Written by Anthony L. Cuaycong
Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft
Genre: Action
Price: $39.99
Those from the outside looking in would be hard-pressed to find a gamer who hasn't heard of the Rainbow Six series. Even if they're not familiar with Tom Clancy's books as the source material, the many titles spewed out by the franchise have more than lived up to their inspirations, thrusting players into situations which require both a cool head and a steady aim. Unlike other shooters, Rainbow Six emphasized a more tactical approach to combat, necessitating good positioning and situational awareness to win the day.
Where most of the original Rainbow Six series games had been focused on its single-player options, Rainbow Six Siege took a multiplayer approach, pitting two teams of players against each other in a Counter-Strike style match of planting a bomb in a specific site. With breakable walls, the prevalence of wall bangs, and the different weapons and skills each Operator has, Siege was able to stand out and establish itself among its brethren as a title worthy of playing.
This is where Rainbow Six Extraction comes in. Rainbow Six Siege had originally released a limited-time event featuring players against aliens, forcing them to work together against an inhuman menace. This mode, called Outbreak, was so popular that it inspired the creation of the standalone Rainbow Six Extraction. With much of its concept inspired by an event well loved by its community, what could possibly go wrong in marketting it as its own PvE title?
In Rainbow Six Extraction, players combat an alien presence that has taken over the local area. They need to shoot down all sorts of monsters, team up with friends to rescue friendly civilians, and stay alive to earn experience to better equip their chosen character for the next run.
Indeed, the operative word is experience. Rainbow Six Extraction plays with a sort of Rogue-lite system, with the operators being a vital part in each run on the slate. By completing objectives and successfully extracting out of the map, gamers will earn experience points, level up their operators, and slowly gain access to maps presenting harder obstacles. Lose the operators at any point inside the mission, though, and gamers will not be able to tap them for the entire run and until they are rescued in a future operation. This forces a pretty interesting cost-benefit scenario, often having gamers rotate between operators depending on the level of risk involved.
The operators and maps are lifted directly from Rainbow Six Siege. Any hardcore player of the game will most likely feel at home at Rainbow Six Extraction, with a few new additions here and there to really sell the aliens theme. Slime covers the walls, alien goo and rubble litter once-clean areas. In theory, this is a pretty decent way at changing up the gameplay, especially for those who loved the initial Outbreak event. Add some new objectives to do, insert some familiar characters that people love, touch up the surroundings to sell the atmosphere, and, voila: new game. In practice, however, this is so much more different, and not necessary for the better.
While Rainbow Six Extraction might have some good ideas, it's not able to perform them as well as they should. The game on its easier difficulties is a breeze, and is a boring slog at that. It's really only in the harder modes that gamers need some caution, and even then, maps and objectives get repetitive fast. With only a handful of maps to really play through, they’ll start to see the same ones loop the more they play, and with the higher difficulties locked away, they’re going to be playing through the same scenarios over and over just to get to the more challenging modes.
This wouldn't be a problem if Rainbow Six Extraction is structured and linear. Something akin to Left for Dead, for instance, would have big maps, but with dynamic events to really make each run feel different. The objectives gamers will do might be the same, but the experience they’ll have in each map will be different, punctuated by new enemy placements, memorable set pieces to run through, and different enemy encounters to really sell the idea that the mission is unique.
Rainbow Six Extraction however, relies more on randomly generated objectives. It's not necessarily bad, but some objectives feel way too easy to accomplish. Given how the maps are designed as well, gamers will soon find that nothing much sticks out. Gone are the intriguing moments that Rainbow Six Siege had; no more rappelling down roofs or breaking walls for vision. Instead, gamers will be skulking through narrow corridors and peeking through hallways, unsure of what lurks around the next corner. Maybe it'll be an exciting encounter, or a tough new enemy type; more than likely, it's just going to be the same old, same old; the most unique parts of Rainbow Six Extraction are never really leveraged to make it stand out.
True, Rainbow Six Extraction remains fun. Figuring out these missions the first time around is actually pretty exciting. While maps are mostly carbon copies of their Rainbow Six Siege equivalent, the designers did well in making the areas feel a little more menacing. Moreover, the tactical element is still present, as harder difficulties force gamers to play quietly and slowly. The different enemy types they encounter necessitate different ways to deal with them, and that initial challenge, paired with the new objectives, can bring some enjoyment.
However, Rainbow Six Extraction doesn't feel like a game to be played for long. It just doesn't have that same robustness that other games do. Randomized objectives can be fun, but only if they're designed well. In any case, thoughts on the Outbreak event from Rainbow Six Siege should serve as an accurate gauge. Gamers who liked it will feel at home. Gamers who didn’t will not. Enough said.
THE GOOD
- Enjoyable little side attractions with a lot of tension
- Surprising amount of depth for what was essentially a side mode for Rainbow Six Siege
- Familiar enough gameplay combined with some new gimmicks to spice things up
THE BAD
- Feels and plays like a side mode, relying on repetition and routine to get the most out of the playtime
- Gets monotonous after a while
RATING: 7/10
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