This XCOM spin on Siege is lots of fun - Rainbow Six Extraction Quick Review

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PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Play it if, like me, you’ve always been Siege-curious but have avoided it due to its reputation for sweatiness and griefing. Rainbow Six Extraction is a co-op PvE version of Ubisoft’s smash-hit 5v5 shooter that borrows its refined weapons and operator abilities and repurposes them into a sci-fi PvE co-op experience. What if Siege was about XCOM aliens instead of Tom Clancy stuff? Well, now we know—and despite issues here and there, it’s a really good time.

TIME PLAYED

So far, I’ve played seven hours of Rainbow Six Extraction. I played a couple solo incursions, but the bulk of my time has been in matchmade co-op sessions. I leveled a few of my initial team of operators up enough to unlock a second primary weapon, completed side objectives to unlock new tech and gain bonus experience, and opened up two new areas—San Francisco and Alaska—after running a bunch of missions in the initial zone in New York City. Extraction says I have a ten percent total completion rate right now, whatever that means.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Finely tuned shooting. Why reinvent the wheel? Rainbow Six Siege has spent nearly a decade fussing over its operator kits, and that includes many, many tuning passes on each of their guns. Rainbow Six Extraction lifts this entire system, making its shooting surgical and satisfying, exactly the way it is in Siege. I loved when I got to lean around a corner to pop an faceless Archaean footsoldier with a headshot, or blast shotgun shells through weaker walls to take out aliens I’d spotted with my special X-ray flashlight. While you’re fighting an alien invasion, the weapons are all modeled on real-world firearms—it’s pistols, ARs, shotguns, and LMGs you already know well if you’ve played Siege or any other modern military shooter.

• Roster management. Another great idea Extraction lifts from elsewhere is its roster management system, which feels like a light version of XCOM’s squad management. Sending operators out on missions involves risk, and if they’re hurt or captured during an incursion, they’ll be unavailable for some time after. If I took damage during a mission, the operator I’d selected would have to sit out for my next couple rounds. If I was downed, a protective device attached to every soldier activated, encasing me in anti-ET foam. At that point, my teammates could carry me to the extraction point, or else I’d have to go back to that area to mount a rescue operation.

• Risk versus reward. The dynamic roster is part of a broader emphasis on balancing risk against potential reward in Extraction. Each mission I played actually consisted of three areas, each with its own specific objectives and pulled randomly from the pool of possible mission types for the area. Deploying to New York, I might have to first tag Archaean nests with tracking devices, then eliminate an elite enemy, before yanking a downed teammate out of a gross goop tree and lugging them to the exfil point.

Sub-missions each take place in separate zones that are connected by air locks, and my team and I always had the option of bailing if we took too much damage or lost a member. Completing all three objectives is always tempting, though—rewards got better the more of them we did, and I always wanted to make sure I completed the rescue operations when I attempted those. There’s no way to permanently lose operators, though—if the rescue attempt failed, we’d get the order to fall back and be told that we’d just have to attempt it again once things had calmed down. Still, successfully rescuing a downed operator felt awesome every time: lugging a gross, foam-covered mummy over my shoulder while firing away at approaching aliens was always dangerous, and making it work was a real thrill.

• Low salt. I say this with some caution, because who knows what happens at higher levels of play, but I ran into almost zero saltiness from other players during my time with Rainbow Six Extraction, even when things went terribly wrong. That’s a nice change from Rainbow Six Siege, where expectations on every team member are high, and there’s a nasty griefing culture that’s almost impossible to avoid. The lower-stakes PvE mission structure helps with that, I think, along with the influx of new players now that Extraction is available on Steam.

• Solo-friendly. If you can’t stand the thought of playing with others, Rainbow Six Extraction allows for solo incursions. I preferred this mode sometimes, particularly when I had an operator in MIA status and wanted to make sure I could focus on getting them back to HQ.

• Alien sludge. That stuff is cool, end of story. Most enemies in Rainbow Six Extraction have some means of spreading slimy black ooze called “sprawl,” which looks like veiny black mold, except it’s ankle deep and viscous. It slows operators down if they try to walk through it, and dealing with it figures into every mission plan. I just think it looks neat!

WHAT SUCKS

• Long load times. I have Rainbow Six Extraction installed on an SSD, but loading the game and loading missions still took an inordinately long time. I also had to hold down the space bar to skip the opening cutscene every time I launch the game, which was a tad annoying.

• Unclear objectives. There were a couple mission types that I wasn’t sure how to approach when I first encountered them, like one where operators had to activate three panels in the correct order, and one in which a special piece of equipment had to be activated before we stood on special pressure plates in a sequence. Once I had encountered these mission types, I got codex entries in the main menu where I read up on them more fully, but it sucked to feel like the team’s designated idiot my first time out.

• The grind. Honestly, on the whole, Rainbow Six Extraction isn’t terrible about grinding or monetization. There’s a built-in unlock system that’s similar to a battle pass, though, and one of the best pieces of equipment is only unlocked if you complete the whole thing: a weapon attachment that disperses sprawl wherever you aim it. I had fun with Extraction and will probably continue playing it, but the progression system is a bit discouraging all the same.

💬 Will you be joining the Rainbow Six team for this bug hunt, or are you content to stick with Siege’s PvP? Let me know in the comments.