Rainbow Six Extraction - Game Review

Rainbow Six Extraction is a neat standalone follow-up to Siege's Outbreak mode of 2018 – it has potential but is still to fully realise it.

Best played in multiplayer, Extraction is about hunting hostile and horrifying creatures in contained environments. Gathering intel and extricating fallen comrades who've succumbed to the new threat in battle will be your main focus. With the inclusion of familiar operators, such as Vigil and Sledge and Doc, it's a competent extension of the Siege universe. On the flip side it also features a host of unfamiliar, insidious, parasitic and ability-wielding baddies, such as grunts and spikers and bloaters.

With an ensemble of 18 playable operators to send into the breach, upgradable tech, including body armour, revive kits and scan grenades; and a handful of explosive and reinforcements to tinker with, Rainbow Six Extraction offers plenty beyond the battlefield. In the weeks following launch, Ubisoft plans to evolve its uber-challenging 'Maelstrom Protocol' mode, with weekly assignments and combat and assault modes promising to add flavour to the get-in-extract-get-out fundamentals of the core Extraction experience.

It's often good but rarely great. In its darker, action horror-driven moments, it can be brilliant; but when it’s forcing gratuitous gunplay - that fails to live up to Siege's prestige - it can be repetitive. If Rainbow Six Extraction is to achieve long-term success and build a healthy community, then it must play to its strengths, it must be its own thing, and it must escape the long shadow cast by the very source material responsible for its existence.