Finally, Arc Raiders Is The Extraction Shooter For People With...

Last week I was: making friends with every raider over a mutual hunt for lemons in Arc Raiders.

This week I've been: continuing to team up with players in Arc Raiders, and blasting the mean ones.

As much as I love the nail-biting tension of extraction shooters, it's long been a genre obsessed with a rigorous gear grind and slow pace that make it almost impenetrable for new players, or those that can't dedicate more than a few hours a day or even a week. The one exception to this until now has been Hunt: Showdown, and while I can't recommend it enough, let's face it, it's not your typical extraction shooter.

So, for all these years, the extraction shooter has remained the dominion of a select few with enough time and patience to dedicate to it—and invariably trounce anyone who dares to give it a casual go.

Of course, with enough time and determination, you'll eventually join that elite band, but my point is that the genre isn't known for being welcoming and even semi-casual. If you want a genre to truly grow and experiment, encouraging a more diverse audience will do it.

Just as I thought perhaps the genre would never become truly mainstream—not even Bungie's Marathon seems to be breaking through—in comes Arc Raiders, somehow capturing the intensity and fear that any of its competitors do, but does so without requiring you to invest countless hours to keep up, nor feel like you're hit with the reset baton when you die. Loot matters, but it's not the be-all and end-all. Oh, and there are cool robots that make you shit yourself and encourage you to forge uneasy bonds with your fellow raiders.

What Arc Raiders nails on the head is a streamlined loot system that offers advantages as you move up tiers, but largely against its PvE robots than against other players in PvP. The best weapons, like the rare Hullcracker or Jupiter, specialise in punching through the toughest machines thanks to increased armour penetration.

Higher-tier assault rifles, pistols, and so on don't really do all that much more damage to players than the basic guns you'll find in free loadouts. Instead, they come with better handling, bigger magazines, or faster reloads. Better guns are better, but it's never the reason you win or lose a fight.

Even the way shields and healing work ensures the gap between cheap/common and expensive/rare items is never an insurmountable rift.

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Source: PC Gamer