{"id":1605455,"date":"2026-06-13T09:11:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T09:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iBxQT4dqWDDYj5yjsEgVN9"},"modified":"2026-06-13T09:11:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T09:11:54","slug":"extraction-shooter-peak-is-finally-returning-and-all-you-arc-raiders-players-should-definitely-take-note","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/extraction-shooter-peak-is-finally-returning-and-all-you-arc-raiders-players-should-definitely-take-note\/","title":{"rendered":"Extraction shooter peak is finally returning and all you Arc Raiders players should definitely take note"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I’m not really <\/em>a Call of Duty player for the most part. Sure, I’ve played the hits like anyone who enjoys a good shooter, and have fond memories of the first, second, and third, plus the Modern Warfare games and the original Black Ops, but besides those, modern CoD has mostly alienated me. Or at least it did until 2022 when I found myself putting hundreds of hours into a new Warzone mode: DMZ.<\/p>\n

To this day, I genuinely think DMZ is one of the most underrated extraction shooters around, plus one of the best things modern Call of Duty has ever produced. It’s not necessarily for the hardcore crowd, but for those who prefer more PvE-centric play. Back before DMZ, I felt alienated by the genre. I personally love extraction shooters like Hunt: Showdown\u2014it’s a fantastic concept, but for me its world and setting (which I wanted to explore) were hampered by the fact I’d get sniped whenever I attempted to do that.<\/p>\n

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\"DMZ<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

(Image credit: Infinity Ward)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I love PvP, but more as an interlude, as a tasty little morsel of encounter that occurs between exploration and PvE. And this is one of the reasons DMZ was so good<\/u><\/a>. The giant city-wide map of Al Mazrah, flush with locked buildings to explore, loot rooms to raid, vehicles, events, and even boss-type enemies felt so liberating. Sometimes you’d encounter other players, sometimes you wouldn’t, but when you did, its team-based mechanics made these encounters all the better.<\/p>\n

Not just proximity chat, but the ability to gamble on betraying your team to join another, or even recruit other teams you’d just wiped, giving you a better chance at clearing harder areas. And to clarify, I’m not talking about an unofficial alliance Marathon-style, you could literally join other teams to tackle harder content. Stuff like the Koschei Complex\u2014an entire indoor mode with loot vaults and bosses you could only matchmake for in <\/em>Al Mazrah itself.<\/p>\n

Building 21 was a fantastic concept, too, channeling many of the same ideas as Marathon’s Cryo Archive years before. To enter this hardcore mode, you required a special keycard loot item you could only find in Al Mazrah, which would give you a single run when the mode was periodically active. This was a great way to incentivise players to bring their best gear, especially as the building was filled with puzzles, dangerous enemies, valuable loot, and bosses like the grenade launcher-wielding Velikan.<\/p>\n

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\"DMZ<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

(Image credit: Infinity Ward)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Defeating him was the only way to get this extremely powerful gun in DMZ and my proudest moment in the mode might be when I managed to kill him and snatch it. All of this is to say, DMZ was filled with really smart ideas, and for me, it was my Arc Raiders before <\/em>Arc Raiders.<\/p>\n

Sure, it wasn’t perfect, and sometimes a match would devolve into teams of six riding around ganking everyone in sight. DMZ has also progressively gotten more sweaty since its release (as shooters generally do), but especially after Activision stopped supporting the mode in 2023. That’s why I’m excited for a fresh start. As you’ve probably seen, DMZ 2.0 is set to arrive<\/a> with Modern Warfare 4<\/a>, and not as a beta like the previous iteration, but a fully-fledged mode. <\/p>\n

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