So first off, I wanted to catch up a bit. I started this blog a little over a decade ago. A lot has changed in my life in the last 10 years. Relationships have changed. The gaming industry has changed a lot (in my opinion for the worse). I took some time to go back and read my prior post about Halo. I still mostly agree with what I wrote, but like most people, I have a hard time not cringing at some of what I wrote so long ago. I may write a follow up to that at some point, but thats not why we’re here today. Also of note, Im typing a majority of this on my phone with a bluetooth keyboard.
So, I’ve currently been working on a series of playing the Main Story Quest of Final Fantasy XIV, recording and uploading the New Game + experience. I’ve been doing this for various reasons, but one of which is that I can do so alone. A couple of nights ago I was preparing to do this but my wife needed to do laundry. Anyone who has ever recorded anything knows that background noise really taints the experience and the product, and knowing the sound of the spin cycle alone, I opted to find something else to do for the evening. It was at this point, I asked my lovely wife to sit down and look at some relatively inexpensive games I had on my steam wishlist. I’ve been starting to move away from Xbox, not so much by choice, but because Xbox seems hellbent to make a platform and games I have 0 interest in. That too is a conversation for another time. So she sits down with me and looks at games I’ve been looking at.
First and foremost, I dont play extraction shooters. I dont play Tarkov or any of those. Getting griefed by other players so they can steal what you found doesnt have much appeal to me. The closest I’ve ever come to this was likely the Division. The Dark Zone had an appeal that could make the experience worth it. Outside this, I haven’t played any, but I’ve watched a lot of the gameplay, and it straight up turned me off to the whole experience. You know the saying “you dont have to eat crap to know you wouldn’t like it”, and I at least put in the effort of watching someone else do it. So what was I looking at? Well, there were really 4 games I was considering. I’d had Starship Troopers Terran Command on my wishlist for some time. It was simple: I like Starship Troopers, and I like RTS games. It looked fairly simple, and it was on sale for like 45% off at $18. The second was at the same price, and that was Escape from Duckov. Escape from Duckov was brought to me by watching Legendary Drops on YouTube. It was posed as a funny version of an extraction shooter, but top down, and single player. I was leaning heavily toward this option as a fun repeatable game to pass the time at a fair price point. The third was Jump Space, which Ill be honest looks super cool. The only downsides being that it was about $20, was early access and was primarily a coop thing, and that wasn’t really what I was trying to do necessarily.
The fourth and final game was Arc Raiders. People had hyped this game. It was posed as the “Extraction shooters for people that don't like Extraction shooters”. I wasn’t really planning on buying this. My big challenge with the traditional extraction shooter is, as I somewhat mentioned is that you spend a bunch of time avoiding adversity just to get murdered by some guy(s) who want your stuff. The appeal is supposed to be the combination of the tension of interactions with other players, and the thrill of being able to get out with some really good stuff. Like Indiana Jones grabbing the treasure, running from the boulder and getting out from under the closing door while just grabbing your hat. I was still uninterested until I heard the following information: Arc Raiders will match players who want to PvP with more players who want to do so, and will match players who stick to killing robots and working together. With that information, I added it to my wishlist. My wife and I sat and watched the trailers for each game, and after consideration, she felt that Arc Raiders would be the best choice. I admit, I was kinda excited. It was more expensive than I was originally planning to do, but I hadn’t played with friends in some time. Looking at steam page, a lot of my friends already had the game, so it’s was an almost foregone conclusion. Getting friends to pick up new titles can be a challenge as many people know, unless you want to buy a copy for everyone involved. So without much adieu, I purchased, downloaded and reached out to friends. I spoke with my friend Sean first, and then Matt. Sean was onboard immediately, which I appreciated. I got through the brief tutorial. Knowing the game is mostly about the emergent gameplay, I skipped the cutscenes as I wanted to get to gameplay. Normally I wouldn’t do this, but I should have taken note of my impulse to do this, as it was a subtle red flag that I should have taken note of. Once we got into a few matches, and extracted, something started to become clear to me. Allow me to share a meme I created.
Watching trailers and gameplay that I’d seen, what I expected was cool robot fights. What I ended up with is gathering garbage to craft stuff. What occurred to me is, what am I buying or crafting? Guns? Shouldn’t that be what Im finding? Or something cool? Finding wires and batteries isn’t super engaging to me. I realized I was looting so I could loot so I could loot. With the ever existent possibility that I could be murdered by randoms and losing all the stuff that I grabbed, just to set me back. The game has a skill tree. I look at it. I’m thinking I could build for support. It ends up that none of the skills look remotely interesting for truly impactful in a way I can envision. Sean and I did a couple runs with little issue until we tried to extract via the train the buried city. There we ran into our first people who said “friendly” only to shoot me with a shotgun when they came around the corner.
My first thought was “well, I hope he enjoys the metal scraps I had”. We moved on, and eventually Matt joined us for a couple matches. He gave some blueprints, which was kind of him to do. Not his fault, but all I thought was, between the couple of blue prints I found, the 1 common gun I already had that I found, and the blueprints I got from him, none of it was interesting. I wasn’t finding anything exciting. Then I realised If I did, there was a high chance that someone would kill me and take it. After Sean got murdered into one of our first 3 player forays, Sean eventually had to leave, and Matt and I ran a couple more missions. Matt extolled that 3 stacks of players seem to make you have to run into more pvp situations, which isn’t what I was looking for. After the couple missions Matt and I ran, he had to go, and he warned me to be careful, with the assumption I would keep playing. He left.
I had no interest in continuing to play. This was the second red flag. A new game, a few hours in, and I don’t want to play it? How boring had this gotten already? It was like a book you’re a couple chapters into and you wonder, “when does this get interesting”. So as I laid in bed that night, I looked into videos of the perception that the game wasn’t living up to the promise so to speak. I start to listen to what they have to say. It’s all the same: “This game is great. It’s polished. It’s beautiful. I’m bored. There is no end game, and there’s nothing to do but get good stuff to take in to ruin other peoples times”.
It was at this point I suddenly remembered, you could get refunds. You have to understand. I’ve never returned a game in my life. On steam, this would be the very first time I’ve ever tried. I look at my playtime. It’s closer to 3 hours. I look at the rules “You can return if you’ve played less than 2 hours, but you can still submit a request”. I think about it. “Do I want to do this?” I mull it over. I realise I have 0 interest in continuing. Nothing about the game and its gameplay has gotten me ensnared in a way that makes me think “maybe this is worth sticking out”. So I submit my request. It feels dirty. Like I quit before really getting into it. I figure it’s a win/win. If they approve my request, I can move on to something I really may enjoy. If they decline, im stuck with it, and maybe I can learn to like it if I invest more time into it.
I wake this morning to an email from Steam at 2am. They approved my request. An unusual feeling, but satisfying in a way. I start thinking, how do i tell my friends? Do I? I think of sending a video or clip that explains, but then I think back to the last time I wanted to share thoughts, and it was this blog. So I spend a stupid amount of time with AI trying to create the image I used in this review. I get my Bluetooth keyboard out, and begin typing, and here we are. It is at this point I will have to think about what I want to do next. Im leaning toward Jump Space as you can still play with your friends, and for a more reasonable cost.
What I know for sure is, that unfortunately, it wont be Arc Raiders.
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