If you told me in the summer I would have 100 hours into a looter-shooter by the end of 2025, I would have bet you $100 and a slap across the mouth that there was now way that was even remotely possible. AND…. here we are, with not only playing a ton, but got enough garbage in my stash to do the first season reset and get a modest bonus. This game is a fucking miracle. Design-wise it’s very similar to how Fortnite came about, as it started as a Big Boss Battler FPS and then morphed during playtesting into the boss battler looter shooter that it is now. Fortnite started as a rather lame FPS zombie tower defense and morphed into the PUBG-killer for little kids that became a global juggernaut.
There are so many games out there that try to find the secret sauce like this and I think I have an answer for why this one, PUBG, and FORTNITE hit so hard: CHAOS and CREATIVE PLAY. All three of these games are tight FPS games, and all three allow the player to come into a game with a plan that is totally different from any other player’s plan, and likely very different from what they did the round before as well. Hel, my first Fortnite win I just hid in a bush and back shot the last guy after he took out the third last guy… other times I dropped into hot zones to fight it out to get the best loot before the mid-game. There are tons of strange tactical plays in Arc Raiders, from setting up elaborate traps, gargoyling, to a hardcore run and gun PVP, to an Arc slayer to someone that runs onto maps with ZERO equipment and rolls the dice. All of them are somehow both viable and totally not viable in various situations. People gear up with a plan and the game answers with things you could not have foreseen happening, like spawning into and area with a rocketeer right there, or a leaper dropping into the building right next to you between you and the extract, or ALL the crazy stuff real people try to do to and for other players. What’s more, you can absolutely contribute to this chaos for great effect on a round. See someone with a Stitcher (and anti raider weapon) running around shooting people into the ground? Lure Grenade him to draw the Arcs in that he cannot hope to even damage. Having trouble aiming? set up massive traps in common areas and pick up the loot later. Want to help people? Set up ziplines so they can traverse the map in a jiffy, or heal them up (when they don’t shoot you). I think the combination of the chaos of a round and that you get such a wide breadth of choice in terms of how to approach it are what make Fortnite, PubG and Arc Raiders top of the pops.
Aesthetic
Arc Raiders is a trash-collection game and it’s aesthetics support this throughout, the raiders and Speranza denizens wear a variety of cast off gear and clothing, most of which is straight out of late 1960’s and early 70’s sci fi films. In contrast, the Arc robots (?) are ultra modern looking and mirror something that would be designed along the same lines today. This is a huge draw for the game as it just looks great throughout.
Sound design
The belle of the ball by far in Arc Raiders is the sound design. The importance of sound, sound recognition and being able to tell what is happening locally as well as on the larger maps themselves throughout the trash collection is essential to what makes AR fun as hell. You will know immediately on a map if players have engaged a matriarch or rocketeer, or if you haven’t checked the clock, that you are now down to 10, 5 or 2 minutes left based on sounds on the map. Locally, other raiders make sounds doing anything and everything and one of the biggest areas of learning the game /experience is what those sounds mean (and what to do about it). It’s hard to describe without experiencing it how important sound is to the entire Arcs experience, but it is phenomenal.
Here is an example during the first week of play dealing with a single rocketeer without the correct weapons, and having no idea what to do…
With fighting raiders, it’s really a crazy mess when people get stuck in, and usually when the adrenaline is pumping, stupid choices are made that lead to failures. An example of three such ‘events’ below.
When it comes down to it, Arc Raiders just delivers what gamers want, a playground of chaos and insanity that can be avoided by not taking risks and playing super safe, or leaned into by jumping on stella montis with ZERO equipment except a couple of smoke grenades. Totally game of the year.