Rainbow Six: Extraction - Early Impressions
Unlike Rainbow Six: Siege, which started solely as a PvP experience before adding PvE later on, Rainbow Six: Extraction has been built as a pure PvE experience. Whether going in solo or with up to two other operators, you will be dropped into a containment zone to kill, investigate and survive the parasitic aliens that have thrown the United States into chaos.
It is up to your operatives to make incursions into containment areas to gather information and eliminate threats. Completing objectives, neutralising threats and getting your operator back safely will increase the stats of your operators and allow you to upgrade your gadgets, increasing your lethality and chance of surviving.
I have had Extraction for a week now and the one thing I have noticed is that I would very much rather play within a squad than solo. While the game does adjust the difficulty and amount of enemies you will face if you are playing alone, this is a game that has been developed primarily as a multiplayer experience. It is about balancing out the operators in your squad to give you the best chance at completing your mission and getting out alive.
Jumping into a squad with Paul James and Ryan Betson, I found the experience to be much more fun and engaging. If you take the time to watch the Extraction P2Plays, you will see at first we were just kind of doing our own thing. Yes, we were communicating but we weren’t very tactical and it ended up going pear-shaped very quickly. As we started to adjust, plan our load-outs and characters and start to play the game as it should be played, we survived longer. I must throw a shout out to Paul, who had to save both myself and Ryan, putting his operator at risk to extract our incapacitated bodies.
Our final run was where it all came together. I was scouting out enemies with my drone, safe knowing that Paul and Ryan were clearing out the enemies and protecting me from any unpleasant surprises. We moved quietly, completed our objectives and got the hell out. Was it a perfect run? No, but it was successful and provided us with a nice multiplayer XP bonus.
And that is the key to progression in Extraction. As I said, this is a game that has been designed as a multiplayer experience first and foremost. You will progress far faster when playing with others than trying to play the game by yourself.
That is why I am not ready to give you a full review right now. Like many games journalists, I have had early access to the game, but I have had very little experience with that essential multiplayer aspect. Once the game launches, especially being a day-one drop on Xbox Game Pass, there will be a flood of potential teammates to squad up with and play the content the way it was truly meant to be experienced.
Look out for my full review on Player2 sometime in the near future.
