Latest Arc Raiders Review
Arc Raiders is a genuinely enjoyable extraction shooter thanks to interesting weapons, beautiful maps, and unpredictable, action-packed PvPvE encounters.
PC Gamer's got your back
Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware.
What is it? A singleplayer and multiplayer third-person extraction shooter set in a post-apocalyptic Rust Belt-inspired setting. Release date October 30, 2025Expect to pay $40 / £30Developer Embark StudiosPublisher Embark StudiosReviewed on RTX 3070, Core AMD Ryzen 5 5600G, 16GB RAMMultiplayer YesSteam Deck TBCLink Steam
We should not be standing in the open like this. My friends may be chill enough to enjoy rummaging through carcasses of rusted arcs and foraging for mushrooms, but Arc Raiders is an extraction shooter, and I know what happens in extraction shooters. Nothing is sacred and nowhere is safe.
I've found some wires and a volcanic rock. I have no idea how good these things are yet, but I've played enough Escape from Tarkov to know that living long enough to escape with anything is a win. "Just enjoy yourself", they say, but I can't stop whipping the camera back and forth, trying to spot danger before it sees me. I lose the first vote to head back to Speranza via an extraction point, so I continue skulking behind my squad, muttering about lines of sight and being too loud. It's not until we shoot down a couple of flying Wasp arcs that we start the journey home.
Finally, an extraction site. A safe place? Wrong. This is a prime camping spot; we're in more danger than we've ever been in. My paranoia is vindicated when two other players come running along the ridgeline, strangers ready to strip me of all my earthly belongings and call me trash. Prepared for war, I fire off enough shots to take out one of their shields, and then they just… leave. In the end, the extraction lift arrives, we get in, and we're out. No shot in the back of the head from someone lying in wait, no duel to the death over the lift. My amygdala had been working overtime, but it wasn't until the end of my first excursion in Arc Raiders that I realised not all extraction shooters have to be like Tarkov.
Arc Raiders' post-apocalyptic premise is familiar, but the '70s/'80s sci-fi style it casts it in manages to hit the sweet spot of actually being cool to look at. The world has gone to hell thanks to robots and AI, so now all the
Source: PC Gamer
