Review of Rainbow Six Extraction

For Rainbow Six Extraction, Ubisoft extrapolated the fan-favorite Outbreak game mode from Rainbow Six Siege and expanded it into its own game. In it, players must confront, study, and fight a deadly alien species called the Archaeans in four known theaters of war: New York City, San Francisco, Alaska, and Truth or Consequences, New Mexico . Rainbow Six Extraction, at its core, is a three-player PvE game where tactics outweigh raw FPS skills. Players must complete different objectives in each Incursion, the title of which each gameplay session carries, and do so with different weapons, gear, and operators. It creates some intense moments and requires a bit of thought and management on the player’s behalf, but ultimately, it feels like more of a game mode than something bigger. Overall, Rainbow Six Extraction excels in sheer fun factor with its moment-to-moment gameplay. The weapons are different enough to be truly satisfying, while choosing one suppressor versus another attachment offers its own fun risks, and a variety of tactical options all add to the importance of battle. Completing an entire Incursion can be rewarding, while calling for an early capture doesn’t feel like a failure. It’s a tactical experience for hardcore Rainbow Six players and invites players to test their skills and bask in small victories. For that hardcore audience, Rainbow Six Extraction offers more challenging and rewarding experiences. When players advance enough, they can unlock Wall-to-Wall Assignments and Maelstrom Protocols. The first is a great Horde mode, where all the weight of a single Incursion is still important but pure combat takes precedence. Maelstrom Protocol, its ranked PvE mode, really serves as a way for hardcore players to show off their skills in the toughest and longest Incursions. They are also refreshed every week, ensuring that hardcore players always get new challenges. Rainbow Six Extraction boasts 18 operators, 12 maps, 13 general missions, 25 gadgets, 69 weapons, and 13 enemy archetypes, but players will quickly run through them all. Players will always fall for a three-objective Incursion, and there aren’t really enough objectives in the game to keep it lively. Players can only destroy nests, silently take down enemies, and save MIA Rainbow Six Extraction operators so many times before the new game disappears. Of course, those are not the only three goals, but it can definitely be felt after some time. It would help if the maps brought more variety to these Incursions, but they all look incredibly similar. It doesn’t matter if it’s in New York City or Alaska, because the amount of Sprawl (a goo left everywhere by Rainbow Six Extraction’s Archaeans), Nests, Blinding Spores, and general decay makes it so that any map difference is largely unimportant. The only real change the maps bring to the gameplay is the difficulty of the online Incursions, as New York City is set to the easiest setting and Truth or Consequences is set to the hardest. Where Rainbow Six Extraction shines is in its operator management. Players will immediately have access to 9 of them, while the other 9 are unlocked through progression. Damage taken in an Incursion is persistent, meaning players must let their characters heal in real-time while using other characters in different Incursions. This ensures that players can learn multiple characters, instead of focusing on one or two like in most online multiplayer games. What’s more, losing a character means that the XP they receive towards overall progress is also held hostage, incentivizing survival and recovery when possible. Unfortunately, the characters themselves are pretty bland. Some Rainbow Six Extraction abilities and loadouts are also superior to others, meaning that certain characters will always be the last choice for Rainbow Six Extraction players. The cheap design of the characters is exacerbated by the in-game microtransactions as well. The skins in Rainbow Six Extraction are mostly recolors with a design change or two. But, each character has a legendary skin with a unique design but they can only be purchased with real money. Furthermore, the items in the shop are more unusual than the usual designs, with one turning an entire character into a bipedal cat, another replacing a head with a TV, and so on. Microtransactions aren’t new, but they feel predatory. RELATED: Rainbow Six Extraction: How to Use Buddy Pass As a multiplayer game, players often play online with friends or randomly, but lack online experience. There is a huge difference in terms of Rainbow Six Extraction gameplay when playing alone, with randoms, or with friends—even worse than typical multiplayer games. In solo play, a lot of the pressure isn’t there and players have more control over the difficulty, but some aspects of the gameplay are more punishing. Blinding Spores, for example, are environmental hazards that attach themselves to players and eventually blind them, which is incredibly dangerous when dealing with an onslaught of Archaeans. In a team, they can shoot or hit a player but in solo play, the only option is to use a stun grenade or ability. Without proper setup, it’s impossible. Playing with friends makes it easier, and also makes it more fun. Multiplayer allows Rainbow Six’s tactical gameplay to shine, while concerns about limited objectives fall by the wayside. Unfortunately, that goes away when playing randoms. Rainbow Six Extraction’s entire focus on objectives makes random teammates a mixed bag. Some teammates will rush to the hardest difficulty and fall within the first minute of the match, ignoring the goal completely. It’s designed for a hardcore audience that wants to go in slowly, take their time, learn the layout, take out enemies, and plan attacks, offenses, and defenses, but that’s not the typical online experience shooter, and it shows. This isn’t necessarily the fault of the game itself, just the nature of random online matchmaking, but having teammates who don’t play the objective in an objective-based game drags the whole experience down. Despite this, Rainbow Six Extraction is technically sound. Aside from a bug when it comes to not completing revives and not connecting to a server (fixed by simply backing up, with matchmaking currently taking a few seconds), Rainbow Six Extraction has no issues with during our playthrough. The technical polish is an outstanding aspect of the game, really making the core experience as fun as possible. Rainbow Six Extraction is a mixed bag of great ideas and poor execution. It’s unfortunate that the bad manages to outweigh the good, because underneath it all, Rainbow Six Extraction’s gameplay approach holds promise. It will be interesting to see how Ubisoft supports this title in the coming weeks and months, but it’s really hard to see how it can fix the many major issues within the game. Rainbow Six Extraction is now available for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Today Technology was provided with an Xbox Series X code for the purposes of this review. MORE: Rainbow Six Extraction: The Best Operators to Upgrade First