Rainbow Six Extraction review: Slimy sci-fi shooter oozes excitement

By Rob Leane

Published: Wednesday, 19 January 2022 at 12:00 am

4.0 out of 5 star rating

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction is launching soon on pretty much every platform going (except for the Nintendo Switch), and today we’re allowed to share our thoughts on this slimy sci-fi shooter, with RadioTimes.com‘s gaming experts having tried out the game early.

Returning fans of the Rainbow Six franchise will immediately notice the major difference that sets this game apart from its predecessors in the series – here, instead of fight off human enemies controlled by other players, you’re defending Earth from non-playable alien invaders known as the Archaeans. This overhaul works well, and it also means that Extraction has a good chance of attracting new fans that are more into fighting spacefaring threats than home-grown ones.

After a string of explanatory cut-scenes and a pacy set of tutorial levels, you’ll be dropped into the game proper with a number of maps and operators to choose from. As you progress, you’ll unlock more places to explore and people to bring with you, with a number of familiar faces from the franchise’s past ending up in your roster of operators.

We’re pleased to report that the core gameplay loop is really fun. To progress through the game’s various stages, you’ll need to undertake a number of missions in each area, earning XP that will allow you to unlock the next wave of content. You can play the game solo if you wish, but it feels like the online co-op (which allows you to team up with other players in groups of two or three) is much more what the game was designed for. That’s where it really shines.

One winning attribute of this game is that each mission (or each ‘incursion’ as the game itself calls them) is different, with objectives being procedurally generated and moved to different spots on the map every time you visit a location. This really helps to keep things fresh.

"Taking
Taking on alien foes in Rainbow Six Extraction.
Ubisoft

Each map is split into three areas, and each area will have its own major objective – these include things like taking down a key asset, collecting a scientific sample, activating a bomb, rescuing a hostage or protecting an important location. Whichever map you’re playing in, generally, you’ll get the easiest objective first and the hardest one last.

The three areas on each map are separated by air locks – once you choose to move on, you can’t go back to the previous area without quitting to the main menu and starting again, which forces you to think twice before blindly pushing forward. Rather than going into the next area, you could also ask for an extraction, banking your XP instead of pushing your luck with the next stage of the mission (if you’re particularly low on health, and/or playing on your own, you might find this option quite tempting).

Plus, in a particularly thrilling twist, if you fail a mission, the operator you used for that incursion will remain trapped in that map, encased in alien goo and waiting for rescue. Next time you load up that map, you’ll have to play as a different operator, and freeing your previous operator from the clutches of your enemies will be one of your key objectives. This is a really exciting idea that you can imagine other games trying to emulate – as you try to drag your fallen comrade out from their alien trappings, there’s nothing to stop Archaeans from attacking you, which makes for some truly tense moments.

All of these elements combine to make the overall gameplay loop rather compelling and exciting – even if you need quite a bit more XP to unlock the next stage of the game, you know that each mission will be different, and you can always use a different operator to mix things up as well – they each have a different core ability to try out, some of which are really fun (holographic decoys) while others are more practical (health packs). It’s an easy game to get sucked into for ‘just one more mission’, which, of course, turns into two or three and then before you know it you’ve missed your planned bedtime.

"Rescuing
Rescuing a fallen operator in Rainbow Six Extraction.
Ubisoft

It helps that the graphics and the overall design gel together really nicely. The Archaeans look genuinely creepy as they shamble about each unique map, and they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes – just as each of your operators has its own quirks, there are alternate versions of the Archaeans which have different tricks up their sleeves, from clouds of poison gas to painful projectiles that you’ll want to watch out for. You’ll need to plot out your moves if you want to succeed.

The maps are just the right size, too – big enough to get slightly lost in, but not so massive that you’ll go for ages without encountering some excitement. And these aren’t just generic arenas, either. They’re well-thought-out areas with plenty of verticality and personality baked in (an early mission takes place near the ruins of the Statue of Liberty, for example, and there’s a decent amount of hiding places to utilise and lore to find about the place).