Today, on January 20, 2022, Rainbow Six: Extraction was released. The new co-op shooter from Ubisoft is a standalone spin-off of the PvP shooter Rainbow Six: Siege, but focuses entirely on PvE. The hype around the game is relatively small, but even at release, Extraction is well received.
What kind of game is this? In Rainbow Six: Extraction, you play alone or with a team of up to 3 specialists in co-op to complete various missions, in which you must accomplish different tasks. The goal is always to learn more about an alien parasite that threatens humanity. Extraction is a pure PvE shooter.
With various playable “Operators” with special abilities, you venture into different areas of the world to gather data. Each mission consists of 3 parts, each with a task and the option to either delve deeper into the area or retreat to secure what you have already achieved.
Rainbow Six: Extraction has been playable since January 20, 2022, at 1:00 AM German time on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Google Stadia. You can learn more in our release hub for Extraction. The hype around the game was relatively low beforehand, likely due to the delays. However, Extraction is well received among players now.
“This is how you make a game”
This is what players say: If you look directly after release on reddit, you will find almost exclusively positive threads with much praise. However, the subreddit for Extraction has only 3,600 members, so the discussions are correspondingly small.
Many users, however, express that they are “surprised” by the game. They did not expect Extraction to captivate them so much. It’s less about the content itself. In the currently largest discussion thread, it says: “It feels nice to play a game that feels complete and not rushed like Battlefield 2042 or Halo Infinite” (via reddit).
Another user agrees in his thread and writes: “This is how you make games.” The comparison refers to the difficult launch of Battlefield 2042. The series has many die-hard fans, but the new installment came with unpopular new features and such severe bugs, that reportedly even cheats did not work sometimes.
In general, shooter fans seemed to be quite dissatisfied with their genre in 2021. Battlefield competitor CoD Vanguard and the battle royale Warzone also struggled. The games were even referred to as a “pile of wreckage full of bugs” at the end of 2021.
What is praised about Extraction? In Extraction, however, players find hardly any flaws. They write that the game feels finished. The delay from the originally planned 2021 seems to have helped. Teamplay is particularly noted as a strong feature. Without communication and good coordination, even easy missions are a challenge in co-op.
During our play session, we could hardly discover any bugs – aside from a few outstanding translations, which have probably been resolved by now. MeinMMO author Marko Jevtic particularly praises the short missions and compares the mechanics to successful indie games.
It is also pleasing that it is not a full-price title. Extraction is available from €40 and is already included in the Xbox Game Pass at release. However, there is also some criticism, especially regarding overly harsh penalties.
Minor connection issues with serious consequences
The servers apparently run largely smoothly at release. There are hardly any complaints about connection drops or lags. However, those affected face unusually harsh penalties.
A few players report that they fly out of the mission after a power outage or internet drop. For this, they receive a penalty for leaving a match early, which prevents them from playing for a certain time – not even in training mode.
Additionally, they lose the operator they were currently playing. In Extraction, your operators are encased in foam when their health points drop to 0 and they can no longer just go down. This can happen especially in the tough endgame mode.
As a result, they drop out of the game and must be rescued. If your teammates fail to successfully extract your operator in tow, you will need to go back into the mission and try to free them yourself. The corresponding mission is then guaranteed.
So far, reports of problems and drops are still relatively few, but the large influx of players will likely only come on the evening of January 20 and over the weekend. Then it will show how well the servers hold up. If you’re still unsure whether you should check out the new Rainbow Six, take a look at our brief check:
Rainbow Six: Extraction in a brief check – Why you should play it and who it is worth for
