Arc Raiders

I usually don't cover big name games, I usually do indie-ish stuff but hey,
 I am loving this so here's couple of thoughts on
Arc Raiders 

Arc Raiders feels like a game that arrived carrying other people’s expectations on its back. You hear the name and you expect noise: bombast, endless firefights, another live-service meat grinder yelling at you to grind harder. The pedigree doesn’t help—ex-DICE devs, clean sci-fi aesthetic, big machines falling from the sky. It sounds like it should be loud, sweaty, and exhausting.

But playing it? It’s quieter. More deliberate. And honestly, that’s where it got me.

There’s something in the rhythm of it that clicks on a personal level. Earth isn’t heroic here—it’s picked clean, half-abandoned, lived-in southern Italy landscape. You’re not a chosen one, not a poster character. You’re a scavenger with a job, poking through ruins, listening for trouble, weighing risk against reward. The ARC machines don’t grandstand. They don’t perform. They just exist—huge, cold, and uncaring. When one shows up, the instinct isn’t excitement, it’s calculation. Can I slip past this? Can I get what I came for and leave?

That feeling—of being small, cautious, slightly out of place—is where Arc Raiders shines. It almost feels like what I was hoping The Forever Winter would be: a world dominated by incomprehensible machines, where survival comes from awareness and restraint. The difference is tone. Arc Raiders drops the oppressive dread and pitch-black nihilism and replaces it with something calmer, cleaner. Still tense, but breathable. Less despair, more quiet resolve.

The PvEvP mechanics (far from perfect) are there and keep the thing fresh, having you always on high alert but without the chance to trust and befriend players to go against the Mechanical enemies around the map.

Gunplay is solid without trying to impress you. Movement is grounded, unshowy. Combat is tense not because it’s flashy, but because mistakes matter. You lose time. You lose loot. You lose momentum. The game constantly nudges you toward smart decisions instead of heroic ones. Extraction feels like relief, not routine. Getting out alive with something valuable feels earned.

Visually, it’s restrained in a way I really respect. Clean lines, muted palettes, machines designed to be readable rather than ornamental. The human side stays deliberately anonymous, almost disposable. You’re not meant to admire yourself—you’re meant to function. That choice won’t land for everyone, but it reinforces the mood perfectly.

And yeah—this is the part where the unease creeps in.

You can feel the live-service framework humming beneath the surface. Systems that seem poised to expand. Loops that could easily tip from tension into grind. Right now, the game trusts silence, patience, and scarcity. If that restraint holds, Arc Raiders has something special. If it doesn’t—if seasons, metas, and engagement hooks start shouting over the atmosphere—this whole delicate balance collapses fast.

Still, in its current state, I’m more attached than I expected to be. There’s confidence here. A willingness to let players feel vulnerable, observant, and human instead of powerful.

Arc Raiders doesn’t beg for attention. It waits. And I really hope it keeps the nerve to stay this quiet—because that’s exactly why it works. 

See you topside, raider.


You can get it here: 

Maniac Cop

Honestly, Maniac Cop sat on my radar for years as one of those VHS urban legends—supposedly crusty, furious, off-the-rails. One of those movies that lives in whispered recommendations and battered tape sleeves. I figured I was in for a throat punch of sleaze and grit: sweaty New York streets, busted faces, the kind of cop flick your parents would confiscate on sight. But watching it now? It’s more polished than the legend—and weirdly, that’s what makes it interesting.

The ingredients are all there. You’ve got the killer cop: face half-melted, built like a truck, Robert Z’Dar looming as Officer Matt Cordell like a walking concrete block. The city looks right—overcast skies, wet-lit alleys, neon bleeding into puddles. The opening even plays mean, baiting you with a classic street-level scare before snapping a woman’s neck in cold daylight. It wants to feel nasty. But Maniac Cop never fully dives into grindhouse chaos.

Instead, it pulls back. There’s restraint in the action, control in the violence. Long shots, old-school pacing, a surprising amount of procedural DNA. Larry Cohen’s script treats the setup less like a slasher and more like a crooked-city paranoia piece: a killer in uniform, innocent cops getting gunned down by scared civilians, the system eating itself alive. It’s closer to a crime thriller with a supernatural infection than a splatter reel.

I went in chasing pure grit; I got mood.

TThe camera lingers. Lustig lets scenes breathe. The soundtrack leans toward synth tension instead of shock stings. You’re supposed to feel the dread spreading through the city, not just rubberneck at bodies dropping. Even the practical effects feel purposeful—there, but not screaming for attention. For a movie called Maniac Cop, it’s oddly careful.

There’s also real noir energy under the pulp. Bruce Campbell plays Jack Forrest as a man already halfway ruined—framed, compromised, exhausted. Laurene Landon’s Theresa Mallory has rough edges and weight, not just genre utility. Tom Atkins shows up as the kind of hard-edged authority figure you expect him to be… and then the movie casually tosses him out a window halfway through, just to remind you this thing doesn’t follow the rules you think it does. The characters are adults, messy, morally scuffed. No dumb teens, no cartoon heroics.

That’s the odd truth of it: Maniac Cop looks tougher than it actually is. The marketing promises pure grime, but the film itself is almost thoughtful, even a little tragic. Cordell isn’t just a monster—he’s a wronged enforcer, chewed up by corruption and brutality, turned into something relentless and empty. The slasher mechanics are there, but they’re wrapped in cynicism instead of cruelty.

It’s not toothless—but it’s not sleaze for the sake of sleaze either. It’s a midnight movie with a bit of pride. Rough enough to work, smooth enough to catch you off guard if you grew up hearing about it as the “dirtiest cop movie ever.”

Bottom line: Maniac Cop is an odd one. Not nearly as raw as I wanted—but cooler, stranger, and more controlled than expected. Worth your time, especially if you want to see what happens when VHS cult mythology meets a movie that quietly thinks it has something to say.

It’s not toothless, but it’s not sleaze for the sake of sleaze. It’s a midnight movie with a little pride—rough enough to work, smooth enough to surprise you if you grew up hearing about it as the “dirtiest cop movie ever.” Bottom line: Maniac Cop is an odd one. Not nearly as raw as I wanted, but cool in a way I didn’t expect. Worth your time, especially if you want to see what happens when VHS cult starts acting like it’s got something to prove.