Went into a raid solo, called the extraction lift. Some dude runs up - I shout “Don’t shoot, let’s extract together!” He shoots me instantly, of course... Then another random guy shows up - I scream “Kill that bastard!” He actually does it! 😂 Loots the traitor, helps me extract, and we both ride the lift like brothers in arms. Betrayal, revenge, teamwork - all in one minute. Absolute masterpiece.

First game, fresh drop, gear barely functional, and, i full of confidence. I'm scanning for loot when I hear this THUD. I peek over the ridge, and there it is, a 4 legged chrome beast. I thought, "Cool, I'll just sneak around it." Big mistake. The second my flashlight flickered, it turned like it heard my GPU fan spin up. The ground starts shaking, and suddenly this thing is charging me like it's late for a firmware update. I hit it with grenades, bullets, nothing stops it. It vaults over cover, tracks my every dodge, and when I finally think I lost it behind a rock, the thing flanks me. FLANKS. I didn't know bots could hold grudges, but apparently Embark Studios wrote the AI like, "If player breathes, hunt player." Thanks, Embark, never been hunted so efficiently by something without emotions.

No fishing. My disappointment is immeasurable

Good game but getting sick of being asked to pay for a game to just be bombarded w/ skins that cost half the game ADDENDUM 11/3: Upon great reflection on reading over 400 comments, I'd like to spell some things out for my UPDATED review... ● The game is great! I love it and it's an instant classic. Embark has made the perfect casual extraction shooter. ● Arc Raiders is $40 ● A skin bundle costs 2400 Raider Tokens or $19.99 ● An outfit costs 1100 to 1400 Raider Tokens or $14.99 ● As of November 3rd, there is no way to earn free Raider Tokens outside of the starter deck, which only gives you 700 Raider Tokens (at least you can buy a back bling!) ● I still don't think skins should cost half the price of the game It's the principle, people.

Don't trust anyone in ARC Raiders, i thought i had a friendly raiders finally but nope, they shot me in the head when I was extracting, that's really fucking shit, and now i'm developing trust issues ..

Already had the chance to play this before in the Server slam &' i gotta say, Embark Studios knows what they are doing. I can't wait to nerd the shit out of this game &' just enjoy my time, but since no one will ever see this review ill just admit it... My hype to this game might be huge, but my thighs &' ass are MASSIVE.

Lore: The clankers have taken over Logical conclussion: We should work together to fight against them Your average player: We should kill each other instead Good game, but I still hope one day someone will make a good extraction shooter that lets you just do the pve.

The game is absolutely great and all, but I’ve got just one question… …where are the dinosaurs?

If you've played The Finals, then you know the quality to expect from this game. My first game ended with me tagging along with a random dude who simply said "Don't shoot. Let's leave together." And it was beautiful.

The developers promised to build a tractor and have demonstrated it twice during two beta tests. People want a tank and don't understand why it's a tractor.

Playing solo's for some reason the community is really nice and not always pvp. Playing Duo/Trios bro its on sight at any given moment everyone wants blood.

Just not for me. As someone with limited playtime, I dont want to struggle against people who can spend their whole life playing the game. My first few interactions with other players I was shot on sight. The only way to finish a mission and not risk a wasted run was to be topside for less than 5 minutes. If they introduce a PVE mode, maybe add in some human, or humanoid, scavenger mobs that drop weapons and gear, I'll revisit the game.

