Rainbow Six Extraction Review: endless grind with no payout

Play Rainbow Six extraction, Ubisoft’s co-op vs. AI spinoff of its competitive tactical shooter Rainbow Six Siege, is like playing the worst parts of a very good game. The mechanics remain excellent, but all the new content feels like an endless list of RPG side quests that are meant to lead to something better but never really do.

In extraction, players form squads of up to three people to complete missions called Incursions, which can take place in twelve different areas and have three random targets each time you load into a new one. Each player chooses an operator and loadout, earning XP for their overall account and the specific operator they use.

extraction brings back many favorites from the siege List including Smoke, Ela, Sledge and Finka to name a few for a total of 18 playable Operators. The game also features a few other non-playable operators like Mira, Ash, and Thermite that pull you through the cutscenes and missions, but they mostly serve as a reminder of that siegeThe characters of just aren’t very charming.

This game is dead serious, which is a real shame considering its ridiculous story could have been fertile ground for silliness. extraction Set in an alternate world where some of the largest cities in the United States (as well as Alaska) are being overrun by an alien race known as the Archæans, only a team of Rainbow Six operators can save the day.

With a multitude of voiced operators, extraction may seem tailor-made for in-game banter, but there is none to speak of. Every moment of every mission is as silent as a crypt – unless, of course, a character calls out their next tactical move, such as calling out “reload” for the 400th time in a mission. That grumpy tone is more or less tolerable in the early stages of the game, but by hour 20 I just wanted someone to make one single

Joke after killing alien number 1,159.

Aside from the drab tone, at least the shooting feels great. All extractionThe underlying mechanics of rainbow six victories, and as far as realistic sim lite shooting games goes, it’s the best there is. extraction has an arsenal of over a dozen guns, each with a unique kick and enough recoil to make learning to control your spray an invaluable skill. It’s a shame Ubisoft decided to keep it siegeHowever, weapon limitations apply, meaning each operator has a character-specific arsenal that you can’t mix and match.

Like its starting material, extraction looks amazing too. Thin retaining walls are torn apart by gunfire, sheetrock and shards of concrete wherever you fire, and the crawling sprawl, an alien black goo that seeps across the ground and slows your movement, covers any areas your bullets missed. The levels themselves rarely feel unique, but they were solid enough that I never felt frustrated going back. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the enemies within them.

Put simply: extraction‘s aliens are boring. Each area you enter during an incursion has multiple spawn pods called hives. Beehives spawn Archæans when alerted, spreading sprawl across the ground. Along with the Hives you have various enemies like Grunts which are basically zombies; Spitters shooting at you; bashers who hit you mighty; and the occasional Apex spawning other enemies. There are nine other enemy variants, none exciting enough to mention here.

Every enemy has a weak point, and stealth kills allow you to take out the enemy without them alerting their friends. That means almost all extraction is spent walking slowly through similar-looking corridors, firing one shot at a time. If this is going to be a stealth game, this could be a compelling source of tension. But the detection mechanisms are finicky and unreliable. Occasionally, a misguided step would give my position away from two rooms – more often I could walk right up to an Archean before he knew I was there. This causes the camouflage to feel sloppy rather than challenging.

By the time I had played almost 20 hours I was just running through the levels knowing exactly when and where to step to avoid alerting enemies. When I accidentally caught the attention of a horde of Archaeans – a moment that was meant to feel exciting and chaotic – the game turned into a squishy mess instead. Enemy animation stutters across the screen, making headshots crooked and clumsy, and I’ve found myself pinned against the game’s clumsily designed rooms too many times and beaten to death with no hope of survival.

If your operator dies during a raid, they will be added to the MIA list, which is one of them extractionis the better mechanic. Next time you return to that particular zone, one of your goals will be to rescue the missing operator by completing a fun little mini-game of pulling him out of a strange tree. Until you complete the rescue, this operator is locked and unavailable for further assaults.

To prevent your operator from going MIA, you can also choose to extract at any time during an attack, regardless of how many of the three objectives you’ve accomplished. There’s no price for an early extraction other than missing out on the XP that the rest of the mission has to offer, so it really never feels like weighing interesting risk against reward.

extraction also features a challenge system, a la Call of Duty, that requires you to use specific weapon attachments or abilities. This system is called Studies and it is as close as you can get extraction comes to certain missions. They are site-specific, but since there are no clear mechanisms between sites, each study is essentially interchangeable with the others. There are over 100 of them in the game and they are (unfortunately) the best way to level up.

But the study system – like everything else in extraction – is a grind. For more than 20 hours I loaded Incursions, completed my three study challenges, completed my three random objectives and extracted. At the end of each run, I watched the XP meter tick up toward a new piece of gear I knew I wasn’t going to use. Then I would start the whole thing all over again.

Because all progression is linear, you’ll only be given rewards in a set order, and you’ll rarely feel significantly stronger. In other words, extraction is a very flat experience. With more polished missions this could be a great game, but as it stands the system lacks the peaks and valleys of random loot that help make most tricky PVE games fun. The promise of an unexpected high makes grinding worthwhile. Random drops on weapons, upgrades, or gear in general could have gone a long way in making me just want to queue for another Incursion for a chance at a rare reward.

Worse, all those levels and upgrades always feel like they’re urging you into something cool, but once you hit the endgame it turns out they never were. “Endgame” is just more of the same Incursions, but with harder difficulties, a smaller pool of operators (that changes every few days), and a few modifiers.

extractionGrinding is no more or less rewarding than a clicker game. Its biggest asset is its underlying mechanics, which makes for a solid shooter if you can find the right group of friends to play it with. In the end, it’s little more than a way to kill time until better, more interesting games come out.

Rainbow Six extraction will be released on January 20th on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Google Stadia, Xbox One and Xbox Series X and is available in Xbox Game Pass for all platforms. It’s also available on Windows PC via Steam and the Ubisoft Connect Store. The game was verified on PC using a code provided by Ubisoft. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased through affiliate links. You can find For more information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy, click here.