Rainbow Six Siege is the first new iteration of the Rainbow Six franchise since 2008’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2. Rebooting the long-running Rainbow Six series as a five-on-five, attack-and-defend competitive shooter. Siege, like other multiplayer-focused shooters such as Evolve and Titanfall, has made gamers question if it’s worth picking up, wondering if there’s going to be enough meat on the bone so to speak to keep them playing. Ubisoft has announced that all future add-on maps will be distributed for free, how many maps though remains to be unanswered at this precise moment in time, although the base game includes 11 maps.
Rainbow Six Siege also see the introduction of microtransactions allowing players to unlock boosters for in-game currency, in-game currency packs, weapon skins and more. The in-game currency allows players to unlock weapon attachments, new operators and of course in-game skins. Players can also use some of their hard earned in-game currency in the microtransaction store.
Rainbow Six Siege introduces a vast variety of destructible environment’s, and it’s no gimmick to be taken lightly. Shooting through walls, blasting through floors and ceilings will make you rethink your traditional methods of cover especially when defending your team’s objective from the opposing attacker team.
Defenders get 30 seconds to fortify their position to defend their objective with barbed wire on the floor, barricades, reinforces doors and windows and more, limiting the enemy’s ability to approach their target from certain angels. But beware the attacking team get those precious 30 seconds to try and locate their target using remote controlled drones.
It goes without saying that Rainbow Six Siege’s audio deserves special mention, unlike most game audio, if you listen closely enough there’s subtly hints on that your ensuing enemies might be lurking behind that wall or barricade. From the suction of the breach charge being placed or the metallic rustle of an enemy wading through barbed wire provide a subtle hint of the enemy’s location, with delightful chaos ensuing when things get loud.
Siege includes 20 Operators (10 Attackers and 10 Defenders) each packed with unique skills. I personally prefer Thermite who can laser-cut his way through reinforced doors, walls & windows. Pulse who can detect nearby heartbeats through any surface. Unlocking an operator provides a short unique cutscene around that operator’s skills. Which it has to be noted it sounds like they made the British fairly sinister in those cinematics.
Rainbow Six’s favourite game mode, Terrorist Hunt returns with similar game modes to the multiplayer however you and your team will be facing AI controlled enemies. Upping the difficulty to Hard provides a more human-simulated challenge with AI enemies utilizing the very same mechanics you and your team have at your disposal.
Finally, for those that don’t want to jump straight into the games multiplayer arena without getting a grips of the games mechanics and gameplay behaviour, this is where Siege stands out from traditional games with the introduction of Situations offering up 10 Single-player training missions, spotlighting half of the playable operators included in the game. Serving as great tutorials for the different situations you will likely encounter throughout the multiplayer.
While Rainbow Six Siege does lack the traditional Tom Clancy story experience, there are hints that it could possibly be added in at a later date. Upon completing situation 10 a bonus situation will unlock complete which includes an intro cutscene, a unique gameplay hook and post-mission cutscene.
So how does Rainbow Six Siege stand up to full load on launch, so far we’ve experienced little disconnections during our playthrough. Level progression can be considerably slow if you’re unable to score some kills, but get a nice balance of spotting enemies and kills and you’ll progress through the ranks quickly.