(Sorry, I did a essay.) Were you to ask TGA, they would (not actually, of course) say that there was only one game released this year: Claire Obscur: Expedition 33 (E33). That game swept TGA in a...
(Sorry, I did a essay.)
Were you to ask TGA, they would (not actually, of course) say that there was only one game released this year: Claire Obscur: Expedition 33 (E33). That game swept TGA in a way that no other game ever has.
Whereas Steam's awards are a much wider spread. Across 11 categories, only a single game won two awards. Steam's awards demonstrate the width and breadth of gaming. TGA did not.
It comes down to the difference in voting populations, of course. TGA is game journalists, Steam is (PC) players. And this year shows the gap between the two.
Let's first look at E33, as that really is the sticking point for a lot of people.
TGA awards for E33
Game of the Year
Best Game Direction
Best Narrative
Best Art Direction
Best Score and Music
Best Performance (Actor)
Best Indie
Best Indie Debut
Best RPG
Aside: In TGA, E33 was also a finalist for Best Audio Design.
Steam Awards for E33
Best Soundtrack
Aside: In Steam's awards, E33 was also a finalist for Game of the Year.
It's clear that journalists were taken with E33. They loved it.
Or, being cynical: they loved what they saw of it. Games journalists have a well-earned reputation of only playing a game for a few hours before writing their reviews and moving on to the next game. And I suspect that's a major contributing factor here.
E33 has an absurdly good first several hours. The characterization is great, the narrative is great, the visual are great, the music is great, the direction and presentation are great. It has heartfelt character moments with characters we've only known for minutes. It present as a gut wrenching story of a dwindling population coming together to overcome adversity.
For those who don't finish games, those first hours make E33 seem like the best game there ever was. And if that's all you play, then I can understand how you'd give it all of the awards at TGA.
But beyond those first hours things change. There are some wild (WILD) tone shifts in Act 1 that persist throughout the rest of the game. There are major story beats and revelations that sabotage a fan-favorite character, and recontextualize the rest of the characters... for the worse. The story is not what was presented in Act 1.
Personally, I would call the story (of Act 1) a bait-and-switch. The real story only shows itself in Act 2.
So I think it makes sense that gamers at large (via the Steam awards) did not rate it as highly as the journalist voters of TGA. E33 is still a beloved game, but it is a game with flaws. It does not feel right for it to sweep the awards. Especially not when the year was so stacked with excellent games.
I considered writing up a list of the many excellent games this year... but I don't have to. Look at the Steam Awards list: across 11 categories, there is only one repeat. If you remove the "Game of the Year" all-up category then there are no repeats.
And that feels much more correct. There were tons of amazing games this year. Many more than can fit in those 11 categories; in total, there were 50 different games nominated for those 11 spots in the Steam awards.
So... TGA is trash and Steam is great? We've all known that forever. But TGA is a marketing show, and Steam's awards are a glorified blogpost. So guess which award set gets all the attention, and consequentially, the credibility.
As someone whose favorite game this year was E33, I find your post rather disrespectful of anyone who did enjoy it. You're stating your personal preferences as if they are an objective analysis of...
Exemplary
As someone whose favorite game this year was E33, I find your post rather disrespectful of anyone who did enjoy it. You're stating your personal preferences as if they are an objective analysis of the game. But game preference is subjective; whatever the reason, I enjoyed the game far more than you.
Why did E33 win a bunch of awards at TGA? It's really not complicated - it turns out that E33 hit just the right spot for many people. They're not wrong just because they have different, subjective preferences than you.
As someone lukewarm on E33, I find it equally disrespectful to imply that it was so much better than every other game that came out this year that it should dominate that hard. Obviously there are...
As someone lukewarm on E33, I find it equally disrespectful to imply that it was so much better than every other game that came out this year that it should dominate that hard. Obviously there are other issues with TGA, like how they only seriously consider a handful of AAA games every year, but 2025 had so many other good games come out. I don't think it's fair to rag on the game itself for this, but it is bullshit.
