It’s easy to be skeptical about a new extraction shooter in 2025. Escape From Tarkov has locked down the genre in its perpetual closed beta status since 2017, and experimental competitors like The Cycle: Frontier have come and gone in the meantime. That’s not to mention the fact that Bungie’s Marathon is coming out this year, a looming shadow over this hard-core gaming genre.

But Embark Studios’ ARC Raiders is surprisingly accessible to more casual players, and I can see it carving out its own niche within the space. During a 3-hour online preview event where media members were able to get hands-on experience with solo and squad play in the latest beta build, I got a feel for how each run plays out: sneaking around for loot, hiding from or dispatching robot enemies and engaging other players in combat in a mad dash to the remaining exits on the map.

The world of ARC Raiders is perhaps the biggest draw — humanity is overrun by an onslaught of the ARC, a fleet of different mechanized enemies that routinely fall from space. The last remnants of mankind live in the underground city of Speranza, struggling through life and waiting to reclaim the world.

In the meantime, someone has to make the trip up through the tubes to grab crucial supplies left on the surface for the movers and shakers down below. That’s where the raiders come in. Players step into the role of one of a ragtag gang of mercenaries that navigate the arid-but-not-desolate post-post-apocalypse for profit and glory and who are just as likely to gun down the ARC as they are their fellow man to heist a score and bring it back below the surface.

The goals and main progression systems of ARC Raiders are very similar to other extraction shooters in this sense. Whether I was tackling questlines for the vendors in Speranza or building and upgrading workbenches to expand my arsenal, my purpose in each run was to find specific loot (or kill specific bots) to strengthen my character. A persistent skill tree with nodes that increase vitality, mobility and looting speed ensured that I felt like I was getting stronger even when I didn’t make it back underground.

It seems like the end goal is to build up an arsenal strong enough to challenge hulking robotic behemoths — like the ARC Queen seen in the photo above — that are designed as a sort of raid boss that multiple players will need to work together to take down. Even still, there’s a lot to enjoy here for players who never reach this endgame. Unlike my experience with Escape From Tarkov and The Cycle: Frontier, I never had a dull run during my time with ARC Raiders.

High-speed action, changing map conditions and emergent narratives make each run feel unique

Extraction shooters usually encourage slow, methodical gameplay — when you can lose everything in seconds, you carefully calculate every move.

This is less so the case in ARC Raiders. It’s a game where you can crouch, but you can’t go prone, suggesting more of an active play style than hiding for prolonged minutes to avoid making a sound. Instead, you’re encouraged to dodge roll out of danger and take ziplines up and down buildings. Runs are far more entertaining because everyone is constantly being pushed into high-speed player-versus-player-versus-enemy action.

The preview started us in solo runs, bringing in little equipment and setting us loose on each other as we crept in from the edges of the map. From the get-go, I was thrust into combat — the first location I looted in my time with ARC Raiders was a medical facility on the outskirts of a dam. This map has the most flora and color of the three we got to try, and it seems as though it offers the most beginner-friendly experience.

As I rifled through drawers to find fabric, bandages and adrenaline shots, I heard footsteps thudding up the stairway behind me — the game has very strong sound design, and it’ll often clue you into threats before you ever see anything. Footsteps might even be a little too loud in the current build, as you can suss out where someone is crouch-walking if you’re keyed in on a nearby player.

I took up a position behind a computer console, making sure none of my extremities were exposed while preparing an ambush. A flashlight shone across the threshold, scanning the room — a raider clad in black strode in cautiously. I popped out of cover and peppered him with gunfire, but as my bullets struck my opponent, blue sparks emitted from his body. His shield protected him from the brunt of my initial volley, and I began to panic as my magazine ran dry.

Suddenly, alarms blared and the building whirred to life. Our brief exchange had activated the building’s security protocols, and a spherical ARC robot rolled out of a hole in the wall. Flamethrowers extended from pods on its sides, and the new threat lit up the room with wicked plumes of fire as I hightailed it out of there.

When I reached the other side of the building, I held rank in a corner and listened for movement. Thirty seconds passed, then a minute, and I knew I couldn’t stay in one place any longer. Creeping back to where I once fought my fellow man, a low electric thrum indicated that it was a machine that won the day.

I dumped my magazine into the bot, sending it backward into a wall as circuitry and debris exploded from its metal husk. The physics engine is working overtime in ARC Raiders, and every shot that connects with an ARC enemy is rewarded with satisfying mechanical spasms and crunching machinery.

It was only as the death sphere stopped moving and I closed the distance toward it that I found the body of my human opponent, who had been set aflame as I made my escape. He had been roasted mid-retreat, attempting to backtrack to the building’s entrance. I grabbed everything I could carry before setting off toward the dam.

Every run I embarked on built a different tale, with many ending in tragedy like this one. There were other adventures, though, that coalesced in spontaneous camaraderie.

During one run in the spaceport map, I made contact with two other solo raiders over proximity voice chat, joining them on their scavenging spree. We found a weapons crate and divvied up the loot.

I passed a rifle and crafting materials to my newfound teammates, and in return, they handed me a rare horizontal grip for my submachine gun. At any point, we could have turned on each other and turned the affair into a proper bloodbath, but we chose to work together for the best chance to escape with our spoils.

In another run, a sandstorm obscured my vision, so I waited until someone opened up the extraction tube to run up and gun them down. It was difficult to assess the threat level of my surroundings, so I decided to cut someone else’s escape short by mere seconds.

The encounter weakened me, and a sniper’s shot tore me asunder moments later — yet I was able to crawl to the console and extract before my bleedout timer ran out, saving my precious loot in the 11th hour of the match.

