PREVIEW – Back in 2011 when the first „gameplay” trailer for Rainbow Six Patriots was released I was interested. The story seemed controversial, but that just gave me all the more hope about the game itself. We might finally get an ambiguous storyline instead of the usual USA vs Terrorist/ Chinese/ Russian gimmicky storyline that was fed to us for the last couple of years.

Sadly in 2014 it was announced that the game was scrapped in favor of… Rainbow Six Siege, a new tactical first person shooter that is meant to compete with Counter Strike, and be featured in Esport. All this can be your for sixty cold hard American dollars, to which all I have to say is … Why?

Wait what? Really? That’s it?

The Rainbow Six Siege beta started off pretty bad, with multiple extensions, and matchmaking issues. Still I was finally able to get my hands on a closed Beta key, so that I may enjoy the cool tactical moments similar to the one shown at E3. Except that while highly coordinated „gameplay” trailers will fill your imagination with wonder and excitement, playing the beta has been an entirely different beast.

The beta is for all intents and purposes is solid, the gunplay is great, the levels are interesting, and breaching a door or smashing through a window by a rope is a unique feeling. For the first few times, and then you might start to ask, is this?
After playing the beta, instead of hype, and a few fun filled matches later I was left with the following questions: Why is this game priced at sixty dollars?

It’s not a bad game, but even with eleven maps, and „supposedly” free maps after release should keep the game afloat for a few months after release, is not that much. The game feels like a free to play shooter or a 10-15 dollar shooter at best. The environments are static as hell (besides the occasional explosions, and small destruction physics), the animation is okay, the graphics were subpar, and the sound design is mediocre. Add to this is that the game modes are fairly standard and nothing special.

We have five player versus AI game mode called Terrorist Hunt, and then there’s a few five player versus five player modes. The big “realistic” draw of the game is that once you die (in any of the game modes), you cannot be revived, and there is no respawn system. According to the developers this was to create a bigger tension within the matches, but in my opinion it just resulted in the opposite.

Why bother playing tactically, when (if you are defending an objective for example), can just camp near the object while the entire place is barricaded. This actually happened to me in one of the matches, where we took out four of the other players while locking down an entire room that contained the objective of the enemy team.

Speaking of objectives, by removing respawn from your game Ubisoft, you just made them entirely pointless, unless there is a kill a VIP that is being escorted by defenders mode. Since all you have to do to win in this game is simply kill everyone, and to be quite frank, there is no need to dick around with the objectives (defuse the bomb / chemical agent etc). You’ll win without even going near the objectives most of the times.

I am now renown through the land!

Rainbow Six Siege has a leveling system that provides you with a currency (renown) to unlock specific types of characters to play in matches. The basic character you are provided at the beginning is The Recruit. After gaining enough currency you’ll be able to use specific characters for special scenarios. It is an okay system, but it still screams like a F2P game, and a system is really slow in providing you with characters / weapons, when I compared it to the recent Black Ops 3 beta, where it was a blast going into matches and unlocking weapon skills.

I also have to wonder how long will the player base will be able to keep up with Siege’s: No respawn and wait for five minutes until the match ends (on all game modes). Because I hope that the matchmaking system will be fixed otherwise people will just not put up with the 1-2 minutes of waiting until finally joining a match, only to get killed in the beginning, then to wait 3-4 minutes for the next match (Unless the host decides to quit, and in that case, well another 5-6 minutes of waiting).

The factions are sort of meh, all of the factions have their different guns that are essential the same, but look a bit different. It feels pointless to give us Spetsnaz, FBI Swat Team, the SAS, if the only difference is that they look a bit different, but have no unique methods of breaching (for example) or weapons.

Ambush… I mean Siege

While I had fun with the Black OPS 3 Beta, Rainbow Six Siege’s closed beta was a mess, and does not really live up to any sort of hype UBISOFT wishes to generate with this game. It’s a mediocre knock off Counter Strike, with the ability to blow some walls up (which has been around since Battlefield Bad Company 2).

I would not recommend anyone pre-ordering or even buying this game at a full price. I am really disappointed that Patriots got canned for this.

-Dante-

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Genres: Action, FPS

Publication: Dec. 1 2015