I'm sitting in a small closet next to the elevator that will take me to safety and a big payday. Before heading home, I open the last storage cabinet and then bam: disaster. Another player runs towards me with murder in his heart and a bullet in the chamber. I turn around just as the door opens and we open up in a firefight, each one badly wounded and ducking behind cover.
At this moment something strange happens: we start chatting. I propose to cease hostilities, and my enemy will be a young British man. He says no and throws a grenade at me: the negotiations are going badly. I close the door and attach a door lock to it, locking it on my side. Out of ignorance, this guy tries to push me again, but finds that his passage inside is insurmountable, while I am healed and ready for a counterattack.
This is one example of the intense player-to-player combat I experienced over the weekend while playing Arc Raiders during a server tournament. Of course, this is an exceptional anecdote. Most encounters with other players are quick shots that end with a sharp punch to the jaw, but you'll be shocked at how much this social aspect adds to the game. I would say this is the core of the whole package.
Let me explain why. The genre of extravagant shooters, to summarize its essence, is a series of simulators of suffering. At their core, they are unforgiving and brutal games. All your best loot can be taken away in a difficult game, and with the wrong turn towards the best player, the vast majority of those hard-won achievements can be lost in a second. Thus, your character's life is one of survival at all costs, a turbulent existence in which you have to watch your back and do what you need to do.
But if you do take a chance, if you hit the “Push to Talk” button or spam “don't shoot” on the emote wheel, you open up the possibility of short-lived friendships. After all, if your inventory is full and their inventory is full, even if you get the better of them, will you walk away with what? A few extra bullets and a toaster? Maybe, if you're lucky, you don't have a drawing?
I believe that the spirit of cooperation is alive and well in Arc Raiders and have seen it work brilliantly. I was able to successfully escape a match with three random players without firing a shot, all with a little verbal reassurance and faith in my fellow man. Things didn’t go well for me either; I walked around with a friend for three minutes before he shot me in the back, apologized before knocking me out and stealing my stuff. I had my head blown off by a real bad guy who spammed “don’t shoot” to lower my guard and then killed me at the first opportunity.
Now you might be thinking, “Arc Raiders didn't invent push-to-talk, stupid, other games have that,” and you're right. Luckily, Embark Studios seems to have tailored even the smallest interactions between you and the world to encourage these PvP encounters. Secret trick? Noise – and a lot of it. Almost everything worth doing in Arc Raiders makes noise: opening doors, breaking open boxes, running literally anywhere, shooting a pistol, calling an elevator to safety, rolling on the ground five times in a row. Everything generates noise that can be heard from a distance: the map is filled with players moving slowly and listening to each other with weapons at the ready.
This means PvP-focused players take on the role of hunters stalking the wilderness and fighting off players they encounter. But maybe you don't like PvP, maybe you're a scavenger. Me, of course! Instead of separating myself from the players around me by doing my own thing and looting for fun, I act as a clarion call for other people. This is great – it naturally encourages interaction between players with different goals.
There is one place that I like. Dam battlegrounds obviously have a large dam in the center of the map. Near this central point is the Control Tower, where many amazing things can be found. But next to the dam itself there is a series of bridges that you will have to reset manually. Not only do they connect the control tower to the rest of the dam, but they also provide access to two very lucrative rooms full of loot. There are even a few lockers inside that can only be opened by those who have accumulated a lot of skill points in the survival skill tree.
It takes time and a lot of noise to get to this place. You naturally attract PvP players adjacent to your location, at which point you're stuck hanging over a huge cliff on the floor below, with only a bridge with no cover between you and the attacking player. This could be a devastating battle ormaybe it's time to open the mic and talk. It happened to me and it was great.
Server Strike was only a small part of the entire game, but judging by this small Arc Raiders offering, I'm frankly desperate to get back into the full game. If you have any love in your heart for online pranks, desperate friends, and the feeling of betrayal, then Arc Raiders has it. It's also in a really well made mining game that sets the bar high for its competitors.
