Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction Review

Rainbow Six Extraction is much more than a cheap knockoff of Ubisoft’s previous Containment event the company hosted in Siege back in 2021. In fact, Extraction is a fully-fledged standalone game that takes a lot of inspiration from Siege but at the same time manages to stand on its own. It is a lot of fun and Ubisoft wants to cater to players who don’t enjoy the sweaty life of being a Siege player.

I don’t play Rainbow Six Siege. I did for a while but it never gelled with me and I fell off the wagon soon after launch. I enjoy PvP games but there has to be a break in it where I can play some PvE modes. Rainbow Six Extraction is that game and after spending a week with the brutal game, I struggled to pull myself away from it.

If Ubisoft got one thing right here, they perfected the whole “one more game” system. This meant that every night I would sit with my brother, shoot some Acheans and keep telling ourselves this would be the last game. A few hours later we were still trying to save our Operators who managed to get themselves locked up somewhere in Alaska. The thought of going to bed while Doc was stuck in a cacoon was daunting.  I had to save him and make sure my Operator roster was healthy and all the REACT members were available.

Watch our Rainbow Six Extraction review below

If you don’t know by now, Rainbow Six Extraction follows the Siege Operators on a new mission. The world has been invaded by these strange aliens called Acheans and their job is to now visit a few locations around the world and collect data on them. While this objective is far off from saving victims from terrorists, the REACT team find themselves pretty capable of pulling it off. Even if some of the Operators feel like they should have stuck to the terrorists instead.

Where Rainbow Six Extraction shines is in its roster system. The more you play, the better your Operators become. Each one of them levels up, unlock new weapons, gain new stat buffs like faster sprint and damage reduction and best of all, their abilities become better to use. Doc’s healing shot starts to heal in greater numbers, Lion’s scan lasts longer and scans in a larger radius.. You get the point.

The thing about Extraction is it wants you to play with everyone and not in a dirty way either. You see, just like Siege, Extraction is relentlessly realistic. These alien freaks hit hard, Operators die quickly and this time around, dying has some serious repercussions. If you die in a mission, you can get revived by a teammate and use one self revive tech. However, get knocked down again and your Operator then turns into a giant yellow cacoon. This cacoon has to be extracted from the mission by a teammate dragging your noob ass all the way to the extraction point. If they die and the mission fails then your Operator gets stuck in that location until you go back into the same mission to save them. This is called MIA.

[perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#3FFF33″ class=”” size=””]The general rinse and repeat gameplay in Rainbow Six Extraction works [/perfectpullquote]It gets even more complicated. Operators that make it through the mission successfully carry their health over with them. So if you leave with 20HP, which was often the case, that Operator will show they have 20HP in the roster. Take them with you to the next mission, you’ll start with 2HP. I could run around and find medikits that only provide temporary health that goes away, but that Operator needs to rest in-between missions to regain their health. This also means I had to successfully complete objectives to earn XP which converts into HP depending on how well I did.

So if you have a favourite Operator, best find a few more. Maybe start to love everyone because Rainbow Six Extraction really wants you to play with everyone. These systems are in place to enforce that. You could get away with using the same Operator but you’ll have to master the game to an extent where you don’t take any damage and leave the mission with enough health to go into a new one.

Thankfully, the general rinse and repeat gameplay in Rainbow Six Extraction works with this system. Missions aren’t too long and going in to save an MIA Operator means there’s an opportunity to complete new objectives, heal your roster and progress your ranks. There’s a steep learning curve here but once mastered, Extraction’s cycle is hella fun.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#FFF933″ class=”” size=””]Tougher difficulties might reward more objective XP but they also threw insane modifiers at me[/perfectpullquote]I also need to stress how important team gameplay is in the game. Communicating with your squad goes a long way. Tagging enemies helps alert other players around you and going in slowly, with everyone knowing you’re doing this helps too.

The Acheans in Rainbow Six Extraction are tough. Every mission includes three zones and each zone usually inhabits a handful of different enemies. Alert one of them and you’ll have a circus of Bloaters, Stingers and Lurkers to deal with as they hatch out of nests and try and kill your team. They also hit hard. You can die from three hits from a Lurker so avoiding this is important. It is especially tough when you have dozens of nests spawning enemies while you’re trying to complete objectives. You have to kill these nests or take the enemies down who wake them up first. This is not DOOM, you can’t just run around shooting things.

Missions in Rainbow Six Extraction try and spice things up but they really do become very much the same thing after a while. If I was going into a location with an MIA Operator, I had to save them. The game then adds two other objectives to the mix. This could include planting bombs and protecting an area, scanning something, escorting an enemy to the extraction point and more.

Some objectives were easier to do than others but they aren’t the most creative things on the planet. They also help define what team you’ll take into your stage. Some objectives rely on more damage while others require a heavy silent approach. This is especially important in the more challenging difficulties and even more so in the Maelstrom Protocol.

This brings me to my biggest love for Extraction – how it grows and adapts as it gets more challenging. It also delivers new things to see and do. There are 12 main stages in the game but each one can be played with a range of difficulties. The base mode called “moderate” is easy and at times, a breeze. However, as I levelled up and took on more challenging difficulties, my Operators were put to the test. I had to have more equipment, better communication and the enemies weren’t playing around.

Tougher difficulties might reward more objective XP but they also threw insane modifiers at me. These added effects to enemies like popping poison gas balls that attached to my teammates and even armoured nests.

New mission objectives were also available in higher difficulties. One called The Gateway, which isn’t available in Moderate, saw my team enter a portal and face off against a Protean. These are mutated Operators with crazy abilities and deadly damage.

Then there are the weekly assignments that hand out unique modes. Wall-To-Wall was available during the review week. This unique mode saw a never-ending wave of enemies charge at us while we had to find the switches to unlock the airlock to progress to the next area. It was intense.

I am also keen to test out more of the Maelstrom Protocol mode. Here, the game gets tougher the more you progress but you can obtain the best cosmetic gear. I just need more time to get prepped for that because I got my ass handed to me the first time I tried it.

If I have to complain about one thing in Extraction, it’s the Operators. While some of them are great, others just feel useless as their abilities don’t gel in the game as much as others. You’ll probably find five you will rotate with and the rest will be forgotten. I get that all of them had to be included but some feel pointless.

So is Extraction a game for you? Well, if you enjoy co-op shooters then definitely. There’s a lot to enjoy here and quite a lot of content to get through especially if you plan on increasing the challenge. While I wish there was more to do in missions, having a team around and the urge to level up my Operators kept me going. The whole MIA system is fantastic too. Honestly, I loved it and the whole risk and reward factor is brilliant.

We also covered another preview of Extraction. Check it out here.

Available On: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC | Reviewed On: PS5 | Release Date: 20 January 2022 | Price: R885

Note – We published this review during our trial run of our new “star” review system. The original score was 4/5 stars. We have since reverted back to the 10-point system so the review score shown below accurately reflects this.