Technologies

ARC Raiders Review: This Is the Best Extraction Shooter I’ve Ever Played

Embark Studios’ new game has tight gunplay and great maps. More importantly, there are quality-of-life features that every extraction shooter should implement.

I gingerly step through broken glass, flanked by two world-weary teammates, entering a long-abandoned supermarket to hunker down as rotors whir overhead. We’d already wasted enough precious ammunition fighting a pack of flying ARC drones — the latest from an annihilation wave of killer robots responsible for wiping out most of humanity. As we poke around the burnt-out remains of cash registers and store shelves, a distinctly human voice shouts down a nearby hallway. I check my bullet count, raise my weapon, hold my breath and say a prayer as we prepare for another fight.

Every moment is “go time” in developer Embark Studios’ ARC Raiders, an online multiplayer shooter where dual threats — man and machine — threaten to take your life around every corner. Players step into the role of the eponymous raiders, who are the only folks crazy enough to leave the underground city of Speranza (one of the final bastions of humanity) to gather supplies above ground.

Some raiders are after fame, some are after fortune. Most just want to eke out a modest living. A common interest in survival doesn’t mean instant trust, so expect most players to shoot first and ask questions later. Still, communication with strangers is possible, and during a previous press preview, I’d found that uncertain friendships can blossom amid the gunfire.

These emergent narratives are the bread and butter of ARC Raiders matches, in which squads of up to three players emerge from the underground to scavenge loot — either from the scraps of society or other players. As a so-called extraction shooter, each match requires juggling the risk of safely sneaking around the edge of the map or charging into the center for better loot before you make your escape. Meeting (and often dispatching) interesting people while robots threaten to rain hellfire on all of you makes for an addictive gameplay loop, one that often leaves me craving another match regardless of whether or not I just escaped with my life.

Beginner quests, skill point progression and free loadouts (that don’t risk your precious item hoard) exist so casual players have a way to improve their character without the stinging loss of loot from a failed run, which helps make early matches a little less daunting. But the truly exhilarating “a-ha” moment is when you realize that ARC Raiders has reprogrammed the way you see an in-game world.

Become an apex predator or risk becoming prey

A lone raider sits atop a long-abandoned spaceport with a bolt-action rifle, taking pot shots at a straggler who is being harassed by ARC drones hundreds of meters away. A squad of three makes use of heavy rain to flank a team attempting to breach a communications uplink full of valuable scrap. A well-prepared scavenger sees a flashlight bobbing up a winding flight of stairs and pulls the pin on their high-explosive grenade.

Vignettes of my successful ambushes blend together, the memories spiking dopamine and a whole lot of precious loot. Surviving above Speranza entails rummaging through containers and bringing back some crafting supplies, but to truly thrive topside requires a total perspective shift.

Tactical thinking is a far more potent weapon than crackshot aim. ARC Raiders puts a lot of tools in players’ hands: Grappling hooks, ziplines, smoke grenades, makeshift explosives and noisemakers that draw in nearby ARC robots are just a few of the gadgets that help you turn the tide of battle against an opposing player. Rechargeable shields enable players to run and recover. While a longer time-to-kill (meaning players can take more hits than in some similar games) can feel frustrating for ambushers, it does inspire cat-and-mouse pursuits and dramatic revenge arcs.

The constant flip-flop of control is absolute chaos, but that’s part of the game’s core design. One second, you’re the apex predator, hunting down a raider who’s none the wiser. A moment later, you have to band together to fight ARC robots leaping toward you from hundreds of feet away.

Even when all hope is lost and you know you’re losing your items, there are tools to call ARC robots to your location. The ultimate petty move is to get the AI to bomb out the location and eliminate the player who put you down. While plenty of other games feature the thrilling chance that a third party of players might crash the gunfight you’re having with another squad, ARC Raiders ensures there are often robot drones around to complicate combat.

The most recent build of the game concentrates more shiny weapons and crafting materials than ever in named points of interest around the map, with sparse loot around the edges, luring players toward the center. It seems Embark Studios recognizes that the best stories are told when players rub shoulders early and often in a match, so the developers have turned a few dials to make sure you always need to watch your back while breaking open the best containers in the game.

Whether I’m cutting down my foes or getting my lights punched out by a coordinated squad, every raider’s life is a tale inked in blood. The magic of ARC Raiders is that most matches tell a compelling story — you might make fast friends with a complete stranger or indiscriminately gun down man and machine as a one-man army. Either way, your personal narrative is never boring.