The latest game that every single streamer plays and hypes into the stratosphere for 2 weeks before going back to Call of Duty or BF6. If you're anything like me you've been bombarded with videos about this game with people saying how emergent and different and compelling the gameplay is - especially in solos - and how fantastic the community is, citing examples of shouting out on voice chat "don't shoot!" and working together with other randoms to complete objectives and extract together or working with others to bring down bosses. My personal experience was not like this at all. I think I was shot to death in 2 seconds flat by someone who had vastly superior kit after initially spawning on my very first raid. It's like what would literally happen to me if I volunteered for a foreign warzone in real life. Maybe I got to loot a single container beforehand, I can't remember. Pressing E to search a bin feels like something I've done 3,000,000 times before, its no longer memorable. I'm not sure the staggered spawning method this games utilises - where there's two "waves" of spawns into an area - is particularly any better than systems in other games. All other raids I tried before I refunded were extremely typical of those other games: people camped the extract and mercilessly came after me, we're pointlessly playing a deathmatch when it'd obviously be better to all just leave together. People didn't even take my stuff for the most part (as it was T1 trash anyway) but simply denied me the loot I'd painstakingly dredged up from every rusty bin in the wasteland. Oh yay I get to play out the Prisoner's Dilemma time after time again! On a wider point that is not specific to ARC Raiders I really have to question whether bin-diving deserves its pivotal place in modern gaming. Press E, watch the rummage bar fill up, do a bit of very basic inventory management. A boring abstraction of the everyday experience of shopping - an activity I have to do in real life with gruelling frequency. In ARC Raiders, of course, just like when I go to Malik's Mega Market down the street late at night there is a certain chance of being mugged. The ever-present risk of being mugged does make shopping more stressful and fraught but does it make it more interesting? Does it make it fun? In my view: no. Maybe in the future every game will be a chore simulator with time-sink mechanics requiring you to play for 2,000 hours. Surely all of us want a second job. Maybe the future is already here! I'm not arguing the game shouldn't have PVP. Far from it. What would this game be without PVP? It would be so stale, just another Wasteland Supermarket Sweep. Reduce it to a co-op shooter and it really wouldn't have any staying power. You want to talk about market saturation? Co-op shooters are all broadly identical and I'd argue the AI enemies here are interesting only because they're a part of a world which also includes other humans as potential allies or - let's be completely honest, the far more likely alternative - camping, trigger-happy griefers. I'm willing to admit mileage will vary from person to person. If I'd had a single good or memorable experience solo then I might have carried on playing this game desperately chasing the dragon. "One day a fun thing with a random person might happen again!" The equivalent was my first few weeks of PUBG, which were full of strange interactions, people danced on rooftops with no clothes on, offered me a lift, weaponlessly chased me around... no-one had a clue what was happening and it was wildly silly. Fast-forward a year, I'm still playing it, hoping to recapture that and the actual experience is landing, looting for twenty minutes, then getting my head blown off by someone in a ghillie suit 10 miles away. Streamers may be paid to advertise a dream version of this game (either directly or because it's the new hot thing to get views and revenue) in which fun interactions and scenarios constantly play out and every Raid "is like a movie"! Any of us who have played a multiplayer game of any sort shouldn't fool ourselves. This type of thing is always going to be rare and, over time, as the playercount inevitably dwindles following the opening weekend and the streamers move onto the next thing like locust, the servers will be emptier and awash with cheaters and even more silent enemies with good guns, more robotic and implacable than the ARC. This is the reason lots of people are demanding a PVE mode; not because it would be a better game but because it would be a broadly consistent experience, un-tethered from a human element we are all cynical of. ARC Raiders is reliant on random people online not being assholes for its real high points and we all know that people online are, like, the worst. The truth is, even if I'd had a few hours of emergent fun with this, I couldn't recommend it as the future of the game is so obviously laid out for us all to see. Miscellaneous Other Points - I hate the "BUY ME" splurge of cosmetics at the hub. Completely nonsensical in the setting of the game, obviously, and wildly overpriced. Just another feature that all games must now have or shareholders start jumping off rooftops. - I'm dubious about Embark's insistence on using AI all the time, I'm not sure exactly how much has been done here - I've seen various reports - but its a really depressing practice by these devs in particular which feels mainly about cost-saving at the detriment of, you know, humanity's actual future. Ironic given the premise, eh? - I've seen streamers bang on about the uniqueness of the world but it feels exactly as novel as the starting area in the original Destiny. Oh a rusty bus and a satellite dish. Wow. Similarly all the junk weapons and stuff feel very tired and generic. Again, I don't know why this is being sold like the Emperor's New Clothes? If you love the gameplay just say so, it's in a completely middling sci-fi wasteland setting. That's fine. I saw one guy in absolute fake-orgasm mode about how beautiful it is and, come on, you've played a video game before. You've seen this. - Third person. All debate about this is pointless really. You have to accept people can see you around corners. I think it makes for objectively worse and less immersive gunfights where you're tactically swinging a camera about for an advantage but it also means you get a nice animation when you're rooting through a bin and you can see the hat you paid $40 for. - Solo queue. There isn't one. It seeks to put solos versus solos but you will potentially end up against squads and you won't know it. People say this is so the community isn't split but the community IS split by default between people on their own and people with friends. I don't see a compelling reason not to actually split the queues. Again, I've seen this sold as an immersive atmospheric thing: is there another guy with this person, be safe, stalk them, listen out for companions blah blah blah. In reality it'll boil down to this: you potentially versus multiple coordinated human enemies when you call the exit lift. Decide whether you want that experience. Your answer may depend on whether you are a streamer who gets paid to play video games full-time or you're a normal person.

