Why You Should Be Playing Rainbow Six: Siege
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege, released in 2015, is more relevant than ever. In fact, it has been titled one of the best and most complex online shooters since Counter Strike and Counter Strike Global Offensive. For those familiar with the series, Rainbow Six: Siege returns to its roots, prioritizing high-risk gameplay and balancing twitch shooting with complex creative and tactical freedom.
Despite the game being released two years ago, its player base has steadily grown in that time. This is not an accident. Ubisoft, the developers and holders of the Tom Clancy license, have supported and tweaked the game since launch and have truly refined the experience to a sharp point.
For those unfamiliar, explaining the surface of gameplay is easy. Five members of an special ops team, each controlled by an online player, combats five on the opposing team. One team attacks, the other is on defence, and this alternates between rounds. The attacking team must locate an objective in a dense and complex building, either a hostage, a biochemical weapon or a bomb. They have the option to win by either rescuing or disabling the objective, or eliminating all members of the opposing team. The defenders must prevent the objective from being seized during the Siege, or eliminate the opposing team as well.
The kicker? Most of the building is destructible, and it’s one of the few examples where game technology and graphical capability influences the intricacies of game design. Punching out your own holes in wooden walls and using them as a sneaky spyhole to shoot through is possible, as is blowing up walls and fortifying choke points. It’s a thinking man’s shooter, which is much fresher than the current oversaturation of cover-based gameplay.
If you have any interest in tactics, or first-person shooter games, this game is likely for you. The great thing about this game is that it has the full accuracy and military insight of the Tom Clancy brand. If you were a fan of the first to third instalments of Rainbow Six, this will feel like a breath of fresh air.
Perhaps one of the issues that turned people off upon release was the lack of a single player mode. While this could be seen as a deficient quality, thinking that might be a misconception. The gameplay is so tight and well polished that an offline component would take away from the multiplayer focus. It’s like expecting Counter-Strike to have a campaign mode. It would corrupt the gameplay of the online mode.
Here comes a warning. If you prefer offline games, this is not the game for you. While there is a lengthy ‘situations mode’ which allows you to fight against AI terrorists and flex your tactical muscles, it’s more to help you learn the intricacies of the game and become familiar with the gamefeel. You can also do that by playing online with a service such as I Like Cheats, allowing to see how online matches play out with that no-pressure feeling. Another turn off was that the game originally had a limited and challenging netcode, but those issues have all but been resolved.
The game often goes through free weekends on Steam, as well as deep cut sales. If you have the time, the inclination and the willingness to get better, this game could just be your new addiction.