ARC Raiders didn’t reinvent everything, but perfected much
Even though Hunt: Showdown and The Cycle: Frontier utilized some of the key pillars of ARC Raiders’ success earlier, the game from Embark has perfected them. The AI opponents are more refined than those in The Cycle, and the vision is closer to the “core” of the genre than with Hunt.
However, perhaps the most important factor for the success of ARC Raiders is its polish. It didn’t release in Early Access but as a finished game. No promises that might not be kept, no constant patches that need to introduce or change fundamental systems.
Letting players in as early as possible is now common. Especially the genre giant Escape from Tarkov is notorious for its endless development, that players are confused when the 1.0 release was suddenly approaching – 8 years after the initial launch.
Another praise that often comes up is the (certainly related to the “finished game”) performance of ARC Raiders. The game runs smoothly and you don’t even need a high-end PC to play with good performance.
ARC Raiders does many things differently from the competition in the genre and apparently successfully and to the delight of players, especially those who do not want to play the next clone of Escape from Tarkov. Nevertheless, this shooter has led to the existence of extraction shooters in this form: A whole new gaming genre is emerging – What are EFT-Likes?