These are pulse-pounding moments that define extraction shooters for many players, and it’s what makes the high-stakes gameplay feel so rewarding.

Squad gameplay is just as riveting — I spent an hour navigating the arid alleyways of ARC Raiders’ Buried City with Paul Greveson, a technical artist from Embark Studios, and CNET’s very own David Lumb. As we negotiated a deserted highway overpass and tight urban corridors, it became clear that careful coordination is the key to success in ARC Raiders.

We looted and shared crafting materials that were required for our questlines back home, and watched each other’s backs as the ARC presence increased across the map. At one point, we had 90 seconds to reach a train station before we lost our only path back to Speranza (extraction zones are only available for limited times from the start of the match, and some shutter sooner than others). As we descended the zipline below ground, a large flying ARC unit — the Snitch — spotted me and called nearby gun-toting Wasps to our location.

They descended into the sinkhole, and my team had to fight aerial units in dark, cramped tunnels before we could escape. For an extraction shooter, it was an intensely cinematic moment — it was a peak of urban warfare that reminded me of The Division in many ways.

In other games like Escape From Tarkov, the downtime between these encounters is excruciatingly long — I can set out on multiple scavenger runs in a row without a moment that defines my gameplay session. In ARC Raiders, I feel like something important and exciting happens in every run.

Even though losing your items when dying midway through a run sucks, giving folks these epic stories to chase every time they set out into the world is the secret sauce for retaining players in an extraction shooter — and I think it’s where ARC Raiders stands head and shoulders above the competition. The game even lets you relive your greatest hits after every run, showing off a detailed map with all the places you looted, the ARC enemies you destroyed and the raiders you wounded (or who wounded you).

Even when you’re losing items, you’re discovering and sharing emergent narratives with the other raiders around you. That is what makes every run feel like time well spent.

ARC Raiders eschews common extraction shooter trappings to embrace a wider playerbase

Speed is key to attracting more gamers, and ARC Raiders seems to have stumbled upon a winning formula. Running and gunning feels just as valuable as perching in a sniper’s nest and watching out for unsuspecting raiders, and I was never taken out in a single shot so long as I had a shield equipped.

Even when I was caught off-guard, every engagement I had with another player felt fair — that’s important when your entire inventory of loot is on the line, and I suspect that this higher feeling of player agency will be a massive draw for players who have been turned away by similar games.

Player parity and fairness seems to be one of the core pillars of ARC Raiders’ design, which is unusual for an extraction shooter. Embark Studios is creating a game that seemingly respects your time, even when you don’t make it back to Speranza alive — and if you don’t play the game for hours each week.

In similar extraction shooter games, hardcore players are able to pull ahead early, assembling high-tier armor that low-tier weapons can’t penetrate. They camouflage themselves and wait in corners for half an hour to obliterate any unsuspecting players who wander into the wrong room. Then, they rifle through their belongings and extract the goods.

ARC Raiders disincentivizes this behavior in several ways. The third-person camera view and enhanced mobility mean that a corner camper doesn’t have an inherent advantage in a fight, and there don’t seem to be any pieces of armor that small arms can’t pierce. Equippable shields merely offer different health bar extensions, which will help veterans fare better in combat but won’t outright determine how a fight plays out.

Higher-caliber weapons still serve a purpose, though, since you’ll need certain bullet penetration to take out the roaming ARC robots. There were runs where I avoided the quad-rotor flying Wasp drones and only fought tiny pests like the insectoid Ticks because I was carrying only weapons that used light ammunition.

There are tangible benefits to accumulating a bigger arsenal that make continuing to dive into the world of ARC Raiders feel extremely rewarding, and I ended up eager to play “just one more run” as I discovered how to deal with new challenges.

One of the biggest changes from other extraction shooters will also be a boon to the more casual playerbase: Your progression will stay intact over the game’s lifespan, as Embark Studios doesn’t currently plan to periodically wipe players’ stashed loot. The studio told me that it’s working on several other options to prevent the balance of power from skewing too hard toward endgame players hoarding the highest-tier equipment, but ARC Raiders players seemingly won’t have to worry about losing their hard-earned loot — unless they’re eliminated on the field.

When you’re dealing with a player-versus-player experience, there are variables outside of the core gameplay systems to worry about, too. For one, there’s the inherent lack of balance between squad and solo play. The preview event was structured so that there were designated times for both playing alone and in a three-person squad, but this obviously won’t be the case when the game launches.

Embark Studios plans to primarily limit matchmaking so that lobbies separate solo and squad players, but I was told that solo players could end up in squad player lobbies to ensure good matchmaking times in low population areas or during off-peak hours. It doesn’t feel great to run into a coordinated squad and lose all of your items when you’re by yourself, which could become a thorny issue for players in certain regions.

Other extraction shooters have struggled with cheating problems — rampant cheating played a large role in the death of The Cycle: Frontier and it’s still a massive problem in Escape From Tarkov. When you’ve invested 20 to 30 minutes on a run, it’s demoralizing to get wiped by someone using wallhacks to unload on you before you’d ever have a chance to react.

ARC Raiders has a very fair and generous extraction shooter gameplay loop, but post-launch success will also be measured by Embark Studios’ ability to quash a potential cheating epidemic before it begins. For now, the game is shaping up to be an interesting entry into the extraction shooter genre: With no-risk alternatives like free loadout options and ways to loot and extract without fighting, ARC Raiders welcomes even casual players to brave the threats above ground and reap the rewards.

ARC Raiders is set to launch on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, though we don’t yet have price or release date information for the game, nor details on its monetization strategy.