REVIEW – The past few weeks have been full of triple AAA shooters, and all in different genres, and game modes. While Activision totally created a sci-fi universe out of Call Of Duty, Dice switched out Battlefield for Battlefront, only Ubisoft remained as an actual „military simulator” for this year. Rainbow Six: Siege was probably spun-off from the cancelled Patriots game that Ubisoft suddenly abandoned a few years ago. Is the pure tactical product able to survive the already over-saturated multiplayer market?

Throughout the history of the franchise, we could never say that the gameplay was streamlined. The series had a long road until it reached the simplicity of the two Vegas games. It adapted to the eras of modern shooters slowly, which resulted in a Call Of Duty-ish game with (lacking) RTS elements. Unfortunately, we cannot state that the series returned to its roots with this latest iteration, but it shows that the series does not wish to be a mere shadow of COD anymore.

The developers revived the ideas from the tactical shooters of the late 90s such as Counter-Strike. While Rainbow Six Siege does tug at the hearts of nostalgia, it is not able to provide anything more than the good old CS. Of course, it has new features and looks better, a lot of money was put into the project that can be seen by the visuals alone. The game still falls short in a way and does not provide too much.

„Rampage”

I was waiting for the general effects from Counter Strike characters within this game that were always played after a few frags. The game modes are also severely lacking, and maybe a small license would have been right to be asked to lighten up the mood from Valve .

The first game mode is Hostage Rescue in which terrorists are holding some civilian NPCs in a small location (house, or shop). As the bad guys, we have the option to barricade the building and place traps all over the place. As the Anti-Terrorists, our objective is to free the civilians and kill the enemy. We can have a small advantage at the beginning of the match by using tiny robots to scout the area before entering the building.

The 5V5 combat is satisfying enough for the genre fans, but at the end Rainbow Six Siege does not provide anything to those who do not like this type of combat style. The one significant positive feature of this game for the typical gamer is that the game takes the tactical element rather seriously and skips on the COD arcade mode. Although this will depend on which team the server will drop us (old Titan gamers or newbie cod babies).

The next game mode is Horde mode that looks like the following: we’re dropped into a level where you have no idea what to do. The game generates a random objective and is similar to Hostage Rescue, so it is not an actual separate mode.
Lastly (as there are only three modes) the final mode contains ten missions that are a Battlefront-rescue singleplayer mode.

This mode shows and walks the player through the different mechanics and features. Nothing else is provided on the singleplayer front – that is a black mark for UBISOFT! (Although it is not like we did not know about this).

Red Faction: Siege

One of the best features of the game is the entirely destructible levels. You can blow a hole in any wall, ground (the enemies’ head), and this allows us to be more tactical and surprise our enemies. Of course, we will need a co-operative team.
The graphics are good, and the characters, levels are well detailed. What we can be disappointed about is that the three modes are barely even constituted as one. It’s not enough that Patriots was cancelled, but the modes are lackluster in this game for sixty dollars.

The roster of the characters is enormous, and have their special abilities, so it is a good idea to think through who we select in each of the levels. Otherwise, we might regret choosing a bad character, as there is no respawn, and we’ll have to wait until the end of the round to select another character.

The tactical options are excellent, and can cause a few fun surprises for the experimenting gamers. As much as I wrote bad things about the other two modes besides Hostage Rescue, those two modes can also be fun. The only problem is the cost – value meter is wrong. It is not much for a sixty dollar price tag. We have other games that we can spend our money on.

-Kese-

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Genre: Action, FPS

Relase date: 2015. nov. 30.