At 5 pm, on most weeknights, I head out to rummage through the remnants of civilization for stray wires and leftover air fresheners. However, as soon as I return from the Kilburn Tesco Metro, I launch Arc Raiders and do the same, only this time with friends. (Classic joke structure ACTIVATED.) That’s the enchantment of videogames.
Even though I keep going back to the extraction shooter Arc Raiders, exploring its devastated Earth in 20-minute intervals while avoiding the flying robots that are on the lookout for soft humans, there’s always a nuance when assessing multiplayer games: are you playing because the game is enjoyable, or because it’s wonderful to reconnect with the old crew?