Rainbow Six Extraction was released not to long ago by Ubisoft. Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the studio that made the world-famous Assassin’s Creed and Rainbow Six Siege games, this new installment promised some intense co-op action. But did the title hold up to its promises?
Extraction sees our beloved R6 operators placed in the environment of the United States where a parasitic virus is attacking. The operators are tasked with eliminating these parasites, as well as get samples to study them. This isn’t the first time Siege has explored a game-mode like this, with many drawing parallels between Extraction and R6’s Outbreak mode from around 2018.
The game was announced to release on Game Pass, which I’d say definitely has helped it get into the homes of many prospective players. Ubisoft also decided to decrease the price to around $40 USD some time ago, which made sense after playing it.
Generally, Extraction felt more like a DLC than it did a full game. It did, however, include its fun factor and didn’t fail to give me some interesting gameplay time.
The Missions
The missions in this game are pretty definitive. There are a few core objectives that you have to accomplish once you land into an incursion. For the most part, they include some sort of task like killing a certain Archaen (the name of these parasites) or getting samples from strange “sprawls” that appeared throughout the maps. They were straightforward.
Each time you load into a map, you’re met with three objectives. There are no optional objectives or little side-extras that you have to do. You just have to finish the three and then you can call your mission a success.
At some point, they do feel quite repetitive. However, there was always something new that sprung out during each mission. Many times, you’d be hounded by swarms of Archaens and you’d have to blast your way through them. The most strategic way would be to accomplish the missions with as little open-combat as possible. Extraction feels like it wants you to be more tactical with your decisions.
Combat
The combat mechanics are basically the same as in Siege. The gunplay isn’t too much of a difference. So, if you’ve played Siege before, then you’ll find yourself quickly adjusting to all the controls and mechanics of this game.
In my personal playthrough, I felt like the recoil had been toned down, but that could just be my feeling of it. For some, this may not be the same.
This isn’t like Call of Duty Zombies, where you can just run around psychotically and fire at will at nearly everything you see. Clearly, Zombies is meant to be a more “arcade” style game. Extraction isn’t like that. Although it can feel like it’s going for one of those Left 4 Dead or Zombies ideas, it’s certainly a more tactical style of gameplay.
I found that the most optimum way of playing Extraction was to use cover often and take up crouching a lot more. Similar to Siege itself, which is better if you’re crouching everywhere, it’s easier to avoid being spotted by the Archaens and having them alert their entire group.
Each operator has their own power-ups, which can be useful depending on what the situation is. I found myself playing mostly with a few operators and working on the different powers to see if they really made a difference in the gameplay. It can, but it’s not super intense or needed all the time.
There are different difficulty modes that can also impact how difficult the combat becomes. The higher the difficulty is, the harder and the longer it is to kill the Archaens. Their health is sometimes insanely high the more difficult it is, which I would say makes sense. But it doesn’t get very simple when you run out of ammo and your squad is just trying to figure out how to survive without all getting downed.
It happened to me several times where my squad and I would be downed and swarmed so that whoever was alive couldn’t have much of a timeframe to revive anyone else. It was the most irritating part, as the XP hit was much higher than if we had just simply extracted early and called it a loss.
The truly annoying piece of dying in the game was that the operator in use would become MIA. That means that the next time you load into an incursion, you have to go and rescue that MIA operator. Although it’s interesting as a game mechanic at first, it quickly becomes old when your favorite operator gets locked until you free them from the clutches of what looks like radioactive cheese (at least, that’s what my squadmates thought it looked like).
Operators
The operators were a familiar face from Siege in this game, of course. 18 of the Siege operators were placed in the Extraction game. I personally started out with my Siege main–Doc–to see how he played in Extraction. I felt that he was extremely vital to have on a team, as his stims would definitely help in more dire situations. I also used Lion, Vigil, and played around with a few other operators.
I liked the idea of being able to use different weapons on Operators that didn’t necessarily have them in Siege. It was nice for a change. It was also nice to have familiar faces in the game. In order to unlock some Operators, you would need to gain XP and level up. The microtransactions seem limited to mainly cosmetic pieces, which aren’t necessary at all to play the game.
As I mentioned earlier, the gadgets–or powers, as I call them–were not always the most useful feature. There were few situations in which I felt compelled to use them or to care to use them. I was mostly concentrated on using my regular weapons to play the game.
Conclusions
Rainbow Six Extraction is a fun game, especially if you’ve got friends you play with. It’s graphics are generally decent, and it has quite fun combat experiences. It can be tough, but if you’re playing with a cohesive squad, it definitely adds to the gameplay quality.
It’s not a particularly large game, but for a PvE, I felt like it delivered on the qualities that make that genre of games fun. There are enemies, objectives, nice weapons, and plenty of space to move and learn the maps through.
Overall, it’s not a game I would spend hundreds of hours in, but I certainly enjoyed it as an experience. If you have Game Pass, don’t skip this one out. It’s definitely worth a try.
Let us know what you think in the comments below. Remember to keep all discussions polite and respectful.
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Zainah Yousef
Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.
