The Good and the Bad - Some honest thoughts about Arc Raiders

I don't usually post game reviews on Reddit, but Arc Raiders is an interesting enough situation to warrant saying something. I probably have close to 100 hours at this point, when considering the pre-release tests.

The devs behind ARC Raiders are extremely talented. The game looks, sounds, runs, and feels incredible. It's truly polished in almost every area. The AI is smart and challenging. The overall design, lore, and aesthetic are unique and show real care. The launch was perfect.

However, once you get past the presentation, the game starts to fall apart. The core loop is short and repetitive, even compared to other extraction shooters. The in-game events are kind of cool, but also lack depth. Loot is generic and cumbersome with its multi-layer recycle design, fetch quests feel extremely lazy and dated, and the skill tree doesn’t add much. The leveling and currency systems don’t create a real sense of progress. There’s no strong feeling of loss on death or reward on survival. It's more of the boring, same old stuff we've already been playing but without any of the depth.

Because these things mean very little, it feels like there is also very little reward to killing other players. In a way this is a fresh and unique take compared to other extraction games. However this only plays to the toxicity of combat where there is more merit in killing for "fun" than any other purpose. I personally don't feel that satisfaction from killing anyone in this game, I just feel like I'm ruining someone else's experience by dropping in on them at an opportune time. It's very rarely ever fair of course, it is an extraction shooter after all, but I do plenty of fair killing in other PvP games to feel any satisfaction here. Instead, trying to help players is a refreshing and unique playstyle, but again, very little purpose or reward.

Embark - the cash grab is crazy. The skins are average, can’t be mixed or customized, and cost way too much. $20 for a small skin bundle on top of a $40 game is unacceptable. The polish and care put into the design and art makes the contrast of greediness in the cash shop feel jarring.

I want to be a fan of Embark. You have an incredibly talented team, but the seedy, quick cash mentality from those calling the shots overshadows everything good you've built. The shift to an extraction shooter reflects this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that decision caused frustration within the team itself.

ARC Raiders is extremely artistically and technically impressive, but those merits alone do not make a good game. It’s getting a lot of praise right now, and some of it is deserved, but much of it is truly driven by hype. On Steam right now it is rated "Very Positive" which will without a doubt fall to "Mostly" or "Mixed" within the next few months. Unless something major changes, the game will either have to shift to free-to-play or watch its player base disappear within a year.