Review
Played on: Xbox Series XReleased: 2022
Does taking the characters, weapon realism and destructible scenery from Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, adding aliens, organically overgrown maps and mission objectives, sound weird to you? Or taking away the competitive aspect and focusing on cooperative gaming against computer controlled, nasty alien creatures?
Well, Ubisoft did just that last year. Releasing and adding Rainbow Six Extraction to the list of unexpected spin-off titles through the years.
Sure, it sounded surprising and off-brand when it released. Even the training mode leaves you a little baffled. Yet, somehow, playing it cooperatively with friends something just clicks perfectly into place as you start getting better at its objectives.
Sure, it sounded surprising and off-brand when it released. Even the training mode leaves you a little baffled. Yet, somehow, playing it cooperatively with friends something just clicks perfectly into place as you start getting better at its objectives.
It's an exciting, hectic, creepy and extremely cooperative focused experience. With a lot of random enemy placement and diverse, albeit heavily repeated tasks to complete, making it a new experience every time you play.
Extraction pits up to three players in a team, in what they call an "incursion", on a map to complete three main objectives. Each map has three interconnected sub-maps, which host one of the objectives each. These three sub-maps increase with enemy numbers and difficulty as you progress through them.
Extraction pits up to three players in a team, in what they call an "incursion", on a map to complete three main objectives. Each map has three interconnected sub-maps, which host one of the objectives each. These three sub-maps increase with enemy numbers and difficulty as you progress through them.
Completing the first objective on a sub-map, you’re left with two options: extract via helicopter, banking your experience points so far, or continuing through decontamination to the next sub-map. Sub-map two will feature more alien presence and the third will contain the most aliens. It’s a gamble: do you continue, risking dying and losing experience points, resulting in subtraction of your overall player level, or continue to earn even more?!
Objectives range from hunting down elite targets, capturing aliens, electronically tagging alien eggs, blowing up hives and so on. There’s a diverse set of tasks, yet they're heavily repeated. You'll quickly get used to each type and perhaps wish they'd added more. Some are objectively way harder than others.
Gameplay focuses on stealth, trying your best not to alert tons of aliens, being overrun will send you to your death extremely fast. The enemies will relentlessly attack you, be it with claws, blowing up nasty explosive gases or shooting sharp objects at you. Their random placement and numbers will make each mission task unpredictable.
It's a constant decision balance of either getting the hell out of a sub-map, mission completed or not, or pushing forward to a new sub-map to rack up more of those sweet experience points, needed to get your hands on advanced equipment and levelling up characters. Your life bar and ammo can quickly diminish and there's scarce with refills on each sub-map.
Just like in RB6 Siege, each character has a unique tech ability and weapon set. Choosing wisely to suit your attack approach is key. Furthermore, an extracted, but wounded, character won’t be 100% healed for the next round. Forcing you to choose another character on the next mission while your favourite rests.
Worse still, if you die you leave your character behind, stuck inside that map, thus having to be rescued to become playable again. It’s a clever way of making the player try out various characters, weapons and special abilities. Going out on a rescue mission is tricky and requires a lot of skill to extract the unconscious characters out of the map.
Gameplay is exactly the same as RB6 Siege, veterans of that game will very much feel at home in Extraction immediately, with excellent gun handling and realism. Allowing for precise shots from a distance, even leaning around corners and taking down the creatures quietly and unseen. It's a surprisingly realistic gunplay for such a fictional setting!
Visually, Extraction adds a lot of extra effects to the RB6 Siege engine, with overgrown, nasty alien growth around maps, particles in the air, heavy smoke usage and many enemies on screen. It's a more taxing game than RB6 Siege, but I’m happy to see the game running at 4K@60fps on my Series X, albeit with framerate drops when things get hectic. Luckily, I have a TV with VRR and don't notice them, but there's a rock solid 1080p@60fps choice for those that don’t have VRR.
For an experienced RB6 Siege player Extraction might feel a little shallow, with re-use of gameplay and characters, but it’s an entertaining change of setting and tasks from the normal RB6 Siege style. People who enjoy a bit of horror will find themselves at home too, with the creepy noises and sneaking about, trying to be undetected by horrible creatures is intense and offers a lot of jump scares.
There’s even a story element to the whole experience, but it’s fairly bland and thinly presented. Be aware that this is a multiplayer cooperative online experience at heart, not a fully fleshed out story experience. It can, of course, be played solo but you’re at a serious disadvantage fighting alone.
It's a constant decision balance of either getting the hell out of a sub-map, mission completed or not, or pushing forward to a new sub-map to rack up more of those sweet experience points, needed to get your hands on advanced equipment and levelling up characters. Your life bar and ammo can quickly diminish and there's scarce with refills on each sub-map.
Just like in RB6 Siege, each character has a unique tech ability and weapon set. Choosing wisely to suit your attack approach is key. Furthermore, an extracted, but wounded, character won’t be 100% healed for the next round. Forcing you to choose another character on the next mission while your favourite rests.
Worse still, if you die you leave your character behind, stuck inside that map, thus having to be rescued to become playable again. It’s a clever way of making the player try out various characters, weapons and special abilities. Going out on a rescue mission is tricky and requires a lot of skill to extract the unconscious characters out of the map.
Gameplay is exactly the same as RB6 Siege, veterans of that game will very much feel at home in Extraction immediately, with excellent gun handling and realism. Allowing for precise shots from a distance, even leaning around corners and taking down the creatures quietly and unseen. It's a surprisingly realistic gunplay for such a fictional setting!
Visually, Extraction adds a lot of extra effects to the RB6 Siege engine, with overgrown, nasty alien growth around maps, particles in the air, heavy smoke usage and many enemies on screen. It's a more taxing game than RB6 Siege, but I’m happy to see the game running at 4K@60fps on my Series X, albeit with framerate drops when things get hectic. Luckily, I have a TV with VRR and don't notice them, but there's a rock solid 1080p@60fps choice for those that don’t have VRR.
For an experienced RB6 Siege player Extraction might feel a little shallow, with re-use of gameplay and characters, but it’s an entertaining change of setting and tasks from the normal RB6 Siege style. People who enjoy a bit of horror will find themselves at home too, with the creepy noises and sneaking about, trying to be undetected by horrible creatures is intense and offers a lot of jump scares.
There’s even a story element to the whole experience, but it’s fairly bland and thinly presented. Be aware that this is a multiplayer cooperative online experience at heart, not a fully fleshed out story experience. It can, of course, be played solo but you’re at a serious disadvantage fighting alone.
Talking of coop, I can't recommend it enough to be be played with friends, you can adjust the difficulty to accommodate 1 to 3 players, but there's so much more entertainment to be had when covering each others back and utilising the abilities of more players combined. Giving you a much needed edge over the aliens.
Apart from the rather shallow layout of repeated objectives and mission structure, another gripe is that the difficulty feels random. Sometimes sub-maps are overcrowded with aliens, other times they're fairly easy to complete. Sure, it makes players feel vulnerable, but the unpredictable difficulty can be a rough.
I can recommend Extraction as a fun coop shooter against computer enemies, but it should’ve been beefed up with more variation and a stronger depth to its actual progress system and story. It’s something you'll find most entertaining to play with a friend and, neatly enough, once the game is bought a friend can play it for free!
I can recommend Extraction as a fun coop shooter against computer enemies, but it should’ve been beefed up with more variation and a stronger depth to its actual progress system and story. It’s something you'll find most entertaining to play with a friend and, neatly enough, once the game is bought a friend can play it for free!
