Rainbow Six Extraction – -apkrig

The idea is certainly good

In the United States, a scandal has spread in the form of not-so-friendly alien creatures that first appeared in New Mexico. In addition to the aforementioned American state, you will also visit San Francisco, Alaska or, for example, New York with the remains of the Statue of Liberty. These locations are divided into several smaller maps, where you and your operators will obtain samples of the mysterious Archaens or liquidate their slimoid existence.

Unfortunately, even though some maps are smaller, they suffer from an unimaginative design in size, and my colleagues and I have often gotten lost in similar-looking rooms with the same graphic assets or unnaturally large peppers.

On each quest, you go through three parts of the map with three different tasks in up to three players (that’s why I think the game should be called Rainbow Three). If you no longer feel like continuing the new area, you can evaporate at any time and end the mission by calling a helicopter to the place. It often happened to us that we deleted back right after the first finished area – and sometimes not even that. It is these moments of flight that are one of the strongest that the game has to offer and when you are rolling on the landing platform in the last campaign, from which you shoot at enemies and count long seconds.

Human foot nowhere. The whole area is covered only with eggs, slowing slime and various forms of hostile extraterrestrial life. If you are not quieter enough, pulsating cocoons generate more bastards. One step is enough for the game to evaluate as bad, and suddenly there is a horde of emzas. The silent action suddenly becomes a frantic physiotherapy of the index finger pushing the trigger.

The problem is that one often has no idea where the enemies are coming from and where they are shooting from. To this, the game adds a time limit to each parachute, which will push and kick the adrenaline, but in this case it only leads to the shooting of everyone and everything. It doesn’t make much sense to think about it and consider a tactical approach. Especially when you have a bunch of bullets in your backpack. Extraction in this approach seems like a cat who doesn’t know what he wants. Tactization is missing, shooting is barren. In other words: Generic action.

You may know the operators already mentioned from the previous title with the Rainbow Six sticker. In Extraction, this time they associate under the REACT organization. They carry their special abilities, so it’s up to you whether you wield a big hammer or want to scan the area carefully. Apart from these abilities, they are not so different in terms of gameplay. It is paradoxical that you will hardly use the unique skills that are supposed to differentiate individual operators in practice due to the frenetic action described above. There is no real use for most of them and, for example, the hammer maker popular in our group was only in number with his tool and had nothing to contribute. If the enemies got too close, it was too late for everything.

If the character falls during a homeland mission, instead of dying, she is only covered in stasis assembly-looking foam, which will keep her alive until other REACT colleagues arrive. Until the liberation or death of another colleague, this character is inaccessible and must be rescued in one of the other missions. Then all you have to do is throw the blob of orange mucus over your shoulder and take it to the appropriate box. And it is done! You will also find a direct “xcom” approach in heroes who suffered more serious injuries in the mission. The game throws these injuries in your face and your operator must treat himself to a nap instead of another expedition.

The absence of a favorite character in the selection will not draw a line across the budget, but at least it may at least limit access to useful abilities or arsenal. The fact that each player on the team must control a different character does not add to this limitation. On the other hand, the game will force you to gradually test all the operators, so you will definitely not be bored during the first few missions. On the third hand, you won’t have a chance to form a relationship with the characters, so you won’t care if they end up in assembly foam or in the infirmary.

Story emptiness

Although a nice cutscene appears here and there between the expeditions to the infested areas, I can’t shake the feeling of emptiness from the story background. Although the movies look epic and play on emotions, in no way will you feel a sudden surge of motivation to keep playing because of the story. In addition, the performing characters themselves seem blank and generic to me, even if you recognize the Rainbow Six Siege operators in them.

You will experience the same epic wasteland during missions, when your advisors pour tips and commands into you via a communicator with a rather serious cadence. After a few hours, you will notice that their radio vibe is repeated a lot and starts to eat you up.

While completing the side tasks labeled Studies, you may learn something new about aggressive aliens, but the posts are more of a diary type. In addition, they are generic again and you won’t learn much new from them. You simply don’t play Extraction because of the story.

Originality at freezing point

As Rainbow Six Extraction boasts fresh gameplay ideas and fails, it lags visually. Aliens seem unoriginal and scattered. Whether it’s the aforementioned pulsating cocoons, the ubiquitous slime, dolls with exploding sores on the back, or humanoids who want to beat you with their stumps or shoot projectiles from them. From all this, I have the feeling that I have seen some such monsters somewhere. And besides, the individual species somehow don’t get along.

If you are looking forward to an interesting wardrobe and visual beautification of your avatars, you are crying at the moment. The inconspicuous repainting of bulletproof vests or small changes to the helmets won’t inspire much, and weapons with a letter texture will break the feeling of a special unit to save the planet at first.

After all, the whole graphic side of the game lags on both feet and has not moved much since Rainbow Six Siege. The feeling of obsolescence is exacerbated by the abysmal graphic difference between the really spoiled cutscenes, where you see every pore on your face, and real acting, where you see only a pancake on your face. Or rather a helmet. Similarly, the game environment, which is mentioned several times, uses the same assets, regardless of whether you are currently in the police station or in the penthouse.

But what I have to praise is the mastery of the visual side of the game brand, because if you ever play Rainbow Six Extraction, you will definitely get one particular word in your head. Yellow!

Feast for the ear

However, after a previous critique, I would definitely highlight the successful sound design. The steps themselves reveal to you what you stand for and how much it sticks, who is around the corner or at the door, or when one of the players entertains you with an improved health condition. Everything is underlined by unobtrusive electronic music, which perfectly completes the atmosphere. All of this may sound obvious, but it’s the individual sounds themselves and their balance that create a working soundstage.

Another nice addition is the directional indicators of the steps of your enemies, from which you can know the degree of their anger. So if, for whatever reason, you can’t have the volume driven to the ceiling, either because of the need to play quietly or because of hysterical teammates, the absence of sound will not destroy the gameplay.

A few times and enough

The biggest killer of Rainbow Six Extraction is its repetition. Locations look quickly and individual tasks soon begin to repeat. Then all you have to do is increase the difficulty level together with the various mutations of the enemies, which, however, copy a really steep curve and sometimes seem unfair. An imbalance can also be felt when the number of players changes, when you play solo you can dance between the emzas and one by one you can quickly cook with a pole in the back, but from two players upwards it seems that the Archaeans are suddenly much more sensitive.

However, developers can fix all this with later fixes, updates and additions. And if Ubisoft supports Extraction as well as Siege, the average-looking cooperative duckling may turn out to be a pretty tactical swan with a slightly more generic visual, but great sound design and imaginative gameplay.