Rainbow Six Extraction review: It’s dangerous to go it alone

digitaltrends.com:

Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy brand of games is in the middle of an identity crisis. What initially started with engaging tactical shooters like Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell is now home to competitive shooters with wacky names like XDefiant, battle royales, and now, a Left 4 Dead-inspired cooperative shooter where players fight off an alien parasite.

Rainbow Six Extraction spun off from a limited-time mode of the popular competitive multiplayer shooter Rainbow Six Siege. It’s an attempt to adapt Siege’s methodical, team-focused gameplay into a cooperative setting while stretching the limits of what the Rainbow Six subseries can be about.

Rainbow Six Extraction is a perfect example of the Tom Clancy brand’s current struggle. While its more tactical pace stands out within the cooperative shooter genre, its lack of an engaging narrative and it repetitive gameplay mean that the best aspects of the game don’t get the time to shine.

Typically, Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six video games are rooted in realistic military-tangential conflict. We’ve seen that premise stretched more and more with each new game using that label, but Rainbow Six Extraction officially jumps the shark.

A race of aliens called the Archaeans and their Chimera parasite have attacked Earth. In response, several operators from Rainbow Six Siege team up, form the “Rainbow Exogenous Analysis & Containment Team (REACT), and try to fight back against this overwhelming threat.

Ubisoft barely seems to care about the plot of Rainbow Six Extraction.

REACT is led by three notable Rainbow Six Siege operators — Ash, Thermite, and Mira. As a Rainbow Six Siege spinoff, Extraction had the opportunity to expand on Siege‘s lore and allow us to get to know some of the most popular operators