, is that ARC Raiders' matchmaking does a good job of separating both solo and squad players into maps with others at their same progression level, making it very rare that any runs to the Rust Belt (the term ARC Raiders uses to refer to its post-apocalyptic surface world) are cut disastrously short for anything other than carelessness and greed. ARC Raiders is primarily designed to be fun, and that emphasis on playability immediately helps it stand out from other similarly minded extraction shooters.

ARC Raiders Was Already Great In Its First Preview, But It's Even Better Ahead of Its Launch

The biggest question on our minds going into the second preview of ARC Raiders centered around how much had changed in the last few months of development leading up to the game's release. The answer, as it turns out, is a whole lot. Players can still expect the core gameplay loop to be the same, but the subtle nuances that Embark Studios has put into play to polish the experience and make it ready for a general audience really come through in how much better ARC Raiders' in-game economy and progression loop are now structured.

In between expeditions to the surface, players will retreat to an underground city that serves as a hub. They'll recycle materials, craft gear and weapons, turn in quests, and move further along a skill tree for their Raider that is divided into three sections that provide significant improvements to how effective players are at looting and shooting. As you might expect, that progression loop eventually gives way to players becoming pretty powerful, and Embark has a unique system in play for how ARC Raiders handles the progression wipes that the extraction shooter genre is known for.

Rather than pigeonhole players into losing all their progress at certain points, ARC Raiders has implemented the "Projects" system. By signing up for a Project, players open themselves up to some of ARC Raiders' best rewards, but they do so with the full knowledge that all their progress will reset when the Project date terminates. This kind of risk/reward system is a great incentive for players looking for a greater challenge and a more leveled playing field, but the option to simply opt out of Projects is a major boon for anyone who plans on playing ARC Raiders more casually.

And when it comes to things like the costs of upgrading items or building out the player's workshop, material costs have been reduced, resources are much easier to come by on expeditions, and the creation of a "free loadout" option that randomizes players' kits makes it so that players who have lost everything in a bad run can still venture out to fight another day.

Part of what makes the extraction shooter genre so prohibitive for new players is this feeling of being "behind" or the FOMO that comes from putting a game down and not playing for a while. ARC Raiders is a very different kind of extraction shooter, one that's more friendly to the average player, precisely because it allows players to engage with it as casually or as hardcore as they choose, and it's still the same amount of fun regardless of which path you take. On top of it all, Embark has once again outdone itself in the art direction department with ARC Raiders' unique sci-fi setting and world, delivering a game that looks and sounds as good as it plays. With plenty of other options for extraction shooter games out there, ARC Raiders is cutting through the noise to deliver something that will appease the gamut of shooter fans, from hardcore enthusiasts to co-op weekend warriors.

ARC Raiders launches on October 30, 2025, for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. The Best War Games was provided a PC code for this preview.

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