Arc Raiders just cannot be stopped. The extraction shooter from Embark Studios has once again attracted more players over the weekend than it has in its launch week, and over its first weekend on the market.
Arc Raiders' first proper patch, assuming you're a member of the honourable sect who don't count hotfixes as patches, has arrived. It's relatively small, but it does set up three new map conditions that'll be unleashed in the shooter this weekend, as well as fixing some pesky bugs.
I called out sliding as one of my favourite aspects of Arc Raiders in a launch-day write-up. It lends the looter shooter a gambolling giddiness you might not expect from its heavily laden packmule characters. In more practical terms, it makes you harder to hit and allows you to flank or retreat while regenerating stamina, the catch being that you might slide into somewhere you'd rather not be, like directly beneath a bunch of Hornets.
After a few hours spent doing migrant penguin impressions in Buried City and Blue Gate, a thought occurred: hang on, this is almost like the hypermobile ski shooting in Tribes: Ascend. I mean, not really, but perhaps if they made friction a setting on custom servers, this crouch-walking pillage 'em up could be a bona fide movement shooter.