Grimy, cassette futurism vibes done right

While much of ARC Raiders’ appeal hinges on its intense moment-to-moment gameplay, the implementation of hulking robotic AI opponents and a more casual approach to the extraction shooter gameplay loop, it’s the pulpy sci-fi lore and grounded visual trappings that entranced me in the first place.

ARC Raiders developers say the game takes place in the “post-post-apocalypse,” a world where humanity has ultimately survived a near-extinction event. People persist beneath the ground as the natural world overtakes brutalist architecture, urban centers and even space launchpads. The synthesis of greenery and tech is absolutely beautiful, so it’s a shame that the game incentivizes you to turn down your graphical settings to have a better chance of seeing other players through dense foliage.

Persevering through an existential crisis made humans rekindle their appreciation for analog technology. Scavenger suits are adorned with a plethora of knobs, buttons and gauges that do heaven knows what, and barren office spaces are filled with bulky PC monitors. One map in particular features a spaceport that reminds me of grainy Space Race-era video footage that teachers would wheel out at school. It’s scary as hell to check your corners in abandoned industrial buildings, but taking a moment to really soak in the environments made me appreciate the haunted ode to humanity’s technological achievements.

If the ARC are the endpoint of machine advancement, it totally makes sense for humans in this world to make makeshift guns out of what amounts to PVC pipes, paperclips and chewing gum. But even the ARC feel delightfully retro, a vision of the future that is more HAL 9000 than T-1000 Terminator. These clean, efficient killers are like twisted parodies of an Asimov book cover, built to fulfill specific purposes and aid mankind before they turned on their masters.

Everything in ARC Raiders is built with a purpose, and when you look at cosmetics, weapons and enemy robots, you can understand what that purpose is at a single glance. This is well-executed visual design, which isn’t just important from an aesthetic standpoint. It’s crucial to be able to assess a threat right away in a competitive game with high stakes, where the wrong combat engagement can cost you hours of progress.

Games like Starfield and Concord angled for a grounded and grungy retrostyle, but a lack of interesting character designs meant those experiences largely fell flat. ARC Raiders oozes style — some visual motifs feel like they’re ripped straight off of industrial propaganda posters — and has the gameplay substance to back it up.

ARC Raiders stands tall among titans of the industry

To enter the extraction shooter arena, a developer has to be as fearless as an ARC Raider. The genre is infamous for high-profile failures like The Cycle: Frontier and projects that never come to fruition, such as Sega’s Hyenas. Bungie’s Marathon is supposed to be a serious contender, but that game has been marred with one black eye after another, and is now indefinitely delayed. Certainly, no game has come close to dethroning Escape From Tarkov from its spot as the top dog extraction shooter.

But Embark Studios has been a disruptive force in the industry before: The developer’s debut release, The Finals, took the world by storm with its Battlefield-like world destruction and its game show spin on the battle royale subgenre.

Embark Studios has captured lightning in a bottle once again with ARC Raiders. Other extraction shooters have had player-versus-AI elements to contend with in each match, like Escape From Tarkov’s scavengers and rogues and The Cycle: Frontier’s fearsome reptilian foes. None have ever felt quite as deadly, nor as intelligent, as the robots that roam the world of ARC Raiders.

Most importantly, ARC Raiders is perhaps the most easily accessible extraction shooter for a casual audience. If you’re scared of losing the last bits of valuable loot in your stash, you can enter a match with random shoddy equipment to try and earn better materials and weapons at very little personal risk. And with lower-quality gear, you’ll have to adjust your strategy and learn different ways to be effective in matches.

ARC Raiders’ unique spin on the extraction shooter formula, though, is a voluntary wipe system. While other games delete players’ loot hoards on a regular basis, Embark found a way to incentivize the more hard-core players to reset their stash to access special cosmetic rewards, while assuring casual players they won’t ever have to give up their entire inventory. Knowing that I won’t have to lose out on my strongest weapons or the skill points I’ve invested in my character makes ARC Raiders feel more approachable as a game that I can play “long-term,” as opposed to something I’ll only play for a brief stint before blitzing the next big thing.

This system might need balance passes as the game evolves, but it’s a clear signal from Embark Studios that tells casual players that the time and energy they spend on this game will be respected.

This game nails the fundamentals of extraction shooters with its tight gunplay, exciting loot and map designs rife with ambush locations. Its special blend of player-versus-player-versus-freakishly-intelligent-robot gameplay will enrapture extraction-shooter fans and newcomers alike. While losing your loot is always deflating, ARC Raiders has guardrails in place to get a casual gamer back in the action quickly and easily.