It's great, i'm addicted to the game. But keep asking player feedback after every run which is super annoying af

Woke bullshit. Body type 1 & 2 = refund.

There's only one REAL reason I'm not recommending this game, and naturally, It's PvP... The loot is pretty boring, though I also haven't gotten too far into the progression (lvl 17 at this time). My main issue is forced PvP. I know, I'm bad at PvP, skill issue, whatever you want to say. At least try to understand the perspective of being a typically casual player that enjoys shooter games, looter games, and exploration. Like PvE Tarkov, I believe that they did a very good job of that, making it not as difficult, while making loot a little more scarce while also making it so that you can have a challenge on higher difficulty maps, but you can also have a calm run on the less difficult ones. I absolutely HATE forced PvP. I want to be friendly to people and shoot robots, hell, I think the robots are already somewhat difficult enough, the rocketeer has ended my run plenty of times, plus it takes a while to kill, if I even CAN kill it, especially with a free kit. My point being, I want to have a calm time playing a game, looting, and shooting robots. What I DON'T want is tryhards that only play PvP for the joy of egoing everyone else, the amount of times I've been killed only to also hear "suck my dick", "you're so shit", "back to the lobby", ect. It's just sad to see honestly. I really enjoy the gameplay, the guns are kinda cool, especially when you unlock the later and better ones, the ARC are fun to fight, hitting the little jets and "crit" spots is fun, exploring the environments is fun, I just think that the game is ruined by other people who only enjoy being the absolute best. Again, I know I'm not great at PvP, I don't care to be great at PvP, I just want to enjoy playing a game after I get off work while also not being limited to playing specific games, everyone should be able to be included and should be able to enjoy playing the game, even those of us who just want to be friendly and don't want to fight each other. In all, I'll reiterate again, I love this games style, I love Embark Studios, they're probably one of the few game companies that actually LISTENS to their players and also regularly adds content to the games, like The Finals, another game I really enjoy, the whole point of that one is PvP, but you also don't lose gear or get enemies talking trash, only other teammates. Anyways, I love Embark, I like this game, I just really wish I didn't have to fight some of you people out there. I don't understand the perspective of being so competitive to the point where you're just ruining someone else's fun, especially people who just want to relax after bad days at work or dealing with other things where playing games helps us feel better. Feel free to speak your mind about what you think, if you think the same, if you hate the game overall, or just tell me I suck at the game if you want, I don't care, just thought I'd speak my frustrations with the hope that the few of us out there who just aren't so competitive may have a real chance to absolutely love this game if they ever decide to have a PvE only or unmatchmade games. (please, i really suck at fighting others and im tired of meeting someone and being friendly to them only to get my head blown off by an anvil) :( Edit: I REALLY didn't expect this to blow up so much! Thank you all kindly for the points, and the words! I should mention, I've played quite a bit of solo queue, and from what I can see, a lot of the people seem to be very nice and friendly. The only time I really ran into issues with PvP being very toxic or unenjoyable was in a stack of 3. I also do agree with some of your points here, the PvP does make the game more alive, I do believe that a lot of PvE only games to tend to die off quite quick IF not done very specifically correctly, or without adding very regular content. Not saying PvP should be COMPLETELY removed, I enjoy it with friends at times, I just also believe that a sort of PvE alternative would be nice for those of us who aren't so competitive. Another comment I've seen is that not all games cater to everyone, I totally agree. I don't feel like every game HAS to be catered to everyone, I just want to itterate that a ton more people would play more consistently if they didn't HAVE to do PvP. On a last note, I saw someone said something about the talking aspect, and you are ABSOLUTELY right. In games where I wouldn't talk or would use the voice changer to have a deeper voice, people tended to give me a "you're trash" or "back to the lobby", but when talking without, that's when the more "suck my dick" comments come out. Addendum: Thank you all, I really didn't expect my review to actually be seen! Thank you for the points, and the clowns! Thank you for telling your sides of it, I read all the comments and it's always nice to see people who have really valid counterpoints, or people who agree with my points!

