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After weeks of server slams and beta tests, Arc Raiders is out properly, and it's getting an incredibly warm reception. As positive reviews come in, the game is currently the highest-rated multiplayer shooter on OpenCritic, beating out the likes of Counter-Strike and Overwatch.
At time of writing, Arc Raiders has a score of 93 on OpenCritic, taken from 21 reviews. This places it in the upper echelon on the aggregator to begin with, but more specifically gives it the number one spot in terms of multiplayer shooters, whether that be first or third-person.
Looking through the all-time rankings across multiplayer, shooter, co-op, and sci-fi, you'll find nothing similar to Arc Raiders with the same rating or higher. The competition above it in the shooter category is Half-Life: Alyx, Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania, and The Last of Us Remastered. All shooters of some description, sure, but in a different lane to Embark Studios's PvPvE experience. Meanwhile, Overwatch, Counter-Strike, Quake 2 and numerous other classics sit safely below it.
Anticipation was high, as the company's last game, The Finals, was also well-received, and it became a mainstay of the Steam wishlist charts. The people who got to try it out early were impressed by the mechanical smoothness and incorporation of co-operative elements.
The maps are crawling with robot enemies, and some of them are huge, prompting Shadow of the Colossus-esque sequences to bring them down. It's a formula that makes the whole thing feel particularly fresh in a saturated landscape, though not surprising given the team was founded by former Battlefield devs.
Ironically, Arc Raiders has stiff competition coming out now in both Battlefield 6 and the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, and yet it's holding its own, peaking at over 350,000 players so far. So long as Embark provides the right kind of support, this is one colossus that should keep growing for years to come.
