REVIEW : Rainbow Six Extraction (PS5)
Rainbow Six Extraction is a PvE tactical shooter as well as a trigger-happy horror game. It’s a spin-off of Rainbow Six Siege’s older cousin, and a fully realised version of the strike force perpetrator’s restricted extraterrestrial invasion ‘Outbreak’ mode from 2018. Extraction is a multiplayer game about hunting aggressive and scary creatures in confined spaces. It’s all about gathering intelligence and rescuing fallen colleagues who have surrendered to the new war threat. It’s a respectable continuation of the Siege universe, thanks to the addition of familiar operators like Vigil, Sledge, and Doc. It’s a fine progression of its source material, with a slew of devious parasitic and ability-wielding foes including grunts, spikers, and bloaters.
Before we get into that, let’s take a look at Extractions long route to release. The shooter, then known as Rainbow Six Quarantine, was first shown at E3 2019 and was set to release in the following year. However, the global epidemic disrupted Ubisoft Montreal’s plans less than ten months later, necessitating subsequent three setbacks and a name change, all under conditions that were more akin to a Tom Clancy fiction than our pre-2020 reality. Extraction’s debut is understated, bordering on lacklustre, unlike the opening cinematics of The Division and Siege, when we’re given a formerly far-fetched-now-entirely credible scenario about a global pandemic; and are introduced to a band of crackshot universe by Hollywood actress Angela Bassett.
Set on Liberty Island in New York City, we see tourists rushing between souvenir kiosks and the Statue of Liberty before seeing the Chimera Parasite for the first time. As a strong, greyish, and sticky biofilm known as the ‘Sprawl’ spreads with threatening purpose, arcing stalagmite, tree root-like ‘Carapace’ formations break through the asphalt. With that, we’re whisked away to REACT HQ – the headquarters of Extraction’s expert band of anti-alien freedom fighters – and then thrown into the danger zone, to take down swarms of Archaeans in New York, San Francisco, and Alaska, among a few other places.
However, there’s a sense of unease about the whole thing. It all feels a little rushed, as if Extraction is trying to remove itself from its long history, its previous ties to ‘Quarantine,’ and the core themes we’re used to seeing accentuated in Rainbow Six games. Who knows, maybe a longer introduction was pared down over time, but given that this is a side project born from a trial, a limited-time mode that debuted three-and-a-half years ago for a different game entirely, more narrative would’ve made me care more about the characters willing to risk their lives for saviour. I imagine the same will be true for newcomers who aren’t familiar with Siege in any way.
However, it’s worth noting that, similar to Siege, Ubisoft has great plans for Extraction, including developing a player base and tweaking with the model after launch, if there’s enough interest. And, even if I’m reading too much into how Extraction establishes itself, it’s evident that the game seems most at ease when it’s on the ground. To that purpose, New York City is the first of four main deployment regions in Rainbow Six Extraction, each of which has three distinct sites. These major places are dispersed among three’subzones,’ each with its own set of objectives that dictate how you’ll explore and pillage each area under a 15-minute time constraint.
On one operation, you might raid a NYC police station to acquire Archaean biopsy samples, while on another, you might wade through the Sprawl-infested remains of a San Francisco casino to release a trapped VIP before transporting him over your shoulder to the evacuation zone. As you might guess, things get tougher the lower you go and the more experience you get (and consequently the better equipment, weaponry, and technology you may obtain). The type of Archaean you encounter, as well as their proclivity for parasitic mutation, changes according to the complexity of each incursion.
Moderate missions only have basic-level enemies, whereas Cautious, Severe, and Critical missions have a full ecosystem of enemies (of which there are over ten), any of which can mutate into tougher, more formidable beasts – ranging from armoured nests that can spawn unlimited Archaeans to invisible alien baddies and Archaeans who use Chimera Fog to get the upper hand. The hints to how Extraction sets itself up in battle will be appreciated by fans of Siege. Players are urged to launch ground-running drones into the danger zone in addition to smoke bombs to check out objectives, indicate spots of interest, and, most importantly, identify enemy positions. However, unlike Siege, your Archaean foes are unconcerned about the reconnaissance technology circling about them.
Similarly, environmental destruction plays a role here – it’s been a central tenet of Siege since the beginning – but the more you learn about each Archaean type’s moves, the more you realise that tearing down a divider with Sledge’s hammer and going all out with a shotgun is a last resort against remarkably much any other plan of attack. Instead, skulking around in the shadows and plucking off prey surreptitiously is a much better strategy to go ahead, particularly during the infiltration phase of the game. And it’s at these moments that Rainbow Six Extraction succeeds – when it’s doing its own thing, not trying to be the next Left 4 Dead; when it forces you to think about every decision, every action, every repercussion, the XP you could gain or the XP you might lose.
All of the above can be completed in single – mode fiber, but it’s always more enjoyable to play with friends. In the lack of properly occupied servers prior to launch, I paired up with two colleagues of the GamesRadar+ team for some squad-based hijinks in cross-play (limit groups of three), with two of us playing on PS5 and the other on Xbox. Ubisoft Connect, which instantly syncs on PC and may be linked to console profiles in-game, allows Extraction to be played on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X. Not that doing it alone in Extraction isn’t exciting, but there’s something immensely more fun about embarking on a ‘Specimen’ incursion – when you’re tasked with enticing an Archaean from far within the map to a trap erected on the extraction point in order to retrieve a specimen. In addition, later missions require you to go to alternative realms to battle shape-shifting ‘Protean’ Archaeans. These enemies are modelled like REACT operators and have similar skill sets, and three-player teams are barely enough in these set-tos.
Rainbow Six Extraction has an ensemble of 18 playable operators to throw into the breach, including a slew of Siege-familiar favourites; modular tech, including as body armour, revive kits, and scan grenades; and a number of bombs and reinforcements to dabble with. Ubisoft aims to update its uber-challenging ‘Maelstrom Protocol’ mode in the weeks following launch, with weekly missions, combat, and attack modes promising to add flavour to the core Extraction experience’s get-in-extract-get-out foundations. The trouble is, it all hinges on Extraction getting off to a fast start and attracting the initial player base it expects to maintain, sustain, and grow.
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