Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction Review

With Back 4 Blood, Aliens Fireteam Elite, and the upcoming Redfall, it seems like the genre of cooperative shooters is growing rapidly. Whilst it is great for players who like to shoot everything in their way for no apparent reason with their friends, this has to be built on greatly for it is one of — if not the — only feature they have. Does Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction do that? Find out!

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction (Extraction henceforth) is a spin-off of the competitive PVP shooter Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege and borrows almost all of its gunplay, mechanics, and operators from the original game but puts you in a PVE world instead. In Extraction, you can team up with two other players to fight a bunch of aliens. Now, since Extraction is a direct spin-off of Siege, and given Siege’s competitive nature you’d assume Extraction would be easier since you’re fighting AI opponents instead of actual players; that’s not quite the case.

Extraction’s ‘story’ has the same generic template: the world (United States) has been invaded by an alien race known as Archæans and it’s up to the newly found ‘REACT team’ — with the not so new operators we have come to know from Siege — to gather intel and fend off the threat. Honestly, after the opening cutscene I really didn’t care about the story.

After the very common ‘NYC is under attack’ cutscene, you are required to play what is called ‘AI training’, which does not make a good first impression. I don’t even remember what I was doing there in the first place because I pressed leave as soon as I got the chance. Thankfully I was familiar with Siege, so the mechanics weren’t new to me at all. However, the AI training is mediocre at best when it comes to teaching newcomers the mechanics and to get them hooked.

The game’s objective is pretty simple: team up with two other players to complete an Incursion in a territory infested by the Archæans. You will have three main objectives during your Incursion with the option of leaving after completing the first or first and second objectives respectively. The objectives consist of collecting samples by sneaking up on aliens, killing an alien elite, saving and escorting an MIA operator, among others; it’s safe to say that the game has a decent variety of objectives available. After completing an objective you get a checkpoint-esque safe-zone where you can (sometimes) find ammo packs, health packs, or the option to replenish your operator’s ability. The catch is that, if you decide to continue after completing an objective, the next area of the Incursion (or the ‘hot zone’ as the game calls it) has more enemies and it increases in difficulty.

The decision of whether you want to continue an Incursion or head back to the extraction zone is an important one to make, and this is precisely what sets apart Extraction from all of the other co-op shooters. See, if you’re low on health or ammo and your operator ends up becoming MIA, you can’t use them again until you go on a new Incursion and rescue them. It isn’t game over even if you end up losing most of your operators thanks to the game’s failsafe that makes sure you’ll always have operators available. But at the same time, you need to be careful as only a handful of the operators have abilities that I found to be useful. It is worth noting though, some operators with inferior abilities have superior weapons and gadgets that make up for it!

I have to say, this decision-making mechanic plays a really important part in keeping the game engaging. It’s precisely why me and my friends return to the game and is exactly what differentiates Extraction from all the other mindless shooters.

Whilst the decision-making system in the game is great, the health mechanic absolutely sucks. All operators start at 100 health, but if you lose health during your mission, you lose it permanently. Don’t get me wrong, there are health packs present in the game and operators such as Doc and Finka that can give you health, but it’s temporary and your health depletes to the same as it was when you get shot. For example, if I was at 30 health and found myself a health pack, my health would boost up to 80 but that boost would slowly diminish overtime until I was back to 30. It kind of makes the game feel extra hard and unbalanced even at moderate difficulty; I found the mechanic to be more frustrating than engaging.

It’s also important to note that Extraction is very challenging to play with random teammates. The game requires you to coordinate with your partners, as most of the objectives require you to do stuff simultaneously. So, if you’re planning to launch the game with random teammates you find via matchmaking… don’t. It just makes the game unnecessarily hard and might make the experience extremely underwhelming for you. This game requires you to be on comms at all times if you want to succeed in all three objectives.

Rainbow Six Extraction takes the gunplay from Siege, which took a while but grew on me eventually. All the guns have their own recoil, damage output, and spread. Each operator has four different primary weapons which include the likes of SMGs, assault rifles, shotguns, and LMGs. What’s new here is the ‘REACT tech’, fancy gadgets like the glue grenade, recon drone, and revive kits that help you during your missions. They are available alongside the already present devices your operator has access to like smoke grenades, claymore, drones, etc. The new gadgets are welcomed since they really assist the operators in their missions, and the chances of completing all three objectives using them is significantly higher; the REACT tech gives the game a fresh aspect and makes it very fun to play.

Apart from increasing your overall rank, and unlocking new maps, operators and REACT tech, your operators also level up to rank ten which gives them more durability and enhanced special abilities among other things. Another cool mode the game features is the ‘Maelstrom Protocol’ which is basically a ranked version for players looking for an even enhanced challenge; it rewards players with a lot of XP, React Credit, and seasonal cosmetics.

Maelstrom Protocol features more unique and difficult Archæans and some evolving mutations. There are five ranks from Bronze to Diamond that depend on how many points you earn throughout the game. Having different kinds of enemies, modes, and some badass rewards makes you keep coming back to the game and making the whole experience feel more rewarding.

There are some really good things about Extraction such as the amazing shooting mechanics with a wide variety of guns; this makes killing the enemies feel even more satisfying. The game also features a level of realism you won’t find in other PVE shooters with you being able to breach and shoot through many soft walls and the lethality whilst killing the enemies is gratifying.

Just like the guns, you get access to a lot of gadgets and operators as you progress through the game which gives you a wide variety of options on how you want to approach your Incursion. Ubisoft has also given Extraction a very tactical aspect with the interconnected objectives and zones where you can plan for your next objective or flee if you will. The progression system, which initially feels slow, is fair in terms of the rewards you get out of it.

All of these features make the game feel extremely fun to play and leave you wanting to play more. Features like taking down enemies and the nests by sneaking up aren’t new to the genre but surely feel really satisfying and cool. I found Extraction to be one of the most fun co-op shooters I have played; more so with friends. There is a lot more tactical depth than just mindless shooting which I really appreciate and elevates the game.

Having said that, Extraction suffers from the same problem as other co-op shooters where they start to feel incredibly repetitive incredibly fast. The game does offer a variety of enemies like explosive aliens, aliens that shoot from far, aliens that have extra armour, etc. that makes you react accordingly during the missions. But, thanks to the random mission generator, these objectives repeat themselves quite frequently in short periods of time.

Furthermore, you do not have access to many maps when you start playing. There are a total of 12 locations set in four unique places, and only one of the four places is unlocked in the beginning. Unlocking new maps feels like a task since it requires you to grind through similar missions. So, doing the same exact missions on the same exact maps makes any excitement start to wear off after some time.

Graphically, the game looks more or less like Rainbow Six Siege. It runs at 4K@60FPS on the Xbox Series X. Extraction would also look familiar to you if you have played the Outbreak mode that launched in Siege. The disappointing part was that the game (as of yet) offers no 120 FPS mode on console; I was expecting that since we already saw it be implemented in Siege for the next-gen consoles.

To summarise, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction consists of strong gameplay with the level of realism we’ve seen and loved in Siege. It also takes many risks by introducing new mechanics that are very engaging and set this game apart from other co-op shooters. But at the same time, Extraction makes the same mistakes other co-op shooters make, by giving you a non-meaningful story and a lot of repetition in the missions, making the overall experience kind of mixed. The game also borrows most of its stuff from Siege which leaves it feeling more like an expansion than a full-fledged game.