R6 Grim preview: new Rainbow Six Siege operator is Nomad meets Jackal

pcgamesn.com:

Attackers like Grim, R6’s newest operator, make me nervous. It’s frightening enough that he’s a three-speed with a superb primary weapon, but it’s his gadget – a deployable canister that drops tracking microbots – that sets alarm bells ringing. When he arrives as part of the upcoming Operation Brutal Swarm, he’ll bring yet another device that can live-ping a defender’s location, and if you combine Grim with other tracker operators like Lion, Jackal, or Dokkaebi, you can bully defenders without them being able to fight back.

However, unlike those other three trackers, Grim does at least require some skill and strategy to use effectively; it’s not just a case of pressing a button and getting free intel for your whole team. Before you can get any pings out to your teammates, you’ll have to switch to an over-the-shoulder launcher, pick a spot where the microbots will either root out a defender or stop them from moving, and then hope it doesn’t get blocked by defender gadgets like Mute jammers, Wamai discs, or Aruni gates. There’s a muddle of decision points and vulnerability baked into this gadget that’s reminiscent of the game’s original roster of spec ops characters.

Frustratingly, while all of those caveats make Grim feel fair, they also mean he arrives in Rainbow Six Siege feeling pretty redundant. If his fellow trackers can all perform their role without having to get anywhere near a defender, then why would you pick Grim? Alternatively, you can stack him alongside other trackers, allowing you to isolate and suffocate individual roamers, but leaving your team short when it comes to breaching utility.

The rest of Operation Brutal Swarm is similarly hit and miss. Stadium is the not so new map making its way to ranked and