Rainbow Six Extraction

Call it 'Quarantine' again you cowards!

Remember all that stuff I said about Ubisoft franchises sort of losing what made them special and becoming something else entirely? Yeah, that's pretty much what this game personifies. I don't even rightly understand it, truth be told, it's as though Ubisoft have all these grand ideas for games that they want to make in all these different genres, but absolutely no faith in establishing a new IP or anything truly out there. Maybe that would explain why they turn around and make these games that try to be different, yet are tied down with a desire to be similar to the last entry, and end up never quite nailing the benchmark feeling that they were shooting for to begin with. It's a game of compromise every step of the way, and I think that it really does hurt the developers around them given just how much of a market share Ubisoft have their hands on. Oh, you think I'm being melodramatic and picking on Ubisoft because it's fashionable? First-of-all, I've been picking on Ubisoft since the launch of Assassin's Creed 3, and secondly we're looking at a Rainbow Six game with Aliens in it. So yeah.

Rainbow Six is the series adapted from the works of Tom Clancy to depict a highly specialised military unit who work to save the world against the various terroristic threats that befall it- basically just like every other Tom Clancy story in the world except this time there's a team instead of one really buff man. My introduction to the franchise was the absolutely stellar third person team-based tactical shooter 'Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2'; a game which took and nailed the tactical shooter genre with absolute gusto. I mean it may not have had the level of depth to it that SWAT 4 has or anything, but for an experience designed to be open for everyone it truly did an admirable job in simulating the job of a squad leader with setting up tactical breaches, exploiting choke points, having clear sweeps, and just about everything you'd expect from a game like this.

And I played it to death, utterly and truly. Vegas had an almost mulitplayer-esque unlock system in it wherein you unlocked new gear and weaponary as you earned 'experience' by killing things and completing objectives, and the best gear was locked so high along the XP trail that you were encouraged to either play the campaign an ungodly amount of time or grind the multiplayer. I came to the game years after the multiplayer dried up, so I was all about that campaign. By the last time I played it, I could run pretty much run most of the missions solo because I'd memorised enemy layout like an insane person. The game was grounded, but not boring. Versatile, but not overwhelming. It was exactly the sort of game that Tom Clancy would have been proud of for his military obsessive fictional stories. (Actually, one I assume he was proud of, given it came out when he was still alive.)

Nowadays Rainbow Six only comes before the word 'Siege'. Made as a cobbled together revival of the work that went into the cancelled Rainbow Six game which I was simping for back in the day, Siege is a mutliplayer title that I think few can deny is the single premier multiplayer tactical game on the market right now. Even when I want to hold Ubisoft's feet to the coals for all the half-measures and ignored potentials in their library, I take a moment to acknowledge how Siege is the exception to that rule, because even a broken clock is right twice a day. But it's a multiplayer game, with a less than friendly community attached to it, so I don't get the chance to live out my stupid tactical commander fantasies that I came to this series for. Thus I was so excited when I heard about the upcoming 'Rainbow Six: Quarantine'. Finally, I thought, a return to form!

How foolish I was.

Billed as a 'spin-off' to Siege, and renamed to 'Extraction' for some reason... (Ya bunch of cowards!) the new Rainbow Six features those operatives from the main Siege imbued with the personality traits that could only be dreamt up by a fanfic.net writer. You know, the sort of character where everyone is sort of larger than life and makes sure to lay themselves out on the table with every sentence, also the sort of personality traits that don't originate from the actual game because there these 'characters'  were just classes with faces. These opertaives are then sent into dens of extra-terrestrials that resemble grown-up inklings in order to go through objective based tactical clearing gameplay with your online friends and come out the other side with some sort of McGuffin. There's so much there I want to like, caked in a lot more I find totally alien. Pardon the pun.

"Where does this come from?", you might ask, and the answer is actually pretty simple. So Siege does these events from time to time where they shake up the year with limited time event modes. One such event featured aliens like this in a sort of horde survival mode. It was a welcome change to the formula and enjoyable enough for the time. How that ballooned into a full-blown spin-off is beyond me, I thought fans just wanted that mode to be made permanent- ah, but that must be it! Ubisoft heard the talk about 'I would pay full price for this' and had the whole 'Euro signs in their eyes' moment. Thus was born another Rainbow Six Siege game stepping away from the storybased fun that I assume only I really want at this point. Instead we've got Aliens. Whatsmore, according to the footage someone thought it insanely clever to (in that stereotypical fashion of making a name and then abbreviating it) have these enemies called 'Archies'. Really? 'Archies'? Now I'm just imaging every Alien as a ginger haired stud looking to tell me about "the triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of high school football."

So why haven't I spoken about the raw facts about the game? It's looks or gameplay? Well that's because the trailers we saw were supercut in such an odd way that we never really got to see a proper match play out. But in essence it looks exactly like Siege, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if all new assets were lifted out of unused Siege content, and the gameplay is GTFO. Yeah, Ubisoft didn't come up with anything original, they just ripped off GTFO and made their game run better because of course they did, they're a multimillon Euro company. Although I have to say that GTFO certainly does look considerably more hardcore, if that's the measurement you want to address quality with. Ubisoft really didn't want to put a proper gameplay run together for this one, which I can only assume means they're still trying to nail it. For those who want that, I guess.

I'm not trying to denigrate those who want a Rainbow Six game like this, because from what they've shown even I admit it does look decent. I'm just bitter that it seems to have come at the cost of yet another opportunity to treat us beleaguered. Once upon a time EA were rode across the coals for openly stating their desire to move away from the 'dying' (See: "Not as easily exploitable") single player market, and I feel like Ubisoft are trying to do the same without saying it. (Heck, look at what they did to Ghost Recon.) I suppose at the end of the day I can't complain too hard, because at least the games I like are getting an entry. (The Splinter Cell fan in me was weeping after this conference.) If tactical Inkling hunting is for you, congrats your game has come. Now don't mind me as I sulk back to my SWAT game...