When I gave the extraction shooter Arc Raiders a glowing review back in November, I wasn’t sure it would keep me hooked.
After 2 months, I had 250 hours of study time. Despite its obvious flaws, and developer Embark Studio’s insistence on retaining the AI-generated voice lines, I find myself finding it appealing every day, but not for the reasons I expected.
I always thought that what was special about Ark Raiders was that each round was different and you never knew what was going to happen when you met another player in the middle of a round. But what keeps me coming back isn’t its surprising ways, but the predictable ways it allows you to game the system to squeeze out more fun, higher-level loot, and more special, absurd moments.
Last week, I spawned at night on Ark Raiders’ most violent and claustrophobic map, Stella Monteith. Using emotes, flashlight flashes, and voice communications, I formed an improvised squad with two other friendly raiders. Together we burst dozens of pops, firing rolling death balls that screeched around corners and exploded in your face.
Two hostile players then ambushed us. Perhaps they formed their own spontaneous groups with more murderous intentions. They shot first, but we outplayed them. We sent one person out and the other one ran in an old-fashioned diving suit. We chased him through a maze of pneumatic doors, shouting into our microphones not to trust deep-sea divers. We gathered one, two, three strangers together, all screaming and thirsty for blood, and I led a zigzag chase.
I found him crouched between two shipping containers on the edge of a two-story cliff. He jumped over the edge and managed to survive being slammed to the ground as we all fired in glee. However, he was quickly mowed down by Bastion, one of the Ark Raider’s largest robots. Everyone cheered and celebrated his death by firing trigger grenades into the six-legged beast until it was a smoking ruin.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun / Nexon / Embark Studios
This sequence is classic Ark Raider. Its expansive playground allows you to be a pacifist, robot hunter, PvP enthusiast, and everything in between, but the magic lies in the crags that form when these playstyles collide.
But this round would have played out very differently 200 hours ago. From my perspective, it unfolded as a series of informed predictions based on the time I spent raiding, and they all came true.
I knew from the movements and voices of my two allies that it was safe to trust them. I knew how to express emotion and shine a flashlight to get them to trust me. I knew I should ride the elevator platform near the spawn for a chance to find a secret weapon box and grab the chunky Vulcano shotgun that would later kill my attacker. When ambushed, I knew when to smoke, when to flank, and which enemy to focus on. When tracking, I knew what route the enemy would take and where they were likely to be hiding.
As a newbie, I would have tripped up one of these hurdles and missed out on the old man’s glorious ending.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun / Nexon / Embark Studios
The more you play, the easier it will be to find the magical wrinkles in Ark Raider. It’s everywhere, even before you participate in a round. I always approached every run in one of two ways. One is to equip heavy gear to maximize your chances of survival to bring back loot from the surface, but you also risk losing expensive gear if you die during a mission. Alternatively, I choose the free loadout, which is risk-free, but doesn’t have a “safe pocket” to protect the items you put inside, even if you die. But I discovered a better way to maximize value. It’s all about using augments with shields and two secure pockets.
This works because I know each map well and can find weapons, healing, and some grenades near where I spawn. Depending on where you are on the map and how much time is left on the round timer, you’ll know whether it’s best to scour the high-value areas for loot (stuffing the blueprints in a safe pocket) or ambush other players who’ve already picked them up clean.
Cheap equipment means a lot of profit and will come in handy when the next wipe called an expedition begins. We were also taught how to use all the gadgets in the game. It never occurred to me to combine smoke and tagging grenades as long as I had to rely on smoke and tagging grenades during a single run. Now I’d say this is one of the deadliest combos in the game.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios
You can now also game the matchmaking system to suit your mood. It’s based at least in part on how aggressive you are, and as I discovered, it adapts quickly. Drop some gifts on strangers and perform the passive three times in a row to return to the friendly lobby. This is great when you want to find a specific blueprint (Tempest hasn’t been touched yet) or when you want to improve your score in Ark Raiders’ weekly trials. When you want to enjoy more PvP with better equipped players, it only takes a few intense rounds to get there.
Finally, I realized that being “good” at Ark Raiders is not about objectives (my goals are lackluster), but about preparation, equipment, and map knowledge. Gaining experience doesn’t necessarily make it more fun, but it can help you avoid getting frustrated to death.
So when you learn that you need to kill a flying robot for a weekly test, you find that the rooftop of a hospital in a buried city is the perfect location. When I was an early raider, someone would sneak up on me and kill me to erase my high score. But now you know where to set up your zipline, how many protective mines to take with you, and where to stand to block the line of sight from nearby buildings. I was able to snipe with confidence.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun / Nexon / Embark Studios
My relationship with Ark is about to be tested. My wife is due to have a baby in a few weeks. Will you still feel the charm even after a few months away? It partially depends on new maps and items, but in the long run I’m worried that Embark’s attitude towards generative AI will kill my appetite.
The game uses paid voice actors to train an AI tool, with their consent, to generate empty, eerie voices for in-game items and locations. Design director Virgil Watkins recently told PCGamesN that the team didn’t have the ability to convey real voices at launch, but that argument has certainly been blown away by the game’s success, and perhaps Embark has made enough money to pay actors 10 times their current rate. Watkins added, “It’s not like we’re not listening to those concerns,” so if you’re listening, please pay real people to make the game.
So far, I’ve cleared up my hypocrisy by telling myself that I have a right to have fun, to relax, to be occupied, and to keep in touch with friends who live 100 miles away. But perhaps the joy of the Ark Raiders will only be able to hide its sour taste for a long time.
Or maybe not.