You can love or hate E33! That's your opinion, you're entitled to it. It's only disrespectful when you start to dismiss other peoples' opinions as invalid.
You can love or hate E33! That's your opinion, you're entitled to it. It's only disrespectful when you start to dismiss other peoples' opinions as invalid.
Steam Awards are quite literally infamous. No one treats them seriously, because as a popular vote, they naturally fall victim to being popularity driven. That's not even a fault of anyone...
So... TGA is trash and Steam is great? We've all known that forever.
Steam Awards are quite literally infamous. No one treats them seriously, because as a popular vote, they naturally fall victim to being popularity driven. That's not even a fault of anyone participating, it's just a fact that, if there are 5 nominations for an award, and you played 1 of them, you're going to vote for the 1 that you played. Multiply that by the number of people with Steam Accounts, and you get the most popular games winning.
That's how Starfield, which, I don't even think is a bad game but is none-the-less about as Bethedsa as a game can be, winning "Most Innovative Game" in '23.
That's fine, you don't have to take them seriously, they can and do just exist as a fun thing, but even with as little legitimacy TGA has, it's still much higher than the Steam Awards.
I'd also add that this is a seriously mischaracterization of gaming journalists that mostly came from cherry-picked examples during the height of the gamergate drama, with all the political infusement that came with that. Gaming journalists, by and large, are quite good at the game's they are given to review, and almost always at least beat the game.
Certainly they all would have managed to beat E33, which is not a long game by any means.
I won't delve too much into your subjective reading of the E33 plot, which is inherently subjective and therefore pointless to discuss, but the tie-in with "gaming journalistic practices" is really unfounded and unshackled to reality.
They both are trash if you take them for anything besides entertainment. I would take the Dice awards or BAFTAs if I wanted serious awards.
So... TGA is trash and Steam is great? We've all known that forever. But TGA is a marketing show, and Steam's awards are a glorified blogpost. So guess which award set gets all the attention, and consequentially, the credibility.
They both are trash if you take them for anything besides entertainment. I would take the Dice awards or BAFTAs if I wanted serious awards.
So completely ignoring the clear game preference bias here, I think this is a poor critique of the TGA's. I think comparing the number of nominations is bad when the nomination categories are...
So completely ignoring the clear game preference bias here, I think this is a poor critique of the TGA's. I think comparing the number of nominations is bad when the nomination categories are pretty different. But when the categories did align, there are areas of overlapping results. I'm not gonna call a clear favorite for one award show over another if they are just swapping first and second place.
Yeah, as awards go, they are pretty silly. Voting on them is fun and creates engagement. On the other hand, I'll never understand the people fighting to the death because No Man Sky wasn't...
Yeah, as awards go, they are pretty silly. Voting on them is fun and creates engagement. On the other hand, I'll never understand the people fighting to the death because No Man Sky wasn't selected again for Labour of Love.
I was surprised to see so little of Kingdom Come Deliverance II, and to see Arc Raiders in the innovation category. I haven't played Arc Raiders at all because (to my knowledge) it's just another...
I was surprised to see so little of Kingdom Come Deliverance II, and to see Arc Raiders in the innovation category. I haven't played Arc Raiders at all because (to my knowledge) it's just another extraction shooter, which has definitely been done to death and never tickled my fancy. Similar feelings about Duckov in that category -- sure it's a clever coat of paint, but the formula is tried and true, and I'm not aware of anything mechanically innovative in either title.
Really happy to see Silksong clean up here after being shafted so hard at the game awards.
Expedition 33 is admittedly something I'd never have tried if not for it's TGA sweep and all the following publicity (so far I like it quite a lot, enough to set Outer Worlds 2 aside near the endgame). Its soundtrack is great, but I feel like the visual style is even stronger, and what it does with gameplay is more innovative than any of the stuff in that category.
Editing to ask a favor: can anyone explain to me (who hasn't played any online fps games since tf2 in 2011) what makes arc raiders special?
I've played the hell out of the game maybe I can clarify a bit. In my opinion, none of the "innovation" is around the zeitgeist of player interactions. They're great, especially in solo play, but...
