Time is a flat circle, and somehow, I've found myself back in 2017. For many – myself included – that year was largely defined by PUBG, which propelled a relatively obscure DayZ mod into the full-blown battle royale genre we know and love today. I paid my dues in Water Town like anyone else (with, yikes, 210 hours of playtime and counting), but between chasing chicken dinners, I spent a lot of time playing a lesser-known top-down strategy game called Door Kickers, which was an indie strategy game about surviving isometric firefights. In an oddly personal twist, it feels like this time capsule of 2017 has been cracked open for Krafton's latest game, Project Arc.
A top-down shooter, Project Arc is a 5v5 multiplayer game inspired by PUBG. Like its battle royale sibling, strategic vision is as prized as quick reflexes, with the result being a mish-mash of Rainbow Six Siege and Counter-Strike. But given how important your line of sight is here, this is the first shooter where I'd rather have a protractor glued to my rifle instead of a silencer.
Getting out of your head
In the hour or so I've played of Project Arc, its two available modes have painted the game in very different lights. The first, Team Deathmatch, is almost arcade-y in its chaos. The map I played on – a sprawling mansion with a mix of narrow corridors, side rooms, and wide-open gardens – made it very clear that in this game, vision is king. Each character moves fairly slowly and can only shoot if their gun is being aimed, which means you're forced to either clear corners at a plodding pace or risk sprinting into a shootout unprepared.
This, in tandem with everyone having low health, means there's a massive emphasis on getting the drop on your opponent. Anything beyond your narrow field of view is shrouded in shadow, which means tactics that seize the element of surprise – such as holding a tight corner with a shotgun or sniping down a lengthy flanking route – are brutally effective. A straight line indicates where you're able to shoot, but this doesn't simplify things as much as you might think: there's also verticality to account for, as your scroll wheel determines whether you're aiming high or low. Aim at head-level, and your shots will sail over anyone crouched down. Crouch down yourself, though, and you'll be unable to see or shoot over waist-high barriers like windows or planters.
In Team Deathmatch, this depth translates to absolute carnage. Trying to kill an opponent is one thing, but doing so in a cramped corridor without blowing the head off your teammate is another matter entirely.
In those first matches I permanently crab-walked around with an SMG, preying on anyone who came around corners too quickly. 90% of my deaths came from opponents doing the same thing to me, with the rest being head-to-head firefights so messy that both parties come away feeling a bit embarrassed.
Don't look down
These top-down shenanigans work much better in Project Arc's round-based "Standard" mode, in which both teams take turns to plant or defuse a bomb across two sites. If it sounds familiar, it should: it's the same game mode popularized by Counter-Strike, Valorant, and Rainbow Six Siege. In practice, it's closest to the latter: you choose operators with unique gadgets and weapons, select wood-paneled walls are destructible and can be reinforced, and attackers choose which part of the map will be their spawnpoint for the round. Here, the aerial perspective shines. As the defender trying to hold an abandoned hospital, it's incredibly tense hearing enemies scuttle around outside – while most of my screen sits in darkness – waiting to see where they'll break in from. Sometimes I'd get lucky and they'd breach the exact boarded-up window I had my shotgun pointed at. Other rounds, I'd be killed without ever knowing they were in the building.
Brilliantly, the emphasis on line of sight means outthinking your opponent often pays off. As an attacker, I found myself using a sniper to blow a hole in a wooden barricade, then one-shotting whoever came to investigate. Defending, I'd hide one operator's proximity mines below open windows and sprawl barbed wire beneath others to annoy the living daylights out of the other team. I found better living through bastardry – and although a "correct" meta will inevitably shore up around launch, Project Arc's learning curve feels quite steep.
By the end of this hands-on, Project Arc's tactical Siege-alike mode made a far better impression than its frantic Team Deathmatch. Its top-down perspective emphasizes the strategic thinking that draws me to games like Counter-Strike in the first place, with less weight on quick reaction speeds and accuracy. For some, that flipping of the scales will be the selling point of Project Arc. Equally, others may find having less control over shooting is frustrating. Personally, my reflexes haven't much improved since the days spent juggling PUBG and Door Kickers in 2017, so any opportunity to let my surviving brain cells do the heavy lifting is a welcome one.
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