The best possible advertisement for ARC Raiders is that Gabe likes it. Might actually be obsessed with it. Called me up to play! Played solo, late, and then woke up early. Sent me clips of his derring do late in the night, awoke to write the strip with his mind clouded by the peals and shrieks of the Earth’s cybernetic inheritors. He has aspirations for his play experience that are situated perhaps a little above mine. But there is a point, somewhere between his best laid plans (men) and my best laid plans (mice) where it’s essentially a co-op horror game and I almost always have the appetite for one round.
The reason our system works is that I cast a wider net than he does and I’m willing to try a few more of the wriggling things I pull up with it. Some of these things should not be eaten and are in fact shoes or jagged, rusty cans. There is a reason why his thresholds are set where they are. But this game, this genre wasn’t on his radar at all – I only fucked with it because the Server Slam popped up and fell way down into its dark pit. I tried to advocate for it. And now he’s down here with me.
The first time I mentioned ARC Raiders I did so by suggesting it was a videogame, which seems odd, but it’s just the terminology we use to describe a thoughtfully made model that feels good to inhabit. I buy the character movement in this game. I buy the parkour, environmental traversal shit. The audio is luscious and coherent and vital. If I shoot well, I hit. It feels like this place would be real even if it weren’t running on my machine.
When I read that it started as a co-op game, it all made sense. Even the environmental enemies, these unwelcome roboids, are filthy nasty and will fuck you up for sure and they’re still plenty to worry about by themselves; their efficacy is something I’ve seen streamers complain about, and that tracks. They move in freaky, sometimes unpleasant ways. The addition of other players as a channel of content into a game that would feel robust even without them casts a malevolent shadow over everything else that’s happening. I can’t get enough.
(CW)TB out.