I've played the hell out of the game maybe I can clarify a bit. In my opinion, none of the "innovation" is around the zeitgeist of player interactions. They're great, especially in solo play, but I don't think the "Aggression Based Matchmaking" was in place soon enough to sway the results of this voting. For clarity: Aggression Based Matchmaking is some behind the scenes engine that people speculated on for a long time that matches people based on if they shoot other players on sight. I'm on the friendly side of the spectrum and I rarely get shot in solos these days, it's rather great.
But I don't think that's why you get the innovation award. That's not enough to justify it, right? Well, there are two other major things they've done that I've never really seen in other games:
On-the-fly voice changing for in-game chat. In an actual, innovative use of AI, they devised a system that allows people to make their voice sound different when chatting through the in-game voice chat. It actually doesn't sound half bad and when I played around with it while playing with my wife, she was impressed that my voice could come out incredibly differently. The next thing that she said is "I like this, I can mask my voice to not have people think I'm a girl right away." It's not perfect, but I've not seen anyone else try this yet. I'm curious to see who else innovates on this concept.
The enemies feel legitimately smart. I'm old by gamer standards, and I've seen many generations of "Our in-game enemies are the smartest yet!" and sometimes they're good, other times they're smart until you figure out their programming and then they're not all that. In Arc Raiders? These enemies are genuinely scary and they feel strangely organic. Their behaviors make sense and it's actually quite intimidating. Lets take the humble wasp as our case study. It's what it is on the tin: a quad copter with guns strapped underneath it. A pain in the butt to deal with. Lets see some of the simple things that this one item does:
It scans both visually and audibly. It either will see you or hear you. If nothing is out of the ordinary, it continues on a scripted patrol route. If it sees or hears a player, it will go into a "query" mode where it will then break from it's patrol route to investigate. If it finds nothing, it will then go back into "patrol" mode and return to it's route. If it see's something however, that's where the interesting stuff starts.
Alright, now it knows you're there. What do you do? If you're caught outside without cover, it's pretty easy: you've got to fight back because it's pretty good at filling you full of holes. If you have cover, it will try to shoot you as soon as it has a clear sight, but it doesn't like to move while firing to keep a stable firing platform. You can get out of the way by hiding behind a rock or tree. The wasp will then try to find an angle where it can get a clear shot on you again. Normally, in most games, this would be a simple strafe, side to side which these do sometimes, but they also trained them to use all three dimensions. These robots have no problems going over top if it will get them a better shot. But what if you go and hide in a building? No problem. If they know you're there (i.e. they were shooting at you on the way in, or you shot one of them) they will swarm around the building. Suddenly you feel like you're trying to hide from the raptors from Jurassic Park. They will look at literally EVERY angle to see if they can get a shot. I've seen them circle around the building to find the one window in the back to get that clear shot and take someone down. And, adding on to that verticality I mentioned earlier, I had a scenario where I thought I was safe in a building with one door that they could reach. The arc quickly taught me that there was a hole in the ceiling as it descended down to start taking shots at me indoors. They aren't limited to a range. They will chase you across the map if you can run from them that long. If they know you are there, the desire to eliminate you is the ultimate goal.
Now what about when you fight them? As you can see in the image, their rotors are unarmored. You can shoot them to take it out, which is relatively easy to do if you are 1-on-1. When you take out one rotor, this destabilizes the drone, and it starts to wobble around erratically. After a moment, however, the drone does figure out how to fix the problem and stabilize itself to return itself back to stability on only three rotors. This is never just a scripted "Wobble in one of 10 ways" like in games of the past. No, this is dynamic. Every time it is different and relatively unpredictable.
The point of this? All enemies do this to some degree. The Hornet is an armored version of the Wasp. There's an Arc that's goal is just to scan and call in friends when it finds you. There's an upgraded version of the wasp that's larger, heavily armored and fires rockets that will ruin your run if they hit you. The walking enemies also do this too. If they lose legs, they crawl around dynamically based on the legs they have lost. They try their best to work around and enact as much damage as possible on the players. I've played lots of shooters over the years, I have not played against enemy NPCs that are as consistently challenging as these are. The scary part? I'm convinced that the devs are slowly making them better over time without telling us. Every week or so, I'm noticing the bots doing something subtly different that I'm certain they weren't doing before.
