Review: Rainbow Six Extraction

destructoid.com:

I’m at the point where some classic franchises are utterly unrecognizable. That can be a good thing…sometimes! After decades in operation you’d expect some kind of change to happen, especially if a new creative team/generation is taking over, or a new company entirely. Rainbow Six Extraction fits neatly into that mystery box.

Rainbow Six Extraction (PC, PS4, PS5 [reviewed], Stadia, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)Developer: Ubisoft MontrealPublisher: UbisoftReleased: January 20, 2022MSRP: $59.99

This is a game where an alien threat crash lands on Earth (not unlike Spider-Man‘s Venom), where you’re instructed by a high-tech AI to locate new information on an unknown invasive threat — it’s not exactly concerned with realism. And there’s pros and cons to that approach! Using the Rainbow Six name is going to ruffle some feathers, for one. I remember playing the original at launch and being completely blown away with its tactical approach. Over the years that grounded tact has waxed and waned, to mixed results. The same mixed reaction is going to happen to Extraction. I went through it myself.

Your alien/virus-fighting travels will predominately take you through New York, San Francisco, and Alaska, amid a few other nondescript locations. So the loop is ironically kind of like the old Assassin‘s Creed games, which consisted of a pool of objectives. In Extraction they range from luring a parasite to a location and capturing it, to “collecting specimens” via melee attacks, to the classic bombing runs just like Counter-Strike, to straight-up kill missions (which spawn an elite at the end). And, just like Assassin’s Creed, there’s an escort variant. There’s a good chunk of objectives, and hardcore players can bump things up to