The latest game in the immensely popular Rainbow Six series has arrived with Rainbow Six: Extraction.
The series features intense squad-based action as players form teams to infiltrate, extract, eliminate, and survive various missions.
Using stealth, tech, weapons, and patience; players have to find the best way to enter a location, avoid or eliminate enemies, and complete objectives while working as a cohesive unit.
This time around the enemy is a parasitic alien race and players must form three-person squads or venture through the locales solo or with a single partner.
Players will select an operative; each with a primary and secondary weapon and two tactical devices such as grenades, mines, revive shots, armor, and drones. As time goes on and players level up; new technology can be researched and used as having the right loadout is essential. Players will also have unique skilsl ranging from gun emplacements, medical, cloaking, and more which can be used in a limited situation and must be replenished as the missions unfolds.
Missions are set in three zones such as New York, San Francisco, Alaska, and more become available as players reach a certain level and naturally they become progressively harder and more intense.
Each zone has random missions and when players select a locale, difficulty level, and their operative; they will encounter missions ranging from elimination, extraction, scanning, and targeting specific strategic locales.
The enemy is very cunning and ruthless and can cloak, shape-shift, and explode amongst their myriad of hostile actions, and players must attack, evade, and work with one another to complete the missions and survive. At the end of a level; players can opt to enter an airlock and move to the next segment or return to an exfiltration zone to end the mission.
This is where the real tactics of the game come into play as health is limited as can be ammunition so players who encounter a difficult mission where they sustain damage or lose a player have to make a hard choice. Players do not die in the game as they are enveloped with a stasis foam should they sustain enough damage.
As such the remaining team must decide to carry the downed player to an Extraction Pod or leave them behind so they can carry on or they can flee to safety. This is not always an easy decision as seeing your team decimated and barely making it to safety with only a small amount of health makes even the most determined player think twice about venturing back in.
Should a player be lost; their experience is deducted from the player and will remain deducted until the character is rescued on a future mission. Seeing your roster of skilled Operatives reduced to a couple of unproven newbies is very humbling and thankfully the maps are very detailed and engaging as players will get very used to playing in the locales frequently before new areas are made available to them.
The action of the game is intense as players can use stealth or run and gun depending on the mission and the variety of enemies and missions is good.
I do wish the Quick Play would allow players to select the skill level they would like to play in and that there was a server list to select from; that being said; at $39.99 and available on Game Pass; Rainbow Six Extraction is a great deal as the cross-play enabled game ensures plenty of players to venture into danger with but like the best games of the series; having the right group of players is essential as I have lost many players due to wild cards not following mission objectives.
Intense, engaging, and deeply entertaining; Rainbow Six Extraction delivers even if it does differ from what fans have come to expect.
4 stars out of 5