So yes, I don't think it's just a zeitgeist emergent game play between players thing. I'm sure that was part of the reason why some people voted, but the Arc themselves really have had an impact on how people perceive and interact with the game. My favorite? Watching someone who downed me get swarmed by robots because they foolishly ran in front of a pack of them to finish me off is always funny as hell because this ruthless killing nature is being done in my advantage.
Hm, maybe I'll have to take a peek. Is it possible to play single player, pure pve? I've seen a few reviews, but none of them got into any of the details you mention. That does sound like it could...
Hm, maybe I'll have to take a peek. Is it possible to play single player, pure pve?
I've seen a few reviews, but none of them got into any of the details you mention. That does sound like it could be innovative.
The short answer is no, you will always be in the map with other players. They will be doing their own thing and they are always a threat. However, they do have a matchmaking algorithm that...
The short answer is no, you will always be in the map with other players. They will be doing their own thing and they are always a threat. However, they do have a matchmaking algorithm that matches players based on how they interact with other players. Shoot on sight? Straight into the thunder dome. Passive and more PvE? You get put in with people who are more friendly. Now this can change with time of day or if people are gaming the algorithm to try and easy targets (foxes in the henhouse, if you will) but in the past week I've only been taken down by players a handful of times. Honestly arc get me more because the higher end bots are incredibly dangerous if you try to fight them.
I see. That may be a deal breaker for me :/ Maybe down the line if it gets really cheap or something, but I've generally been allergic to shooting games with random human opponents. Just usually...
I see. That may be a deal breaker for me :/
Maybe down the line if it gets really cheap or something, but I've generally been allergic to shooting games with random human opponents. Just usually gets too toxic.
I wouldn't be that harsh on it. This is a far cry from an XBox COD lobby with kids screaming insults and slurs into microphones all match long. The chat is proximity based, and many times I can go...
I wouldn't be that harsh on it. This is a far cry from an XBox COD lobby with kids screaming insults and slurs into microphones all match long. The chat is proximity based, and many times I can go an entire raid without seeing another soul. Sure, sometimes you get someone who does scream toxic shit, but 99% of the time its when they have lost a fight and you are about to send them back to Speranza with nothing.
There is no single player, so I won't be playing it. Minecraft on Tildes is the closest I'll get to multiplayer and others on the server know I'll usually hermit on that and play on my own mostly.
There is no single player, so I won't be playing it. Minecraft on Tildes is the closest I'll get to multiplayer and others on the server know I'll usually hermit on that and play on my own mostly.
(I don't play Arc, but I followed its development a bit.) Another thing that's somewhat new and special in Arc Raiders is the animation system for the enemies, which is driven by machine learning...
what makes arc raiders special?
(I don't play Arc, but I followed its development a bit.)
Another thing that's somewhat new and special in Arc Raiders is the animation system for the enemies, which is driven by machine learning algorithms and looks fantastic. Enemies still attack in a realistic looking way when they loose limbs (or rotors for flying drones). This video shows a few examples of the development of the animation system.
I haven't seen that before in this quality in a game, especially in a multiplayer game. And as u/NonoAdomo explained their behaviour also feels quite intelligent.
For the video link the timestamp has good preamble but 11:40 is straight to clips of robotic limb loss. Cheers for sharing that though as it's an interesting behind the scenes series.
For the video link the timestamp has good preamble but 11:40 is straight to clips of robotic limb loss.
Cheers for sharing that though as it's an interesting behind the scenes series.
With Steam users spending just 14% of their playtime on games released in 2025, they need to open a retro category that appeals to the majority who, by this metric, should not be voting for the...
With Steam users spending just 14% of their playtime on games released in 2025, they need to open a retro category that appeals to the majority who, by this metric, should not be voting for the Steam Awards and all of its current-year nominees.
