Players will need to work together if they want to get through all the zones and mission on a map in Rainbow Six Extraction. (Ubisoft)
Rainbow Six Siege brought intriguing concepts to the tactical shooter. Walls could be broken to create new passages or lines of sight. Drones could be used to scout adversaries. Ropes could offer a way to rappel down, opening up new avenues of attack.
It introduced innovative concepts to the genre, but the only problem was that the demanding aspect of the competitive play didn’t appeal to me. Not one to waste a good idea, Ubisoft crafted Rainbow Six Extraction, which takes the Siege gameplay and applies it to a cooperative format. Ubisoft previously experimented with the concept in a limited time event called Outbreak in a Siege expansion. Ubisoft’s latest project carries over those ideas and explores them as a fully fledged game.
Fighting the Archaeans
Extraction follows operators of the Rainbow Exogenous Analysis and Containment Team (REACT), a new unit that was formed after the Outbreak incident. It was discovered that a Russian Soyuz capsule crashed near Truth or Consequences, N.M., and created a mysterious epidemic that brought forth alien lifeforms called Archaeans.
Players can help control areas with the use of the claymore mine in Rainbow Six Extraction. (Ubisoft)
That case was a prelude. Soon after, Archaeans began emerging in New York, San Francisco, Alaska and again in Truth or Consequences. Controlling operators from REACT, players enter these hot zones and fulfill incursions in teams of three. Initially, players have access to just New York, but as they level up, they unlock more regions, maps, upgrades and operators.
It’s a divergent premise for the Rainbow Six franchise that usually focuses on terrorism and black ops. The sci-fi setup lets Ubisoft be more creative, but the big problem is that the threshold to experience that creativity is fairly high. In fact, there’s a steep learning curve and a lot of grinding as players figure out how to play Extraction.
A slow and careful approach
The game is more methodical rather than a run-and-gun affair. Before entering a building, it’s best to send a drone that scouts ahead and marks the dangers and nests that spawn Archaeans. It’s a game that rewards stealth, teamwork and coordination as players act in concert to clear rooms and advance.
One of the reasons for the caution is that players have a finite amount of health. If players are injured, they can’t get that life back during a mission. At best, they can heal and temporarily boost the life meter, but after the mission is over, heavily hurt operators are unavailable because they require time to be patched up.
Rushing into room is asking for disaster because that likely means a teammate goes down and that drags the squad toward failure. With zero health, operators collapse and a protective foam surrounds them. They become missing in action and unavailable. Players will need to rescue and extract them.
Extraction further punishes players by taking away experience points that would raise them a level. It’s brutal, but thankfully, saving MIA operators will let players regain the lost work. Having such a hefty penalty means that players will have to make hard choices during incursions. They can extract at any time if they feel like they may not finish the incursion, but at the same time, leaving means that they miss out on more experience points and opportunities.
If a REACT operator is knocked out during a mission in Rainbow Six Extraction, players lose experience points if they fail the objective and they also lose the operator. They must later rescue them with a new squad. (Ubisoft)
Stretching out replayability
XP is the most important resource because that’s what determines players’ progression. There is a general level that unlocks new maps, costumes, tools and modes, but players also have levels for each of the 18 operators that initially launch with the game. Taking these operators on a mission raises their levels, improving their gear and stats.
That increases the replayability of game that already has a decent of amount of depth and tries to stretch things out by giving players randomized incursion objectives across the 11 areas, which in turn have three subzones. Players will get a preview of the mission goals in each subzone and they can pick their characters based on that.
It’s important to pick operators with the right tools for the job. A commando such as Sledge has strong armor and a hammer that lets him smash through walls, creating new routes through a map. That’s helpful in the Triangulation objective, which requires the squad to activate three laptops within a short time. Players can carve out a fast path to each one. Meanwhile, operators such as Vigil specialize in stealth, which is important in Nest Tracking, which requires players to avoid alerting enemies so that they can mark enemy-spawning points.
With each of the operators having their own unique ability and the chance to create different loadouts, players will find combinations that work well together. They’ll need to experiment to find the best combinations because Extraction is difficult and grows more so as players level up their operators and confront increasing difficulties. But those challenges reward players with more experience and opportunities to face tougher foes in Gateway Singularities.
Players will face more challenges as Ubisoft evolves its end game modes. Players have Maelstrom Protocol, which is an extended incursion, but the requirements to reach it will take players a hefty amount of time, and that’s the big issue with Extraction. The game has an intriguing amount of depth, but players will need to invest a lot of time and find a reliable group to discover the best experience the game has to offer now and perhaps in the future.
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStaiton 4, Google Stadia, Amazon Luna, PC
