There’s nothing like a brand name being used for a new game that just plain isn’t fitting to the brand itself. That is an issue that is seen too often and when I first saw Rainbow Six Extraction, that is exactly what I thought. When Ubisoft announced they were going to be releasing a co-op alien-based first-person shooter title, I was excited about it and then the name Rainbow Six showed up.

That said, I was honestly expecting the game to end up being a dull representation of a strategic co-op game with some Rainbow Six Siege mechanics. However, now that I have put a bunch of hours into it, with plans to dive back in and grind out a bunch more, I have to admit that Extraction is much better than I had expected. Of course, it isn’t flawless, but I am definitely happy to have it in my game library.

Story

After a strange, alien-based parasite has attacked and overrun Earth, it is up to the task force that is meant to be prepared for anything that could happen to take care of the situation. This team, known as REACT, has admitted that there was no way they could have prepared for such an unfathomable attack, but nonetheless, they are sending in their best agents, working on improving their tech, and taking all the efforts needed to better understand this parasite; for with knowledge, comes power.

It is a rather simplistic story that does the job of giving a solid foundation for the game. The general reasoning for the team’s existence, the purpose behind each mission given to the agents being sent out, and explaining what the creatures are. It was a smart path to take when they decided to take a small concept they used for a short event in their game prior and turn it into a full standalone title.

Gameplay

If you played Rainbow Six Siege, then you already know the controls and how smooth they can feel. If you haven’t, then the first thing you will want to do during the tutorial mission is to adjust your sensitivity and other settings to how you like them before the real action begins. Once you are comfortable with your movement, it’s just understanding your controls and gear.

To get the job done, you have your main weapon, secondary weapon, tool, gadget, ability, tagger, and melee to work with. As you increase your milestone and complete missions, you’ll earn points to use in the tech department in order to increase your variety of tools and gadgets. Your tools can be any number of items, such as self-revive, body armor, and a scouting robot. Your gadgets will be items such as grenade types and mines.

Missions can either be done solo or with a party. When you go in solo, you can pick the difficulty, but if you go in with a party then the difficulty is set based on which level you have chosen. Levels unlock based on what milestone you have reached and it isn’t too long before you have all of them unlocked. After you pick a mission, each player will select an operator who will differ in looks, weapon options, and abilities. Each operator will have their starter set items, but as you level up each operator separately, you will be able to choose more weapons from their specific list.

At first, I just picked an operator that I thought looked pretty cool and had a weapon I liked. I quickly learned that working with an operator that has an ability I like to use is important because the higher difficulty levels will require proper use of everything you and your squad have at your disposal. Take some time to learn each operator’s ability before focusing on one. My suggestions would be Doc, Lion, Alibi, or Pulse far starting out.

Once you have your operator, squad, and level selected, you will load up and be given three random mission objectives to complete. Levels are broken up into three sections with one mission in each section. You can choose to skip a section by going straight to the airlock and moving on without completing the current mission, but you lose out on points. Each mission needs to be handled differently and setting up to get the job done will be an important practice to start early. Typically, you should clear the area of all nests and enemies before starting, but some missions need a different approach. Learning how to handle these missions is part of the fun, so I’ll leave this part up to you.

If your operator goes down, you do get a chance to get revived by a teammate or to use a self-revive item. After the first or second down, depending on your gear, you will be at threat to be KO’ed. If you are knocked out, you will no longer be able to participate in the mission, however, if you are with a squad and they can get your character’s body to the extraction pod then you won’t be considered MIA (missing in action). If your body is left behind, then your character will go MIA and have to be rescued next time you do a mission in that level. The good news here is that if your whole party fails a mission and goes down, you can load up the next mission in the same level with the same squad and do a single MIA rescue mission to rescue all of the operators. This also works when loading up with randoms or other players in future games and you both have an MIA character in the same level - you can do a single MIA mission to save them both. This was a great tip since it saves the game from a chance of being tedious.

Once you have completed all of the missions or are simply satisfied with how much you have accomplished, all players need to extract. This is the only way you will get the experience you earned throughout the level. If your operator took enough damage during the mission, they will be considered injured and be out of commission for a few missions. As you complete other missions, you will earn health points to be returned to operators with lower health. Note that you can’t refill this health meter in-game and that all health gained in-game will show as a blue bar meaning that you have the health but it isn’t permanent and your operator will still have the sustained damage following mission completion.

Audio and Visual

Everything about this aspect of the game is what you would expect from a Rainbow Six game. The graphics are well designed so that the environment, operators, creatures, and gear all are distinguished. My only complaint here would be that the icons for the extraction zone, mission objective location, and airlock location are all white which makes them hard to quickly tell apart. Certain mission objectives show as yellow, which helps them stand out, so why can’t the airlock and extraction points also have different colors?

Replayability

Since there are three levels in each zone, two secondary level types to unlock with a higher milestone level, and specific side-missions to complete while in each mission, I would say there is plenty of replayability. As of right now, the max milestone level is 30 and each operator can be leveled up to 10, but I can see at least the milestone level being raised.

Completing the side missions as you go through levels gives more experience, helps unlock research points for more tech item unlocks, and is the general progress of the game. Making them have an important role gives players more of a sense that they need to be completed, which aids in the replayability aspect as well.

On top of all this, I have to mention the higher difficulties. From only seeing the lesser enemies at the starter difficulty to having the full onslaught at the highest difficulty, then having the pressure increased with the other two mission types that will definitely require high-level operators and proper teamwork to accomplish.

What Could Be Better

There really is no excuse for a team as big as Ubisoft to have the servers set up how they are. You would expect a team like this to have set servers for the game so that players can gather together in stable servers, but instead, they have player-hosted servers. That means that if you and one friend decide to search for a game and team up with a random player, but that random player is considered the host, you are at their mercy. If that random decides to do what most randoms do and be bad at the game, die quickly, and then quit the game, you and your friend will be kicked out. Create set servers for Extraction!

I don’t know why multiplayer games are doing this lately, but this isn’t the first time I have seen this. Just because I clicked on starting a mission doesn’t mean that I should be forced to go through with it. By this, I am talking about the fact that if you click on a solo mission and it brings you to the operator selection page, but then you decide to play a different map or perhaps your friend just got on and you want to team up with them - too bad! You have to play the mission because you picked it, despite the fact that you are still in the menu and the level has not been loaded up yet. If you want to change levels or team up with your friend, you have to load up the mission and then immediately extract - which is just plain stupid. Let me back out if I want to back out and I am still on a menu screen. Obviously, this does not apply to the multiplayer load-ups because that would just become problematic.

They should have some more customization options when it comes to icon colors. Instead of picking the colors for your players, just let them decide which colors they want their different icons to be. It makes it more user-friendly and takes away any issues of a visual hindrance.

Verdict

Rainbow Six Extraction is a solid co-op experience! There were so many small, almost insignificant, aspects to this game that they could have let fall through the cracks, yet they managed to include them for the player’s benefit. On the same hand, they also had a handful of issues as well, but what game doesn’t have its fair share of problems? I truly thought this game was going to be a bust, but I am pleasantly surprised at how amazingly entertaining it turned out to be! I didn’t think it was going to be a title I would return to much more than launch week, let alone a title I would recommend. Yet here I am saying that it is definitely worth being in any player’s library, given that they enjoy tactical co-op shooters.