Got a chuckle seeing Silksong won both Game of the Year and "Best Game You Suck At". Feels like a decent representation of the gamer mindset. Aside from that, I was happy to see The Midnight Walk...
Got a chuckle seeing Silksong won both Game of the Year and "Best Game You Suck At". Feels like a decent representation of the gamer mindset.
Aside from that, I was happy to see The Midnight Walk won the VR category. I haven't played it or seen much about it (really need to track down some LPs at some point), but it's a game made with claymation! That alone shows a LOT of passion from the developers, and I love seeing devs rewarded for that sort of passion. (Also, I just really like stylized graphics over going for realism. Helps ensure that games can stand the test of time.)
It definitely stands out against the other nominees in that category, which were two officially licensed racing games (which... ew, one is from EA), a VR shooter and a multiplayer horror game. The latter two seem to thrive on players' interaction more than anything, but I want to give kudos to Emissary Zero for getting nominated since it says it's being made by a single person!
I didn't set aside time to play much of anything in 2025, so I haven't played Silent Hill F. It does look like it drips with atmosphere. But, I'm just disappointed enough by the fact that ENA...
I didn't set aside time to play much of anything in 2025, so I haven't played Silent Hill F. It does look like it drips with atmosphere. But, I'm just disappointed enough by the fact that ENA Dream BBQ didn't take home the prize that I came to comment on a 6 day old post.
I had seen the previous animations by Joel G, but was unaware there would be a game until the trailer for Dream BBQ dropped.
These things tend to be popularity contests and this is a very subjective category. BBQ is probably not going to be everyone's jam. My point is just: if you haven't seen it before, ENA Dream BBQ [Chapter One] is free. You should try it. [Apparently the rest will be paid on release. ] Maybe watch some of the videos (first?) too.
(Sorry, I did a essay.)
Were you to ask TGA, they would (not actually, of course) say that there was only one game released this year: Claire Obscur: Expedition 33 (E33). That game swept TGA in a way that no other game ever has.
Whereas Steam's awards are a much wider spread. Across 11 categories, only a single game won two awards. Steam's awards demonstrate the width and breadth of gaming. TGA did not.
It comes down to the difference in voting populations, of course. TGA is game journalists, Steam is (PC) players. And this year shows the gap between the two.
Let's first look at E33, as that really is the sticking point for a lot of people.
TGA awards for E33
Aside: In TGA, E33 was also a finalist for Best Audio Design.
Steam Awards for E33
Aside: In Steam's awards, E33 was also a finalist for Game of the Year.
It's clear that journalists were taken with E33. They loved it.
Or, being cynical: they loved what they saw of it. Games journalists have a well-earned reputation of only playing a game for a few hours before writing their reviews and moving on to the next game. And I suspect that's a major contributing factor here.
E33 has an absurdly good first several hours. The characterization is great, the narrative is great, the visual are great, the music is great, the direction and presentation are great. It has heartfelt character moments with characters we've only known for minutes. It present as a gut wrenching story of a dwindling population coming together to overcome adversity.
For those who don't finish games, those first hours make E33 seem like the best game there ever was. And if that's all you play, then I can understand how you'd give it all of the awards at TGA.
But beyond those first hours things change. There are some wild (WILD) tone shifts in Act 1 that persist throughout the rest of the game. There are major story beats and revelations that sabotage a fan-favorite character, and recontextualize the rest of the characters... for the worse. The story is not what was presented in Act 1.
Personally, I would call the story (of Act 1) a bait-and-switch. The real story only shows itself in Act 2.
So I think it makes sense that gamers at large (via the Steam awards) did not rate it as highly as the journalist voters of TGA. E33 is still a beloved game, but it is a game with flaws. It does not feel right for it to sweep the awards. Especially not when the year was so stacked with excellent games.
I considered writing up a list of the many excellent games this year... but I don't have to. Look at the Steam Awards list: across 11 categories, there is only one repeat. If you remove the "Game of the Year" all-up category then there are no repeats.
