There is no denying the influence that the Rainbow Six franchise has had on gaming over the past couple of decades. The first game titled “Rainbow Six” oddly enough, was released back in 1998 and throughout the years and many releases in the franchise the series has become synonymous with the term ‘tactical shooter’ assembling a loyal and opinionated fan base in the process. There is no doubt that the shining jewel in Rainbow 6’s crown came with Rainbow Six Siege back in 2015, in a bold move Siege took the tactical gameplay of the franchise and morphed it into an online only team-based tactical shooter and in the process boosted the popularity of the franchise to dizzying heights. Ubisoft Montreal have obviously decided it is time to shake up the Rainbow Six franchise once again with the release of Rainbow Six Extraction, this time moving away from the online team vs team gameplay of Siege and into a cooperative multiplayer environment.

Rainbow Six Extraction is set in the same world as Siege and the games roster is made up of many of the same operators so if you have a favourite operator such as Smoke, Sledge or Finka amongst others then rest assured you will be able to play the same operators in Extraction. The back story revolves around a Russian Soyuz capsule that crashed into the city of Truth Or Consequences in New Mexico, this led to Rainbow HQ launching “Operation Outbreak” in order to investigate the situation. From the investigations conducted during the Truth Or Consequences event, concerns were raised about the handling of future threats which in turn led to the formation of the specialized task force REACT (Rainbow Exogenous Analysis and Containment Team) whose sole purpose is to contain and assess exogenous threats and study them for the advancement of science and the human race. A few years after REACT was formed New York, San Francisco and Alaska all experience catastrophic emergence events and this is where you find yourself deployed as a REACT member tasked with investigating incidents and completing missions to learn more about the current alien threat.

The core gameplay loop sees you and two friends (or randoms if you choose to go the matchmaking route) step into the shoes of your favourite Rainbow Six Siege operators armed with the abilities and weapons of your choice and infiltrate several locations across New York, Alaska and San Francisco, plus a few others. You are tasked with completing various random missions during each infiltration into the containment zones such as taking samples of alien life forms, destroying alien nests and scanning areas of interest. Each containment zone consists of three separate areas that increase in difficulty as you progress through them, each of these zones also includes an extraction area which you can use to extract at any time in order to preserve the current amount of XP you have earned either that or you can double down and progress to a more difficult zone in order to try and earn more XP and complete all 3 of the mission objectives, be warned though if you do decide to progress to the harder areas of the map you do so at the risk of losing most of the XP you have earned and also the current operator you are using if you happen to be defeated before extracting from the map.

If you do get defeated, the operator you used during the mission will then become MIA and you will not be able to use them again until you head back to the same location and perform a successful rescue operation to exfil them from the map, I found this to be a great mechanic that added tension to every mission as you are constantly worried about losing your favourite operator and then having to rescue them and wait for them to heal before you can use them again in future incursions.

If you go into missions in Extraction with all guns blazing, then you are probably going to have a really, really bad time. The core Rainbow Six gameplay of stealth and tactics above all out destruction still applies here and you will have a much better time carefully planning and coordinating your intention with your fellow team members than you will being a lone wolf. I often found the best tactic to successfully complete missions was to carefully and stealthily explore the whole map area carefully taking out aliens either by a quick stab from behind or bullet to their weak points and destroying nests I encountered along the way, destroying nests is of major importance as if left untouched they will respawn enemies over time, leading to your team quickly becoming overwhelmed. Boarding up holes in walls and laying down claymores and mines is also an important part of missions when you are faced with a “defend the point” type of objective and you will find yourself relying on your fellow teammates abilities a lot in these situations which further reinforces team based gameplay. 

Of course working as a team comes easily when you are playing with real life friends but it comes down to the luck of the draw when you rely on the games matchmaking feature, which hopefully won’t lead to Rainbow Six Siege levels of salt and toxicity, we will just have to wait and see how the community pans out. The gunplay in Extraction is right on the money though you would probably expect it to be nothing less than top notch given that it is based on Siege and they have had years to refine the shooting mechanics in that game, the mission mechanics are varied but do get a bit monotonous after a while as they heavily rely on either kill or collect scenarios, the mechanic that comes into play where you have to rescue an operator that has gone MIA though does stand out above the rest as it generally takes one person to try and pull the operator out of a pod while the rest of the team clear enemies and shoot the tendrils that connect to the pod in order to keep freeing the operator, this leads to some wonderfully tense moments.

Of course all of this effort employing tactics and successfully completing missions would get very tiring if you weren’t rewarded for it and as mentioned before one of the ways you get rewarded is via XP which is then used to level up the operator that you earned the XP with as well as to increase your overall account level which is separate from the level of your individual operators. Levelling up individual operators provides bonuses to your overall stats such as speed and armour as well as providing new weapons and attachments and increasing the effectiveness of your abilities such as the ability to carry more ammo or scan enemies through walls at a longer distance, levelling up your account as opposed to your operator allows you to access further locations in the game such as Alaska and San Francisco and also allows you to research various tech such as the ability to deploy claymores or paralysis grenades, these upgrades are then available to every operator on your roster.

All of this sounds complicated but in reality it is great as it leads to a vast amount of varying loadouts you can use to customize your operators with to cater to your play style  and it will all make sense to you after spending time playing the game. There are also sets of challenges you can undertake on each map that if completed will unlock skins for your operators guns and armour as well as unlocking some lore and background on the battle between the alien life forms and the REACT team.

Graphically the game is adequate and does a pretty great job at providing variety through the games various locations, if you have ever played Rainbow Six Siege then you will be familiar with the graphics here, on the PlayStation 5, the game runs incredibly smooth and I never noticed one hint of slowdown in my time playing the game. Ambient sounds are where the game excels, especially if you have a good set of headphones, the sounds of aliens growling and moaning in the distant and the creaks and cracks as various alien nests and vegetation spread their tendrils across the map really leads to a palpable sense of tension that can get downright scary in some situations as you try to narrow down where the sounds are coming from. The guns also sound vastly different from each other with shotguns delivering an overwhelming level of boom compared to the rapid fire sounds of the various automatic weapons available, all of them satisfying in their own right. The menus are also very slick, well designed and intuitively laid out ensuring that skills and customization options are easy to find.

I really enjoyed my time with Rainbow Six Extraction and found the gameplay loop really satisfying, I often found myself playing ‘just one more game’ as I tried to rescue an operator from a previous failed mission or in order to unlock another skin for my character or another ability or attachment for my growing armoury of guns. The roster of 18 included operators in the game ensures that no matter what your playstyle is you will be at least able to find more than a couple of operators with abilities that complement your playstyle, and the way the gameplay balances on a knifes edge between stealth and tactics and all out gun shooting alien extermination ensures that tension and excitement remain at the forefront of the experience.

Usually in games like this I would advise those not into online gameplay to steer clear of this game, especially as the story interweaved in the game is quite light, however I often found myself going through missions solo when none of my friends were available to play, sure it is not the intended way to play the game but it still provides a great amount of entertainment when playing solo. There are a lot of great experiences to be had here, the gunplay is delightful, the risk vs reward mechanics are spot on and the sense of achievement you get from completing missions with your friends is an added bonus. I have played around 30 hours so far and I have not yet found myself getting bored with the gameplay loop and with the Ubisoft promise to add further content to the game I can honestly see me keeping this game in my rotation for a long time to come.