Saturday, September 9, 2017
Rainbow Six Siege pulls me in opposite directions at the same time. On the one hand, the moment-to-moment gameplay experience is fantastic. Every second of the short rounds matter, walls and floors won’t protect you, and sound tactics win matches. But, like other 2015 multiplayer-focused shooters such as Evolve and Star Wars Battlefront, there’s not a lot of there there. My time with Siege leaves me feeling like this Rainbow Six revival is a skeleton with not a lot of meat on its bones.
The Walls Have Ears
Siege reboots the long-running Rainbow Six series as a five-on-five, attack-and-defend competitive shooter that’s as much about blowing holes in the world around you as in your opponents. Destruction is no gimmick; shooting through walls, blasting through floors and ceilings, and keeping as much of your corporeal Special Forces husk behind fragile cover during firefights is key to extending your life in each of the respawn-free modes. Using a gadget to detect the presence of an enemy and fragging them through what would, in most other first-person shooters, be an indestructible hunk of drywall isn’t just satisfying; it’s thrilling. And while Siege isn’t the best-looking shooter out there in terms of environmental detail or character models, it includes memorable touches like the arterial blood spray that coats the wall behind your target when you off them. It looks like something truly terrible happened in that spot.
Playing defense (in applicable game modes) is a strategic rush because you know the attackers could burst through a wall at any moment. When defending an objective, you’ll have 30 seconds or so at the start of a round to fortify key areas with barbed wire on the floor, barricades, reinforced doors and windows, and more, to limit the enemy’s ability to approach their target from certain angles. I haven’t liked fortification in a shooter this much since Gears of War 3’s Horde mode.
Rainbow Six’s audio deserves special mention here, too, because the only soundtrack to each map is the sounds each player makes. Sure, there’s the obvious stuff like gunshots, but it’s the little noises like the suction of a breach charge being placed on a wall or floor, or the metallic rustle of an enemy wading through a barbed wire trap that, if you listen closely, can clue you in on what the other guys are about to do. Then, when things get loud, delightful chaos ensues.
That offense-vs.-defense is reflected in Siege’s Operators – 20 characters (10 attackers and 10 defenders) each team can choose from, each with unique skills. I’m rather partial to Sledge, who can instantly pound holes through walls and floors; Thermite, who can laser-cut his way through reinforced doors or windows; and Pulse, who can detect nearby heartbeats through any surface (though defender Mute can block any nearby gadget as a counter). On the other side of that spectrum, I couldn’t find a use for the Stimpack gun-toting Doc, as very few firefights ended with wounded teammates – guns tend to be so lethal you’re either alive or dead, with nothing in between.
Variety is the Spice
I’m also happy with most of the 11 included maps. Bank is an early favorite, as there’s a basic cops-and-robbers fantasy fulfillment in trying to rescue a hostage from a bank vault while the other team is leveling walls to try and get to you.
While the maps have enough variety between them, the adversarial game modes feel very similar. Hostage, Bomb, and Secure Area are all variations of, “Try to get into a place the other team is keeping you out of.” The CTF-like Hostage carries the most potential, since it ostensibly has the added goal of grabbing a human-shaped flag and carrying it out of danger, but in my experience no one ever even got to the hostage, let alone rescued him/her. Instead, an overwhelming majority of rounds ended with one team getting wiped out.
As for the returning Horde-like Rainbow Six favorite, Terrorist Hunt, where you and your team hold out against waves of AI enemies? Normal mode is a bit of a misnomer. On that skill, the CPU-controlled creeps have fairly lousy aim and won’t take advantage of many of Siege’s new mechanics outside of shooting through walls. Crank it up to at least Hard and you’ll have a better, more realistic, human-simulating challenge with your friends.
Finally, there are Situations: 10 single-player training missions (on the same 10 maps) that spotlight half of the 20 included Operators. They serve as decent tutorials for multiplayer proper, but because you don’t have AI teammates at your side, they teach you little about the tactics and choices you’ll have at your disposal when other people get involved. After that, the bonus Situation 11 that unlocks after you complete the other 10 actually backfires as a pleasant surprise. Not because it’s bad – quite the opposite! It’s a five-player bespoke Terrorist Hunt scenario, complete with an intro cutscene, a unique gameplay hook I won’t spoil, and a post-mission cutscene that basically announces, “Rainbow Six is back! And we’ll totally hook you up with a proper co-op campaign next time, promise!” It’s effectively the developers saying, “Here’s everything you wanted in a narrative-driven campaign that we totally could’ve given you!” It’s a tease.
Under Lock and Key
The least interesting part of Rainbow Six Siege is its progression system. Literally everything is locked when you first fire up the game, including ranked multiplayer matches, which don’t become available until you reach character level 20 – easily 10+ hours. Siege more or less forces you to play the Situations in order to earn Renown, the currency used to unlock the 20 Operators and their weapon attachments. Completing all 10 and achieving 90% of the secondary objectives along the way allowed me to unlock half of the Operator roster. After that, however, it’s a slow grind, as the second 10 require much more Renown to unlock, and completing Terrorist Hunt or PvP matches doesn’t earn you much. Especially if you lose. And that doesn’t even take into account the additional Renown you’ll need in order to unlock vital attachments like scopes and recoil suppressors. It’s almost as if the game wants you to spend real-world cash on Renown point bundles in order to speed up the process.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
Inspired by the reality of counter terrorist operatives across the world, Rainbow 6 Siege invites players to master the art of destruction. Intense close quarters confrontations, high lethality, tactics, team play, and explosive action are at the center of the experience.
The Verdict
Despite the barbed wire and reinforced walls that Rainbow Six Siege makes you walk through in order to get to the meat of the gameplay, I can’t stop thinking about how much fun that gameplay is. I’ve already made new online friends with like-minded players who embrace Siege’s team-centric mechanics. It’s more cerebral than the twitch-and-react shooters of the day like Call of Duty and Halo – which doesn’t make Siege better or worse, but it does make it refreshingly different.
Addictive play
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