ARC Raiders

More than once we extract on our knees, the dregs of life draining out as we hit the button

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Your first trip into the Rust Belt is unlikely to end well. Following a robot invasion that drove most remnants of humanity to live underground, the world above has been left to two populations, both dangerous. The ARC of the title refers to Earth’s new overlords: an apparently inexhaustible supply of striders, flyers and rollers that patrol the surface, shooting on sight. Even the humblest of these bots can spell doom if you don’t know how to deal with them: their metal plating will eat bullets, unless you can hit them in just the right weak spot. Meanwhile, Raiders — your fellow human scavengers, controlled by other players — aren’t necessarily the enemy, but they’re unpredictable. They might offer to team up, or wordlessly gun you down. Or, in particularly sadistic cases, one then the other.

There are two separate strands of threat to worry about, then, and you have just a level-one Rattler to your name. The starter rifle’s rate of fire comes paired with fierce kickback and an agonising two-at-a-time reloading procedure, so that your appointed pocketful of ammunition is unlikely to go very far. On your first time out, an ugly end is all but inevitable, whether it comes beneath the boot of another Raider or at the sharp end of a Hornet's taser.

The Rust Belt thus introduces itself as a hostile place, and that teaches caution. With your weapon tucked away, you scurry, heart in mouth, through maps like one of our rodent ancestors trying not to get squashed underfoot by dinosaurs. But this initial harshness also teaches you to remain alert. We can’t remember the last time a game so often had us leaning into the screen, trying to catch every last detail in a scene — is that deep orange the light of a sunset or of an ARC’s vision cone?

Even more important than looking closely, perhaps, is listening.