Rainbow Six Extraction is finally out, now giving players the opportunity to play with the Rainbow Six Siege operators in a player versus enemy environment. But does the experience translate really well in this new gameplay loop? Let's check out the Rainbow Six Extraction review scores to find out if this new game coming from Ubisoft is a bomb or a bust.
Rainbow Six Extraction Review Scores: 72 Metascore on Metacritic
Rainbow Six Extraction is the first Tom Clancy title to come out as a Ubisoft Original, and it's one of the games that Ubisoft has been working on for a long while now. It's been in development hell for a while, with the game even undergoing name changes (from Quarantine to Extraction). We weren't in a global pandemic yet when the game went into development and then had to change the name when Quarantine didn't feel too safe to use for a game's title anymore. Then, the game started showing more signs of life towards the end of 2020, finally getting more videos and screenshots released last year, and had some beta testing sprinkled throughout the late part of 2021. Now, Extraction is here. So, how does it hold up?
Rainbow Six Extraction Review Scores are Generally Positive
Extraction didn't exactly change the landscape of the gaming industry, but for a game that Ubisoft built on top of one of their other games, it doesn't necessarily need to. For those who are also not familiar, Extraction started off as a limited-time event for Rainbow Six Siege, where players teamed together to fight hordes of alien zombies. Not only did the entire idea for Extraction comes from that, a majority of the game assets from that limited-time event were also lifted directly from the limited-time event. So, clearly, Ubisoft wasn't really trying to set the world on fire with this game, but rather give Rainbow Six Siege fans a new experience that they can play when the competitive PvP experience has become stale for them.
Thankfully, Rainbow Six Extraction runs really smoothly on most systems with competent gunplay and teamwork-oriented levels. However, the game has some bland locations, with the game's various locations being functionally the same. Even if the maps were generated procedurally, each stage felt the same as all of the others. Still, this gives the game a lot of familiarity that makes the game feel like something you'd be able to play in and out of your weeknights without having to spend so much brainpower for it.
The Games Machine gave the game an 8.5/10, saying: “Not only is Rainbow Six Extraction a great cooperative shooter, it also differentiates itself from most of the competition by promoting a more tactical, reasoned approach: the Archean threat is not to be underestimated, as things are always a poor decision away from turning sour for your team. It’s a real shame that you have to unlock almost everything though, difficulty levels included.”
Dexerto gave the game an 8/10, saying: “Rainbow Six Extraction successfully transplants Siege’s excellent gunplay and reliance on coordination into a tense battle for survival. While its objectives are inconsistent in terms of difficulty, they’re almost always thrilling to complete, and making it out alive with just a few bullets left, with a teammate slung over your shoulder always feels exhilarating.”
A lot of other publications were more lukewarm towards the game, though, noting how un-notable the game is and how it fails to stand out from its competition, as many developers have already done team-based zombie shooter games.
IGN puts it simply in their 7/10 review, saying: “Rainbow Six Extraction brings some great new ideas to the venerable first-person shooter as it morphs to a sci-fi co-op game, but it doesn't distinguish itself quite enough to stand out on its own merits.”
VG247 says in its 6/10 review: “So overall, with all things considered, is Rainbow Six: Extraction a good game? Yeah, it’s alright. For my tastes, it doesn’t quite go far enough in some places, and it has lost a bit of that identity that makes Rainbow Six games special, but if you’ve got a few friends who are curious about it then you’ll have a blast jumping into it. It retains that slow, methodical gameplay that is so addictive to a certain kind of player, so I have no doubts that this game will remain a weekly venture for a community out there, somewhere. Whether or not it can retain that playerbase is something we’ll have to keep an eye on.”
But all of these criticisms don't mean that Rainbow Six Extraction is bereft of any original ideas, as it really does have a few things it does differently from other similar games. One of the best features Rainbow Six Extraction has that other games don't is its capture and rescue system, where your operators, when they fall in battle, would be taken as captives by the enemies. When this happens, you won't be able to select that Operator in your missions until you come back using a different Operator to save them. Operators can also get injured, forcing you to swap characters and not rely on the same old character over and over again. Stuff like these, as well as the two unlockable game modes towards the latter part of the game, lets Rainbow Six Extraction remain fresh even after hundreds of different runs.
Conclusion: Is Rainbow Six Extraction good to play?
Rainbow Six Extraction is a nice game to play with your friends in between Rainbow Six Siege sessions. It's lightweight and serves more like target practice or comms practice for your friends to play before heading to competitive. But this game isn't exactly going to be a replacement for Rainbow Six Siege ever. With the game on Xbox Game Pass, you should be able to try the game out and see for yourself if it's the game for you. At its worst, Rainbow Six Extraction is another team-based zombie shooter game that is just fine that many may move on from after a couple of sessions. But for others, this might become a new obsession.
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