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Arc Raiders has finally provided the popular hit for the Extraction Shooter genre. It’s not that there haven’t been other games that have found popularity, but none have been as available on so many platforms, and found its audience as quickly.
But that doesn’t make it the only game in town. While the Extraction genre might not be quite as full of games as other popular genres, there are a few games that have meaningful PvPvE encounters, which for many, is at the heart of what makes Arc Raiders so exciting.
Hunt Showdown: 1896
Hunt Showdown is a particularly unique game, with a vibe and gameplay flow that is entirely its own. There is truly nothing else like it. Set in a horror-flavored old south/west, it’s a PvPvE Extraction Shooter with goals that are a bit different than most other Extraction games.
Hunt Showdown tasks every player/team in the lobby with tracking down one (or two) bounty targets, which are essentially PvE boss fights. That bounty target drops their bounty, and whoever carries that bounty to the extraction gets a big payday.
That’s an easier task said than done, because holding the Bounty makes you visible on the map to every other Hunter, and this is not a game where you can sustain very much damage at all before you become another corpse in the swamp.
Similarly to Arc Raiders, the PvE experiences in Hunt can range from trivial to genuinely difficult. Unlike Arc Raiders, you are almost never, ever going to come across another friendly Hunter. PvP is a huge aspect of that game, and if that’s a draw for you, Hunt Showdown is a game to try.
Dune: Awakening
Dune: Awakening is actually an MMORPG, but there are certain lines that can be drawn to Arc Raiders, and certain things that can be enjoyed in a similar way.
When it comes to progression, Dune: Awakening is a bit of a different beast than Arc. Sure, the primary goal is looting and resource gathering, but the progress in Dune is another dimension more complicated than it is in Arc.
That being said, the looting does a similar philosophy: the more difficult the area, the better the loot. If you want the great stuff, you’ll have to be able to brave some more difficult challenges. You’ll have to decide whether getting that new stuff is worth the risk of losing everything you take with you.
But Dune also has PvPvE situations in it, as well. The Deep Desert is one example of this, holding the prize currency of the world of Dune: Spice. There are a few areas apart from the Deep Desert with this, too.
The Division 2 (Dark Zone)
The Division 2 has been out for quite a long time, but it’s had legs that have kept it running pretty smoothly the whole time. While the majority of The Division 2 is a PvE experience, there are some meaningful and tense PvP experiences to be had, too.
Those PvP experiences are likely the most apt comparison, when it comes to Arc Raiders. Both of these games are third-person, with gunplay and gameplay flow that lead to similar-feeling gunfights. The time-to-kill is a little bit longer than many other games, and there are some inventive gadgets and weaponry that allow for some interesting things to happen.
And then there are the stakes to those gunfights. Losing the fight in either game likely means losing something valuable that you’ve obtained during your run. That’s a staple of the Extraction genre, and it’s what makes fights in these games so much more memorable. The Division 2 has this quality in spades, and it can make for a great time.
Sea of Thieves
Sea of Thieves is a simple game, and yet, Sea of Thieves is also a complex game. At its heart, it’s a game about taking to the high seas on an easy-to-sail ship with friends, chasing adventure and, ideally, treasure. Then you bring that treasure back, and you earn cool things for it.
What makes this simple formula more interesting (and more intense) is that you’re in a world with other players who have their own goals. Sometimes that goal is working relatively peacefully, or at least neutrally, with others. But for a lot of players (and I cannot exclude myself from this) the goal is to do crime.
That crime usually involves taking things that you did not, in fact, earn. But if we count taking it from someone else and putting it on our own ship as earning it, then we do earn it, in our own particular way.
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This makes for chases on the high seas, uneasy confrontations where you don’t know what to expect, and occasionally a Kraken coming in to disrupt everybody’s day. It can be a good time, especially if you aren’t taking things too seriously.
Dark and Darker
Dark and Darker does not enjoy the same size of playerbase that it once did, but as we’ve seen with many multiplayer games in the past, all it takes is one particularly special update to bring people back. Even where it is, there are more than enough players for you to find matches consistently, and keep in the flow of things.
Dark and Darker is the most traditional other Extraction game on this list; it’s just not an Extraction Shooter, at least in most situations. It’s an Extraction Sword-and-Sorcery game, with just about everything that you would imagine comes with that.
It has solos and squad matches like Arc Raiders, and the same kind of philosophy that comes with this kind of game in general; if you die, you lose what you brought with you.
But, there’s plenty to loot along the way in Dark and Darker, and many people are going to be chasing individual goals rather than all chasing the exact same objective. This is another instance where the majority of situations are going to be immediately confrontational, but there will be the odd case where you and another player give a mutual nod and go about your way.