And that feels much more correct. There were tons of amazing games this year. Many more than can fit in those 11 categories; in total, there were 50 different games nominated for those 11 spots in the Steam awards.
So... TGA is trash and Steam is great? We've all known that forever. But TGA is a marketing show, and Steam's awards are a glorified blogpost. So guess which award set gets all the attention, and consequentially, the credibility.
As someone whose favorite game this year was E33, I find your post rather disrespectful of anyone who did enjoy it. You're stating your personal preferences as if they are an objective analysis of the game. But game preference is subjective; whatever the reason, I enjoyed the game far more than you.
Why did E33 win a bunch of awards at TGA? It's really not complicated - it turns out that E33 hit just the right spot for many people. They're not wrong just because they have different, subjective preferences than you.
As someone lukewarm on E33, I find it equally disrespectful to imply that it was so much better than every other game that came out this year that it should dominate that hard. Obviously there are other issues with TGA, like how they only seriously consider a handful of AAA games every year, but 2025 had so many other good games come out. I don't think it's fair to rag on the game itself for this, but it is bullshit.
You can love or hate E33! That's your opinion, you're entitled to it. It's only disrespectful when you start to dismiss other peoples' opinions as invalid.
Steam Awards are quite literally infamous. No one treats them seriously, because as a popular vote, they naturally fall victim to being popularity driven. That's not even a fault of anyone participating, it's just a fact that, if there are 5 nominations for an award, and you played 1 of them, you're going to vote for the 1 that you played. Multiply that by the number of people with Steam Accounts, and you get the most popular games winning.
That's how Starfield, which, I don't even think is a bad game but is none-the-less about as Bethedsa as a game can be, winning "Most Innovative Game" in '23.
That's fine, you don't have to take them seriously, they can and do just exist as a fun thing, but even with as little legitimacy TGA has, it's still much higher than the Steam Awards.
I'd also add that this is a seriously mischaracterization of gaming journalists that mostly came from cherry-picked examples during the height of the gamergate drama, with all the political infusement that came with that. Gaming journalists, by and large, are quite good at the game's they are given to review, and almost always at least beat the game.
Certainly they all would have managed to beat E33, which is not a long game by any means.
I won't delve too much into your subjective reading of the E33 plot, which is inherently subjective and therefore pointless to discuss, but the tie-in with "gaming journalistic practices" is really unfounded and unshackled to reality.
They both are trash if you take them for anything besides entertainment. I would take the Dice awards or BAFTAs if I wanted serious awards.
So completely ignoring the clear game preference bias here, I think this is a poor critique of the TGA's. I think comparing the number of nominations is bad when the nomination categories are pretty different. But when the categories did align, there are areas of overlapping results. I'm not gonna call a clear favorite for one award show over another if they are just swapping first and second place.
The 2025 popularity contest.
Yeah, as awards go, they are pretty silly. Voting on them is fun and creates engagement. On the other hand, I'll never understand the people fighting to the death because No Man Sky wasn't selected again for Labour of Love.
I was surprised to see so little of Kingdom Come Deliverance II, and to see Arc Raiders in the innovation category. I haven't played Arc Raiders at all because (to my knowledge) it's just another extraction shooter, which has definitely been done to death and never tickled my fancy. Similar feelings about Duckov in that category -- sure it's a clever coat of paint, but the formula is tried and true, and I'm not aware of anything mechanically innovative in either title.
Really happy to see Silksong clean up here after being shafted so hard at the game awards.
Expedition 33 is admittedly something I'd never have tried if not for it's TGA sweep and all the following publicity (so far I like it quite a lot, enough to set Outer Worlds 2 aside near the endgame). Its soundtrack is great, but I feel like the visual style is even stronger, and what it does with gameplay is more innovative than any of the stuff in that category.
Editing to ask a favor: can anyone explain to me (who hasn't played any online fps games since tf2 in 2011) what makes arc raiders special?