This loosing items at end if you get killed make the game to be just a waste of time.

The cosmetics pricing is bad. Worse than Embarks own F2P game. A bundle with a single raider skin is more than half the price of the base game and more than twice as expensive as The Finals or Hunt Showdown. This shit you can pull in a F2P game, but it has no place in a paid title. The devs even removed the possibility to earn premium currency through challenges. Your only chance to get some is the battle pass, which grants you 500 or 5 bucks. I'm frankly tired of Embarks constant stream of grievances bundled together with a great game. Get it on a steep discount because monetization is priced as such. I've played the tests. I know the game is good, I said they have a great game. Not the point of this review.

bro. arc waideres got me tweaking. i thought it was just some “shooty robot game” but nah this thing got me crawling through junkyards with a busted rifle while some 12-foot space blender screams in surround sound. first waid i dropped in, didn’t even know what button extracts, just running around looting scrap like a raccoon on espresso. next thing i know, a bot lands from orbit and vaporizes me before i even say “yo chill.” gameplay? absolute chaos. you load into this busted-up future wasteland, try to grab gear, then suddenly three other dudes pop out the bushes and it’s like “trust issues: the video game.” i swear half the time i’m not even fighting, just sprinting while yelling “please let me extract i got good loot.” the other half is me crafting bullets out of soup cans and praying the drones don’t hear me. but when you do survive? holy serotonin dump. like i punched god and he said “respect.” the sound design slaps—every explosion hits like a frying pan to the skull, and the music makes u feel like u just robbed a space bank. visuals got that gritty cold war future vibe, everything’s dusty, metallic, and slightly sad. love that. yeah it’s got jank. bots be teleporting, my squadmate once flew into the sky and never came down. but honestly? that’s the charm. arc waideres ain’t polished—it’s raw. it’s junkyard poetry with bullets. so yeah, play arc waideres if you wanna experience panic, triumph, and at least three emotional breakdowns per match. don’t expect mercy. don’t expect logic. expect vibes, chaos, and loot that makes you feel like the main character for 30 seconds before a robot punts you into orbit. i love arc waiders. #WaidOnWaiders

great game, i love clankers and they love me (putting bullets into my ass)

Amazon drones have taken over. Solo experience isn't a game, it's an adventure.

For a PAY2PLAY game this has way too much of a focus on the Store, and not enough focus on the earnable cosmetics and outfits via gameplay/challenges. If this was free2play I'd understand, But so far I'm getting a big red flag on the store having soo many things compared to the deck(s) Obvisouly the game is great, I have had zero issues in the test other than crashing, and my first two matches so far are flawless. Hopefully they respond well to critism and critique. And dont just cater to Stock Holders and Greedy CEO's.

A player and I were trying to fight each other but we both were getting our booty kicked so hard by AI we decided to team up and extract together instead. Humanity needed a greater enemy than itself and that is Arc.

Overhyped. Movement is sluggish. Gunplay is sluggish. PVP encounters are meh. PVE enemies are boring bullet sponges. Feels more like a running simulator where I have to gather different kinds of scrap. Will come back later to see gameplay feels smoother.

The game went way too hard into the "Get more loot just for the sake of it" The pvp is okay~ish until you realize that rare loot is so common that you're better off not killing anyone because you'd not be able to carry anything more. This game feels like you have nothing to do except be a loot goblin for the sake of it. It feels like the developers wanted to go hard PvE (Imagine that, just like they originally said they would!) but the suits got invested and now they dropped a $40 game where your only interesting gameplay is to ruin other people's gameplay for little to no reward. Mind you, I'm a Hunt: Showdown veteran, there's nothing to do except kill people for the hell of it. After 10 hours I've already unlocked every map and am nearing the point where I can prestige. TL:DR: After 15 hours of gameplay I have been endgame for a while now. No real goals once you get in-game makes the game feel bland and scatterbrained. Maybe updates will fix it but right now this just feels pointless and can't decide what it wants to be.