After every press preview, playtest and server slam ends, the only thing I can think of is this: When do I get to play ARC Raiders again? While I can’t speak to the game’s overall staying power in what is a very difficult genre to successfully breach, I also can’t imagine this game is going the way of The Cycle: Frontier anytime soon.

This is a review in progress. It will be updated after ARC Raiders is publicly released on Oct. 30.

Technologies

AI may change the price of your Big Mac and groceries — what this means for shoppers

As retailers turn to AI tools to streamline operations, experts warn that collecting more detailed consumer data increases the risk of personalized pricing.

Fast-food giants and supermarkets are rolling out a range of AI tools that could affect the prices shoppers pay, but experts warn the spread of data-driven tools could make personalized pricing easier to deploy.

Just this week, a federal antitrust lawsuit filed against McDonald’s

McDonald’s has denied that it’s using AI to determine what individual customers are willing to pay and said it provides its franchisees with “tools, resources, research and recommendations to help them make informed decisions.”

Even so, food businesses globally are increasingly digitizing operations with AI. Earlier this year, American grocery chain Kroger

Meanwhile, electronic shelf labels (ESLs), which display the price of items in store on digital screens, are becoming increasingly popular at supermarkets like Kroger, Amazon

The technology is also gaining traction among U.K. supermarkets such as Tesco

CNBC reached out to Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, Tesco, Morrisons, Asda and Revolut for comment on the use of AI but didn’t immediately hear back.

As AI use becomes normalized among retailers, experts warn that this could lead to more dynamic pricing, which refers to frequent, rapid real-time changes in prices that could dramatically affect shoppers’ experiences.

“Dynamic pricing means changing prices in response to changing market conditions, such as demand, timing, capacity or competitors’ prices,” Miroslava Marinova, a senior lecturer of commercial law at the University of East London, told CNBC. “It is not new. Airlines, hotels, and ride-hailing services have used it for years.”

Bank of England economists Clare Lombardelli and Rupal Patel said in April that more sophisticated technology is leading to prices changing more frequently and also becoming more individualized, which could see more firms charging “as close to the maximum price a consumer is willing to pay for a good or service,” which they defined as “perfect price discrimination.”

These conditions could make it harder for statisticians to “measure and interpret” month-to-month inflation data, as the consumer price index is based on a representative sample of prices for shoppers.

“That works well when prices mostly move slowly and uniformly. But when prices shift continually – and differently for each shopper – the idea of a ‘representative’ price becomes strained,” the BOE economists added.

AI collects more consumer data

While dynamic pricing has been in play for a long time, the BOE economists and Marinova noted that AI tools such as ESLs and facial recognition checkout are changing the amount of information that companies can collect on consumers, from transaction histories to browsing behavior, location, and purchasing patterns.

On Wednesday, U.K. supermarket chain Sainsbury’s released “SmartLists,” an AI feature that helps customers create shopping lists and find products just by uploading pictures of what they need or by typing out meal ideas.

“This is also why the traditional distinction between dynamic and personalised pricing is becoming less clear in practice,” Marinova explained. “Dynamic pricing responds primarily to market conditions, whereas personalised pricing uses information about the consumer to estimate willingness to pay.”

As companies use both pricing systems, it raises questions around whether customer information is being used to determine the prices consumers see.

“As retailers combine market-level information with increasingly detailed consumer data, the boundary between dynamic and personalised pricing becomes thinner,” Marinova added.

Walmart and Kroger have publicly insisted in recent years that they do not use dynamic or surge pricing to set individualized prices for customers, but have instead used tools to streamline operations.

Several U.S. states are moving to curb data-driven pricing. New York requires most businesses using customers’ personal data to set prices to disclose it clearly. Maryland has restricted food retailers and delivery services from using personalised, data-driven pricing to charge higher prices for certain food, while New Jersey and Connecticut have enacted measures targeting “surveillance pricing.”

Consumer choice compromised

Dynamic and personalized pricing are not automatically bad for shoppers, Marinova said, explaining that it can discount items for some consumers, making some products and services more accessible.

However, the risk of individualized pricing is that consumers are no longer aware of whether the price they’re getting reflects general market conditions or if it’s been influenced by information about their own behavior.

“That makes it much harder to compare prices and to know whether another consumer is being offered a different price for the same product,” she said. “If consumers cannot understand why they received a particular price, cannot compare it with prices offered to others, and cannot effectively switch to another supplier, the normal disciplining effect of consumer choice becomes weaker.”

The BOE economists added that an additional challenge is that personalized pricing “splinters the consumer experience,” which means households will face increasingly different inflation rates.