I've played the hell out of the game maybe I can clarify a bit. In my opinion, none of the "innovation" is around the zeitgeist of player interactions. They're great, especially in solo play, but I don't think the "Aggression Based Matchmaking" was in place soon enough to sway the results of this voting. For clarity: Aggression Based Matchmaking is some behind the scenes engine that people speculated on for a long time that matches people based on if they shoot other players on sight. I'm on the friendly side of the spectrum and I rarely get shot in solos these days, it's rather great.
But I don't think that's why you get the innovation award. That's not enough to justify it, right? Well, there are two other major things they've done that I've never really seen in other games:
On-the-fly voice changing for in-game chat. In an actual, innovative use of AI, they devised a system that allows people to make their voice sound different when chatting through the in-game voice chat. It actually doesn't sound half bad and when I played around with it while playing with my wife, she was impressed that my voice could come out incredibly differently. The next thing that she said is "I like this, I can mask my voice to not have people think I'm a girl right away." It's not perfect, but I've not seen anyone else try this yet. I'm curious to see who else innovates on this concept.
The enemies feel legitimately smart. I'm old by gamer standards, and I've seen many generations of "Our in-game enemies are the smartest yet!" and sometimes they're good, other times they're smart until you figure out their programming and then they're not all that. In Arc Raiders? These enemies are genuinely scary and they feel strangely organic. Their behaviors make sense and it's actually quite intimidating. Lets take the humble wasp as our case study. It's what it is on the tin: a quad copter with guns strapped underneath it. A pain in the butt to deal with. Lets see some of the simple things that this one item does:
It scans both visually and audibly. It either will see you or hear you. If nothing is out of the ordinary, it continues on a scripted patrol route. If it sees or hears a player, it will go into a "query" mode where it will then break from it's patrol route to investigate. If it finds nothing, it will then go back into "patrol" mode and return to it's route. If it see's something however, that's where the interesting stuff starts.
Alright, now it knows you're there. What do you do? If you're caught outside without cover, it's pretty easy: you've got to fight back because it's pretty good at filling you full of holes. If you have cover, it will try to shoot you as soon as it has a clear sight, but it doesn't like to move while firing to keep a stable firing platform. You can get out of the way by hiding behind a rock or tree. The wasp will then try to find an angle where it can get a clear shot on you again. Normally, in most games, this would be a simple strafe, side to side which these do sometimes, but they also trained them to use all three dimensions. These robots have no problems going over top if it will get them a better shot. But what if you go and hide in a building? No problem. If they know you're there (i.e. they were shooting at you on the way in, or you shot one of them) they will swarm around the building. Suddenly you feel like you're trying to hide from the raptors from Jurassic Park. They will look at literally EVERY angle to see if they can get a shot. I've seen them circle around the building to find the one window in the back to get that clear shot and take someone down. And, adding on to that verticality I mentioned earlier, I had a scenario where I thought I was safe in a building with one door that they could reach. The arc quickly taught me that there was a hole in the ceiling as it descended down to start taking shots at me indoors. They aren't limited to a range. They will chase you across the map if you can run from them that long. If they know you are there, the desire to eliminate you is the ultimate goal.
Now what about when you fight them? As you can see in the image, their rotors are unarmored. You can shoot them to take it out, which is relatively easy to do if you are 1-on-1. When you take out one rotor, this destabilizes the drone, and it starts to wobble around erratically. After a moment, however, the drone does figure out how to fix the problem and stabilize itself to return itself back to stability on only three rotors. This is never just a scripted "Wobble in one of 10 ways" like in games of the past. No, this is dynamic. Every time it is different and relatively unpredictable.
The point of this? All enemies do this to some degree. The Hornet is an armored version of the Wasp. There's an Arc that's goal is just to scan and call in friends when it finds you. There's an upgraded version of the wasp that's larger, heavily armored and fires rockets that will ruin your run if they hit you. The walking enemies also do this too. If they lose legs, they crawl around dynamically based on the legs they have lost. They try their best to work around and enact as much damage as possible on the players. I've played lots of shooters over the years, I have not played against enemy NPCs that are as consistently challenging as these are. The scary part? I'm convinced that the devs are slowly making them better over time without telling us. Every week or so, I'm noticing the bots doing something subtly different that I'm certain they weren't doing before.
