Recenze Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction » Vortex
Less than four years ago, the time-limited Outbreak event appeared in Rainbow Six: Siege. For one month, he entertained the players with a different gameplay, which was not based on the basic PvP concept, but forced them to cooperate in the fight against various monsters controlled by artificial intelligence. That it was a test of how players would react to such a mode or stand-alone game was a mystery until E3 in 2019, when Rainbow Six Quarantine was introduced and everything fell into place. It should be noted, however, that the first reactions of the players who watched the Ubisoft press conference at the mentioned fair were very lukewarm and the only time when the new Rainbow Six was talked about more eagerly was to change the name to the current Extraction. However, we are not here to follow prejudices, and the moment the game got into our hands, we embarked on night battles in a three-member cooperation.
A story on the other track
The story background of Extraction is based on the aforementioned Outbreak mode, but it is fair to say at the outset that it only plays a supporting role. Although we’re talking about a collaborative action in which you fight artificial intelligence-controlled enemies, it’s not a game like Back 4 Blood or the recent Alien: Fireteam Elite. Extraction processing is very non-linear and will gradually present a handful of locations to which you will return regularly to meet a set of challenges. Nevertheless, the game lore speaks of an incident in New Mexico in which the wreckage of a Russian Soyuz rocket hits the ground, from which an uncertain alien infection escapes. He makes the one he attacks a not-so-handsome monster, which gradually floods the individual regions of the United States. Special military units then look for all the information to stop the infection, whether they go on missions in three, two or solo.
In practice, this means that after short story divisions, which are processed into very nice cutscenes, you will set off with the operators to twelve not very large maps, over and over again, to gain enough experience for which other maps are unlocked and with the help of which you naturally improve the equipment and abilities of individual soldiers. Extraction is also determined by your own decision-making over the degree of risk – if you acknowledge that the health of operators has dropped too much and the situation is not developing well, you can be transported from the mission without even a single completed task. If, on the other hand, you feel that everything fits together well, you can reach the end of the third challenge, gain even more experience and, most importantly, enjoy relatively strong moments of cooperation and tactical progress. Although Extraction does not dictate to the players the correct course of action, the emphasis on cooperation here remains as strong as in Rainbow Six: Siege, which is followed by equipment or a partially destructible environment.
Progres jako z free to play her
However, the action itself lacks smarter opponents, who by their nature are represented only by artificial intelligence, which can be a problem in the long run. Although the game offers four levels of difficulty to choose from before the mission begins, and comes in addition to difficult Maelstrom Protocol missions with nine tasks also with random enemy mutations, developers will still have to work to balance the overall experience. The decisive variable is the number of opponents and their natural resistance, but this curve rises too fast and the moments when literally one click of the claw knocks you down the basic type of opponent are not very cheerful. This certainly adds to the urgency and tensions, but in combination with other mechanisms, such a sharp increase in difficulty may not seem fair.
As we noted in the video review, Extraction acts in some ways as a free to play game for mobile devices, which is mostly about managing your team of operators. The moment one of them is eliminated from the fight, it is not available for selection until you safely transport it back to the base. This can be done during a given mission by having one of your teammates take your half-dead body wrapped in a rescue crust to a special device at the transport point. However, if the rescue fails, the body remains on the map and needs to return in a new mission. If your operator survives but is injured, he will not be active for the next match, if his health drops below 40 HP and just another, I note successful playing, in addition to experience, you can also gain health points, which gradually treat individual operators. And this is where the fear begins to creep in. Due to the relatively tight grind, Extraction may not have settled on the roses after good first impressions from the initial 10-15 hours.
Lack of motivation
During this time, you will be able to extract a significant portion of the game in terms of content. This applies not only to locations and individual maps, but also to the mentioned operators and especially to the types of partial tasks or calls for the mission. In addition to the described rescue of a decommissioned operator, this includes activating three terminals scattered around the map, placing probes in enemy nests, eliminating an elite enemy or teleporting to a special location where the highest form of enemy in a tough arena boss fight will oppose you. There are a total of 13 of these tasks, which may seem like a sufficient amount at first glance, but the fact is that they are performed very quickly and at the core their very banal durability processing does not add much. You could argue that Extraction is not the only similar game in its processing, but the problem is the insufficiently attractive reward you get by replaying it, and regardless of the missions evaluated in the mentioned Maelstrom Protocol mode, the lack of motivation to continue playing.
The result is a game that can entertain you for a while and provide an interesting alternative to other cooperative events, but there is no indication that this will be a durable matter.
Weapons are basically limited to assault rifles and shotguns – although pistols and submachine guns are also represented – but there are not many of them. The basic equipment is also thoroughly standard and special abilities of operators, such as breaking through walls, handing out bulletproof vests or healing do not enter matches so much, even at higher levels of difficulty ammunition boxes, points for using special abilities and pharmacies are still scattered on maps. If you ask about cosmetic additives, they are of course represented in the form of more or less wild skins for weapons and for individual operators, but even that does not serve as a motivation, although Ubisoft of course sells credits and some special skins for hundreds of crowns in a gaming store that was already in place at the time of the review.
The result is a game that can entertain you for a while and provide an interesting alternative to other cooperative events, but there is no indication that this will be a durable affair, as in the case of the great Rainbow Six: Siege. Extraction is also relatively sterile in terms of visual processing, because even though it takes place in various parts of the United States, you can very quickly climb into interchangeable corridors from the outside, which are usually covered with slowing and sometimes deadly alien slime. However, this does not mean that the game has a technical problem – we played on PC and PS5 and we did not notice excessive demands on computer performance or any problems with the game crashing or other ailments. On the console account, however, it is worth noting that the special capabilities of the DualSense driver are not used as well as in Call of Duty, and shooting – especially on the gamepad – works somewhat flat due to the lack of significant differences between weapons.
But let’s not end up on a not-so-positive wave, we have good news for you – if Rainbow Six: Extraction attracts you and you want to enjoy at least until the need to gain experience for a long time, you can do so on PC and Xbox via Game Pass without having to pay for the whole game. On other platforms, you can use not only the reduced price tag, but also the so-called buddy pass, thanks to which even those who do not own it can be invited to the game. Although it is not an indefinite offer, it is definitely enough to play and goes against the current qualities of the game.
