Active Matter. An Extraction Shooter Through the Eyes of a Newcomer

I’ll start this review with an important admission: extraction shooters aren’t normally my thing.

When it comes to first-person shooters, Call of Duty is much closer to what I normally play. So going into Active Matter, I was stepping into a style of game that was genuinely new to me.

And while there were definitely moments where Active Matter tested my patience, I came away pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed what it was trying to do.

A Very Different Kind of Shooter

One of the first things that impressed me was the world itself.

I really liked the environments, the amount of detail and the overall look of the different areas I explored. It feels like some real thought has gone into creating these locations rather than simply giving you somewhere to run around and shoot things.

I also enjoyed having different styles of play available through PvE and PvP. As somebody unfamiliar with this type of game, having those different options gave me more freedom to find the experience that suited me.

The gunplay was another positive. Shooting felt good, and there’s a strong selection of weapons and equipment to choose from. I never felt like I was being pushed towards one particular way of playing.

Anomalies, Injuries and One Very Bad Jump

The anomalies were probably one of the most interesting parts of Active Matter for me.

Jumping through them and discovering how they could affect where I was going added something completely different to the usual FPS experience I’m familiar with.

The injury system also produced one of my favourite moments.

During one raid I found myself high up in a building and ended up having to jump out of a window. I survived but I broke my leg!

I didn’t have the medical supplies I needed to properly deal with it, so suddenly my mistake had consequences. My movement was affected and I had to deal with that injury for the remainder of the raid.

Rather than simply losing some health and carrying on as normal, an injury could actually change the way I had to play. It made my actions feel like they had consequences and created a moment from the game that I’ll actually remember.

Those Invisible Enemies…

This is also where Active Matter became difficult for me.

I actually liked the amount of enemy variety. You are not simply fighting the same generic enemies repeatedly, and there are some very different threats to deal with.

But as someone completely new to this type of game, I found some of the PvE enemies pretty unforgiving.

And then there are the invisible ones.

I understand they’re supposed to be difficult, but these became very frustrating for me. There were times when I felt like I was dealing with a lot while simultaneously trying to learn how Active Matter’s various systems worked.

More experienced extraction shooter players may adapt much quicker than I did, but from a newcomer’s perspective, there’s certainly a learning curve here.

Final Verdict

Active Matter surprised me.

I went into this as someone who doesn’t normally play extraction shooters, and there were definitely times when I felt completely outside my comfort zone.

But that’s also part of why I enjoyed discovering what it had to offer.

It feels much better to play on mouse and keyboard rather than controller, it seems very difficult to get the controller to where it feels good in terms of sensitivity.

I liked the environments, weapon variety, gunplay, PvE and PvP options and especially some of the more unusual mechanics surrounding anomalies and injuries. Breaking my leg after jumping from that window and then having to deal with the consequences is probably the perfect example of what made Active Matter interesting to me.

The difficulty of some PvE encounters was my biggest frustration. Enemy variety is a positive, but certain enemies, especially those invisible ones, could become incredibly annoying while I was still trying to learn the game.

Active Matter hasn’t suddenly turned me into an extraction-shooter expert, but it has made me interested in a genre I wouldn’t normally choose to play.

For a first experience with this style of game, that’s probably one of the biggest compliments I can give it.

WildStar Gaming was provided with a review code by Plan of Attack. This has no influence on our editorial opinion or final score.