Rainbow Six Extraction is a spin-off of Ubisoft’s flagship competitive multiplayer hit Rainbow Six Siege, set in an alien-infested depiction of the United States. This three-player cooperative shooter borrows its predecessor’s operator and weapon roster and puts them in a new context in a more accessible player-versus-environment setting – often with hilarious results. The operator progressions offer exciting rewards for players willing to put in the time, although the climb to unlocking the best rewards is steep. Additionally, a stubborn health system creates significant consequences for players who fail to complete Extraction’s many challenges, carrying over operator injuries from game to game. Rainbow Six Siege casts a significant shadow, however, and despite its best efforts, Ubisoft’s newest shooter struggles to fully emerge from beneath it.
The extraction is technically well processed. It’s polished and comfortable. However, I don’t find it nearly as compelling as the shooter it’s based on. Even in the most thrilling scenarios, I couldn’t help but wish I was playing Rainbow Six Siege. Each attack in Extraction begins as a match in Siege. Your team chooses their operators and loadouts of gear, then prepare to fight an onslaught of AI enemies in four brand new locations: New York City, San Francisco, Alaska, or Truth And Consequences — that is
You and your crew complete a random selection of objectives in each area. These range from stealth-based challenges like Biopsy, which require you to use a knife to extract alien tissue samples, to more assault-oriented objectives like Hunt and Decontamination, which serve as standard kill quests that remain reasonably satisfying. Siege fans may recognize missions like sabotage and rescue, which mirror Siege’s bomb and hostage modes. My favorite target type is Specimen, where your team must trap one of the powerful Archaeans – the parasitic antagonists that plague the dark passages of every environment – in order to capture it alive. This goal is hilarious, and my teammates and I often laughed when an unlucky person was used as bait.
Airlocks separate each city’s three sub-maps and serve as shelters, stocked with supplies like medi-kits and (hopefully) ammo. The deeper your squad ventures into the invasion, the more difficult it is to successfully extract them as the difficulty and variety of enemies increases, ranging from lowly grunts to fearsome behemoths that can breach walls. I enjoy the variety, but you’ll need to increase the difficulty to hit the best ones. If you manage to fight your way through all three areas, you’ll earn extra experience points and unlock perks like increased movement speed or new abilities like Sledge’s charged hammer swing. These operator advancements are the highlight of Extraction’s progression loop, and I wanted to keep playing to get them. You’ll also get new operators, gear, and cosmetics by increasing your player level by completing games and level-specific challenges. While there are exciting rewards to unlock and I particularly appreciate the operator-specific upgrades, overall progression feels unnecessarily slow.
Each weapon handles differently, but I enjoyed using them all equally. Suppressed rifles are my weapon type of choice. They trade brute stopping power for the ability to perform discreet killing shots on all types of Archaeans. Shotguns reliably blast enemies – and walls – to shreds, but draw a lot of attention. Extraction also introduces stealth takedowns, providing a discreet method of completing your objectives when ammo and health are low. Nothing feels better than calmly clearing a perimeter with your team. However, the game doesn’t adequately convey when you’re in danger of being spotted, so my subtle attempts often resulted in panicked gunfights.
While Extraction borrows a lot from Siege, it introduces a new feature I love: persistent operator health. Suppose you played as Vigil before and finished the mission with only four health points. In this case, unless you let him recover by completing Assaults as other characters, he will start the next game injured. Depending on your performance, several Operators could be in an injured status, or worse, absent from action until you rescue them during another mission. This system encouraged me to experiment with operators across the roster, leading to nervous encounters.
Transforming much of Siege’s content library into an accessible co-op shooter, Rainbow Six Extraction offers a tense environment for players of all skill levels. However, in a string of industry-defining hits, this installment feels incredibly safe and significantly less engaging than its predecessor.
