In 2018, the multiplayer tactical shooter Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege launched the Outbreak time event. In it, operatives from the game teamed up against alien parasites that crawled out in Mexico. These were several fairly simple PvE missions with a sharpening for shooting – you run from point A to point B, and enemies climb on you. But Ubisoft wanted to develop this idea into a separate project – the company saw in this the potential for a “softer” entry into the rather difficult Rainbow Six Siege.

So, four years later, the Rainbow Six Extraction shooter was born. Whether he has become the best version of himself during this time – read in our review.

Plot

The plot remained the same, but the place of action has changed: pockets of alien slurry have become more active in America. Goo is a dark substance that gradually spreads and covers the entire surface. She also creates archaea – humanoid monsters that are extremely hostile. The REACT unit is calling on operatives to fight back against the contagion. And that’s all – there is only a plot, without any development.

The main goal of the team is to study the parasite. There is no ultimate task like “kill the main boss”, “destroy the heart of the swarm”, or at least “come up with an antidote”. Moreover, Extraction is trying hard to be a serious game – records about archaea and a parasite in the local archive are collected in a fairly voluminous lore, but, unfortunately, all this has no development. Go on a raid, kill archaeans, collect data, download a level, repeat – that’s the whole point of Rainbow Six Extraction. And when you look into the list of available improvements in the appearance of fighters and find, for example, a cat’s head or a bear suit, you generally forget about the purpose of all these “serious” operations.

Locations

All progression in the game is tied solely to the experience earned. Thanks to him, the following locations open, access to new gadgets, operatives and weapons for them. Roughly speaking, this is your goal in Extraction. You have a base where you can customize the weapons and gadgets of the operatives. Choosing one of them, you go to one of four locations, arranged by difficulty: New York, San Francisco, Alaska and Truth or Consequences. The more difficult the location, the more dangerous archaean individuals will be there.

Each city has three maps, which you can get randomly or choose a specific one. Interestingly, you can also clear maps alone – the difficulty scales depending on the number of operatives. It will even give you twice as many points, but it will be long and rather boring.

Each map is divided into three sectors with one task for each. Complete all three and evacuate – get the maximum score. The maps are the same, but the sectors and tasks for them are in random order, so the same zone can start and end in different places, but it will look different. But after a couple of hours of playing, you will already know where and where you need to move approximately.

Despite the fact that tasks go from easy (in the first sector) to difficult (in the last), in reality this is not always the case. It all depends on the type and number of enemy in combination with the task. And random is also responsible for this, so sometimes it happens that you have to flee in a panic already from the first sector, since you can evacuate in a special place at almost any moment.

rules

It would seem, so what? Fly into the location, kill everyone with a firearm, earn points and move on. But the developers came up with an interesting and sometimes annoying mechanics with the loss of a fighter. If you run out of health on a mission, then your operative does not die, but turns into a nugget – he is covered with protective foam (very similar to breading) and he remains “in the clutches of the enemy.” You can’t use this operator until you rescue him in one of the following runs on the same map by choosing someone else.

But after the rescue, the fighter will be unavailable for some time: he needs to heal – just like the operatives who managed to get out alive, but received a lot of damage. The more successful the sortie, the more health will be replenished by the wounded. This was not enough for the developers, and if you fail the rescue mission, then part of the general experience and experience of the operative will burn out, rolling you back. Coupled with the fact that during operations you can’t be treated in any way, but only temporarily improve your health, you quickly begin to value each fighter and not go into hell.

Shooting

Shooting in Extraction almost completely migrated from Siege: the same operatives, the same weapons, the same shots, the same breakable walls, and even some locations are similar. Unless they were changed to suit the infection, just like gadgets were changed to meet the needs of the fight against archaea.

In case you didn’t know, Siege has a set of operatives with different devices and weapons. Some, for example, have a pulse sensor to detect the enemy through walls, and someone can give the team extra armor. Each fighter is unique, and this is what battle tactics are made up of. But in Siege you play against real people, and in Extraction you play against primitive AI.

Enemies

Archaea do not have some very complex and cunning tactics. They walk back and forth until they find you, and then raise the alarm and run in your face. Yes, there are, for example, exploding archaea or large individuals with a large supply of health, but the difficulty of dealing with them is only in their number and your life reserve. Even the most basic parasites take quite a lot of health in one hit, so the best tactic is to kill them from afar and in stealth.

Detection is also fraught with the fact that archaea usually walk near small nests – if an alarm is triggered near them, they begin to actively breed new individuals, which in turn quickly fill the level and constantly run in your direction. Even three operatives are sometimes not enough to stop 2-3 nests, what can we say if you are alone in this situation.

The goo that covers everything also has a task: it slows down your movement and speeds up the movement of the enemy. Some individuals even know how to quickly move through it, being behind you. Getting rid of slurry on surfaces is quite simple: either stab or shoot. But even with all this, the battle with enemies does not become very tactical, but is divided into two stages: you crawl on your haunches and clean everything carefully, or you shoot at everything that moves as soon as the stealth is screwed up. At higher levels, the second scenario happens more often, even though almost all enemies can be silently killed from behind – this becomes more difficult to implement when there are a lot of Archaea around.

Graphic arts

The picture in Rainbow Six Extraction has nothing to brag about – it is average. It can’t be called terrible either: sometimes you can find rooms with interesting lighting. But otherwise, this game has a PvP basis, and there the graphics can negatively affect performance and connectivity. Both the models of operatives and the models of weapons turned out to be average. Parasites also do not inspire – black blots with reddish “critical points”.

The only thing that is a little mesmerizing is how the black substance in real time covers objects on the map. Sometimes this makes it a little uncomfortable. As a result, Extraction has decent performance: it didn’t lag and never sag for me.

Verdict

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction came from the Siege event – it should have stayed there. The mode itself is not bad, you can enjoy it, especially if you find two more enthusiasts who are also interested in crawling past alien parasites on their belly and clearing locations in stealth. For four years, they could not turn Extraction into a full-fledged offshoot, this is strange.

Rainbow Six Extraction is a set of levels with varying degrees of difficulty. You only need to play them for the sake of pumping and unlocking weapon skins – in conjunction with Siege, this would sound more logical. All these pretentious videos and a large base for analyzing types of archaea do not create an atmosphere at all, and there is no plot here either.

I played Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction on PC via Game Pass. This option seemed normal to me, but if I had to buy at full price, then most likely I would be disappointed. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction isn’t bad, just not very essential.