So yes, I don't think it's just a zeitgeist emergent game play between players thing. I'm sure that was part of the reason why some people voted, but the Arc themselves really have had an impact on how people perceive and interact with the game. My favorite? Watching someone who downed me get swarmed by robots because they foolishly ran in front of a pack of them to finish me off is always funny as hell because this ruthless killing nature is being done in my advantage.
Hm, maybe I'll have to take a peek. Is it possible to play single player, pure pve?
I've seen a few reviews, but none of them got into any of the details you mention. That does sound like it could be innovative.
The short answer is no, you will always be in the map with other players. They will be doing their own thing and they are always a threat. However, they do have a matchmaking algorithm that matches players based on how they interact with other players. Shoot on sight? Straight into the thunder dome. Passive and more PvE? You get put in with people who are more friendly. Now this can change with time of day or if people are gaming the algorithm to try and easy targets (foxes in the henhouse, if you will) but in the past week I've only been taken down by players a handful of times. Honestly arc get me more because the higher end bots are incredibly dangerous if you try to fight them.
I see. That may be a deal breaker for me :/
Maybe down the line if it gets really cheap or something, but I've generally been allergic to shooting games with random human opponents. Just usually gets too toxic.
I wouldn't be that harsh on it. This is a far cry from an XBox COD lobby with kids screaming insults and slurs into microphones all match long. The chat is proximity based, and many times I can go an entire raid without seeing another soul. Sure, sometimes you get someone who does scream toxic shit, but 99% of the time its when they have lost a fight and you are about to send them back to Speranza with nothing.
There is no single player, so I won't be playing it. Minecraft on Tildes is the closest I'll get to multiplayer and others on the server know I'll usually hermit on that and play on my own mostly.
(I don't play Arc, but I followed its development a bit.)
Another thing that's somewhat new and special in Arc Raiders is the animation system for the enemies, which is driven by machine learning algorithms and looks fantastic. Enemies still attack in a realistic looking way when they loose limbs (or rotors for flying drones). This video shows a few examples of the development of the animation system.
I haven't seen that before in this quality in a game, especially in a multiplayer game. And as u/NonoAdomo explained their behaviour also feels quite intelligent.
For the video link the timestamp has good preamble but 11:40 is straight to clips of robotic limb loss.
Cheers for sharing that though as it's an interesting behind the scenes series.
With Steam users spending just 14% of their playtime on games released in 2025, they need to open a retro category that appeals to the majority who, by this metric, should not be voting for the Steam Awards and all of its current-year nominees.
In previous years I have disliked the outcome of the Steam Awards, but these are actually very reasonable.
Got a chuckle seeing Silksong won both Game of the Year and "Best Game You Suck At". Feels like a decent representation of the gamer mindset.
Aside from that, I was happy to see The Midnight Walk won the VR category. I haven't played it or seen much about it (really need to track down some LPs at some point), but it's a game made with claymation! That alone shows a LOT of passion from the developers, and I love seeing devs rewarded for that sort of passion. (Also, I just really like stylized graphics over going for realism. Helps ensure that games can stand the test of time.)
It definitely stands out against the other nominees in that category, which were two officially licensed racing games (which... ew, one is from EA), a VR shooter and a multiplayer horror game. The latter two seem to thrive on players' interaction more than anything, but I want to give kudos to Emissary Zero for getting nominated since it says it's being made by a single person!
I didn't set aside time to play much of anything in 2025, so I haven't played Silent Hill F. It does look like it drips with atmosphere. But, I'm just disappointed enough by the fact that ENA Dream BBQ didn't take home the prize that I came to comment on a 6 day old post.
I had seen the previous animations by Joel G, but was unaware there would be a game until the trailer for Dream BBQ dropped.
These things tend to be popularity contests and this is a very subjective category. BBQ is probably not going to be everyone's jam. My point is just: if you haven't seen it before, ENA Dream BBQ [Chapter One] is free. You should try it. [Apparently the rest will be paid on release. ] Maybe watch some of the videos (first?) too.