Hello!

I’m Nexon Picker PEAKtime.

How much pure game time do you get in?

Like “pure study time,” pure game time means the time you spend simply enjoying games.

Today, I’m sharing my review of ARC Raiders,

which has been taking up the biggest share of my game time lately.

It’s only been 69 days since launch, and I’ve already logged 88 hours?

At minimum, that means I’m playing about an hour a day.

So how did I get this hooked? Let me walk you through it.

The ARCs’ AI Keeps

Getting Better

The robots in ARC Raiders are called ARCs.

From smaller ARCs to giant boss ARCs,

they all bring different gimmicks into battle,

so even fighting ARCs on their own is tense, satisfying fun.

Matriarch, added in the November update,

is built very differently from Queen, with shields and summons,

so you have to approach the fight in a completely different way.

On top of that, the ARC AI keeps learning from players,

so even ARCs that weren’t hard to beat at launch

can suddenly pressure you with wild movement, which keeps every encounter feeling fresh.

That Delicate Tightrope

Between PVE and PVP

ARC Raiders is a PvPvE game built around ARCs as the shared enemy

and Raiders who aren’t exactly your enemies,

but definitely aren’t your allies either.

Matchmaking is split based on how much you shoot other players,

so aggressive players are matched against equally aggressive opponents

through what’s called the ‘Karma Matchmaking System’.

So if you enjoy fighting other Raiders, you can lean into combat,

and if you prefer teamwork and farming, you can focus on that instead,

which gives the game two very different flavors to enjoy.

If You’re in the Full-Shoot Crowd,

Make the Most of Your Gadgets!

I usually run a three-person squad with friends.

Because of that, we naturally end up in a lot of fights,

so we’ve fallen into the aggressive matchmaking people call the ‘full-shoot crowd.’

In Raider-versus-Raider fights, gadgets really matter.

ARC Raiders has everything from throwables like grenades and mines

to a wide variety of gadgets like ziplines and barricades.

Since it’s a TPS game, individual aim definitely matters,

but sometimes a single gadget is enough to flip the whole fight.

These days, a pretty broken grenade called the Trigger Grenade,

which you can throw and detonate whenever you want, is especially popular.

Of course, you can also win fights through pure gunplay.

This scene is from a clip I recorded a week ago,

where I took down three players in a row solo and secured the win.

Moments like this are probably why I can’t put ARC Raiders down.

So that was my review of ARC Raiders,

a game that’s been taking up a huge share of my game time lately.

Once I’m locked in, I sometimes end up playing for 4 to 5 hours a day.

I’ve become one of those full-shoot players who fires the moment I spot someone,

but if you prefer PVE, there’s peaceful matchmaking that suits that style too,

so if you’re looking for an extraction shooter that’s easy to get into, definitely give it a try!