Siege Standalone Mode – First Look at Rainbow Six Extraction

Not bad idea

In Rainbow Six Extraction, three operatives borrowed from Rainbow Six Siege land in one of the locations where they need to complete a series of tasks. As part of the premiere screening, we had only one map available, “Alaska”, on which we had to complete three tasks. The latter, by the way, are selected from 11 at random: players can be offered, for example, to free hostages, hold a certain point or fight off the advancing waves of opponents. Not to say that missions are unique – all this in one form or another has already been encountered in other shooters.

Opponents, fortunately, are much more unique: players will have to face nine types of monsters, all of which differ not only visually, but also in skills. Some seek to shorten the distance as quickly as possible and attack in close combat, others explode when players approach, and still others try to blind and actively set traps.

True, this is not enough: the shooting of enemies is pretty standard, which is why most of the tasks still boil down to the destruction of crowds of aliens. In two hours spent in the game, my colleagues and I managed to understand most of the Extraction mechanics, so soon we went through the map over and over again without any special difficulties. The matches, by the way, are rather short – we managed to complete most of them in 15 minutes. I would like to believe that the pretense of uniformity will disappear with the increase in the number of cards, but without access to them it is difficult to assert such a thing.

Atmosphere above all else

After the game, the word “cool” came to mind: the idea of ​​the shooter is really cool, which is difficult to argue with. Despite the fact that we were given access only to “Alaska”, everyone who played managed to feel the right atmosphere, which was carefully created by the authors of the shooter. Despite the fact that most of the time we performed rather monotonous tasks, at some point it began to seem that Alaska, affected by an alien infection, not only in the game, but also around.

The latter, however, was facilitated by a funny coincidence: I played Extraction from the office, and during the passage we started testing the fire alarm system. Over and over again came from the loudspeakers: “Evacuation! Leave the building urgently! ”, Which added a lot to the atmosphere of what was happening on the screen. Colleagues from other publications, who heard this in headphones, even suggested that the developers add similar voicelines to the shooter.

And it seems that, if we discard a certain monotony, Rainbow Six Extraction can be called a good fun shooter in which you can have a great evening with friends. It would seem that the title has all the makings to become successful … if not for one big “but”.

We’ve already seen it somewhere

Getting a fresh perspective on Extraction is difficult for one simple reason: it’s not a new game. Several years ago, an event called Outbreak was held in Rainbow Six Siege, the essence of which was that … three operatives cleared the location from monsters. Painfully familiar formula, isn’t it?

The Siege event went off with a bang: the players were very happy. The main reason for everyone’s delight is that Outbreak is a near-perfect warm-up for a serious Siege game. The shooter has an e-sports scene and all the components, but there is practically no possibility of individual training. Yes, the title contains the notorious Terrorist Hunt, but it can offer a maximum of 30 bots scattered across a huge map. And after each round in TH, there is a long restart that feels like spending more time than the round itself. In this regard, Siege players were extremely happy to have the opportunity to exercise more or less adequately before rating matches instead of the long and not very productive training sessions in Terrorist Hunt.

Rainbow Six Extraction is a copy of the same event, albeit with minor edits. Yes, it will have more than one card. Yes, there will be more variable opponents. Yes, there will be various tasks. But the essence of the game remains the same: Siege operatives kill monsters. Nothing new. This is exactly the same event, only this time Ubisoft for some reason decided to reward it with a separate client. But why is completely incomprehensible.

There are no new mechanics in Extraction other than Siege. Destructible surfaces, reinforced walls, bullet and punch halls. Even the set of operatives and their abilities migrated from Siege unchanged. It is completely incomprehensible why this game should be considered “new”. It’s hard to understand how Ubisoft is positioning its title and, even more interesting, how they will prove to gamers that it is worth buying with Siege (unless, of course, the company suddenly makes Extraction free).

Perhaps the developers will delight fans with frequent updates, as they do with Siege, and then the title will have a better chance of surviving, maintaining the interest of users. But this, as you know, is fortune telling on the coffee grounds.

Extraction doesn’t look like a full-fledged game right now. Like an event inside Siege – yes. As a separate training mode inside the Siege – yes. As a full-fledged game – unfortunately, no. Of course, there is some time left before the release of Rainbow Six Extraction and the developers from Ubisoft can perform a miracle, but at the moment, I think, the shooter is in danger of failing and not gaining the popularity that the creators are surely counting on.