ArcRunner Review

ArcRunner is a roguelite third-person shooter developed by Trickjump Games and published by PQube. An A.I.-controlled space station known as the Arc has been infected by a meta-virus, causing it to go insane, turn all the robots hostile, and send all the inhabitants to reprocessing. You play as an ArcRunner, sent in to clean up the mess and take back control of the station. It won’t be an easy journey, so be prepared to die a lot.

Each run tasks you with getting from the City, to the Docks, to Eden, killing anything in your way to destroy the meta-virus at the end. These levels are a sight to look at with its cyberpunk style. If I wasn’t frantically trying to survive and shooting anything that moves, I would’ve taken a lot more screenshots. However, because of the style, it can get a little distracting and I sometimes found myself unable to see some enemy types. It wasn’t common, but something to note.

There are three classes you can play as who each have a very unique playstyle and special abilities: the Soldier, the Ninja, and the Hacker. The Soldier is defensive and can throw up a shield wall to deflect bullets, the Ninja favours hit-and-run tactics and can go invisible, and the Hacker is all about subterfuge and hacking objects and enemies to do their bidding. Only the Soldier and the Ninja are available at the start, with the Hacker being unlocked once you reach Eden - the last part of a run. They all feel so different, but I did prefer using the Ninja for its quick melee and its invisibility. It stops enemies from firing, makes them stand still, and it allows you to reposition to a better spot.

However, you won't be making it far without a good gun to help you take out all those robots. There are a variety of weapons you can pick up during your run such as shotguns, rifles, revolvers, and bows etc. Completing the challenge associated with the weapon will add it to your armoury, so you can start with it on a new run. If you want to unlock all the weapons, it forces you to try them out and figure out their strengths and weaknesses. It’s great, but I would’ve liked to be able to track the challenges of a given weapon during a run.

At the end of each area, you can upgrade your character by either getting new abilities or upgrading the ones you already have. I like that all the augments are shown on your character, and that there are upgrades unique to each class, which encourages you to play in the way they're meant to be played.

Once you are inevitably killed, your character loses all augments and weapons and must start from scratch, but that's where nanites come into play. Nanites are used to upgrade your meta-abilities after dying or completing a run. You can get nanites by finding them in your run off of bosses or challenge chests, or receive them at the exit, with each level cleared earning you more nanites. This guarantees you will beat the game, it just depends on how many upgrades it will take. You can reset these any time you want so you can change your build or challenge yourself and go into a run with nothing. It’s a great system, and every time I died, there was always this “one more try” type of feeling - to try again stronger than ever.

Onto technical performance. It ran perfectly, but not on Ultra settings. I had to bump it down to High, but that’s only because my PC isn’t the best available, and even when playing on Ultra, I only suffered a few frame drops. I only encountered one glitch, and that was when the pause menu wouldn’t close, but I could keep playing and bring up a second pause menu. I needed to reset my run, but it was only a minor annoyance compared to the sheer quality on display here.

Although I haven’t beaten the final boss yet, I feel confident in saying that ArcRunner is worth playing. While I didn’t like all the weapons available, the gunplay is great and I never felt frustrated at the game. Every death was my mistake, and I need to correct that for my next run. Even now, I’m itching to have another go and I only stopped to write this review.

ArcRunner is available now on PC via Steam, GOG, and EGS, and coming soon to coming soon to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S|X.