“And when prices differ for the same thing, inflation becomes even more personalised – and aggregate measures may no longer reflect households’ experience,” they said.

Technologies

After France, is Italy next? Goldman Sachs flags bond risks as Rome’s deficit widens

Goldman Sachs says Italy’s higher 2027-28 deficit targets, rising yields and election uncertainty could weaken its debt outlook.

French debt turmoil has thrust Europe’s fiscal pressures into sharp focus in recent weeks, but investors’ attention is quickly turning to Italy amid contentious new government spending plans.

The Italian government will next week present a budget encompassing recently approved allocations to defense and energy, which are set to widen the country’s deficit over the next two years and put Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio on track to become the highest in Europe, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs.

Filippo Taddei, senior European economist at Goldman, said the changes could heap further pressure on Italian government bonds ahead of next year’s general election.

On Oct. 2, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s center-right government approved an extra 28 billion euros ($31 billion) in borrowing over the next two years for defense and energy spending. Although scaled back, the spending plans have raised Italy’s 2027 deficit target to 3.4% of GDP, and its 2028 target to 3.2%. That’s up from earlier April projections of 2.8% and 2.5%, respectively, and above Goldman forecasts.

The measures — which are split evenly between defense and energy, with each worth about 0.3% of GDP per year in 2027 and 2028 — come amid rising investor jitters over runaway government borrowing across the continent.

French bond woes

Yields on French government bonds have surged to multiyear highs in recent days, as the country’s mounting debt crisis fuels wider concerns about Europe’s strained public finances.

France’s benchmark 10-year OAT

Taddei said Italy’s fiscal risk premia could rise ahead of the country’s next general election, due no later than December 22, 2027, on the back of the widening deficit.

A close-run election could leave little scope for fiscal consolidation, as parties on both the right and left look to “add spending-supportive partners” to build viable coalitions, he explained.

“Looser fiscal policy, tighter financial conditions and a close electoral race appear poised to weaken the debt outlook after four years of fiscal consolidation,” he said in a note Thursday.

‘Significant upward surprise’

Italian lawmakers voted Thursday to overhaul the country’s electoral process, switching from a hybrid model to a more proportional system. Meloni’s right-wing coalition says the change will lead to more stable governments and avoid chaotic post-election dealmaking.

But left-leaning opponents said the changes are designed to help Meloni cling to power.

Meloni’s administration — which will deliver its final pre-election budget next week — has been praised for lowering the deficit, which reached 3.1% in 2025.

Bond markets, in turn, have rewarded the country’s new-found political stability, with Meloni recently becoming the longest-serving Italian leader since the World War II.

The spending hikes comply with the EU’s National Escape Clause, which permits member states temporary budget flexibility on defense and energy investments to address shocks caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Middle East conflict.

Still, Taddei said the new deficit targets are a “significant upward surprise”.

“We find that higher fiscal deficits, in addition to rising yields, look set to put the debt-to-GDP ratio on an upward path until 2028, before stabilizing around 137% — the highest in Europe by then,” Taddei noted.

“Higher yields provide a key challenge in the current environment, and we find that a structural shift to 10-year yields higher than 4% would likely set Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio on an increasing path beyond that.”

‘Difficult fiscal decisions’

Konstantin Veit, portfolio manager at PIMCO, said the recent selloff in global bond yields has renewed the focus on countries with relatively weaker fundamentals.

Veit noted that while French government bonds are widely held by overseas investors — leaving them more exposed to negative news flow — Italian sovereign debt, in contrast, is mainly in domestic hands, which is typically “a stabilizing factor.”

“While Italy has higher debt, it has a stronger primary balance, a relatively favorable trajectory, political stability and a history of making the necessary adjustments,” Veit said.

Compared to France, Italy overall seems in a “relatively better place” at this stage, he added, with “stronger fundamentals, a more straightforward political configuration, and a track record of taking difficult fiscal decisions.”

But investors are already zeroing in on opportunities in Italian debt.

Reinout De Bock, head of European rates strategy at UBS Investment Bank, recently unveiled a short position in Italian BTPs, wagering that Italian debt could emerge as the next weak link in European sovereign debt.

“I think Italy maybe will catch up, and people will get more concerned about Italy as well at these higher yields, despite a lot of reforms that have been done in Italy,” de Bock told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

Technologies

Microsoft’s Nadella says AI needs an ‘emergency brake’ that humans control

Nadella joined other tech moguls and researchers in calling for stronger safeguards and, in some cases, for the pacing of frontier development.

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