Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege

I haven’t played a Tom Clancy game that I’ve enjoyed since the Sum of All Fears waaaaay back in the day, and even then, it was a pretty ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ experience for me that wasn’t too memorable by the end of it. (Much like the movie it was based off of, heyo)

 

The world of terrorist hath evolved! Terrorists have gotten their hands on a weapon that could potentially mean the death of all life as we know it, what do we do?!

Why, you get Oscar winner and current American Horror Story cast member Angela Basset to tell you how dire shit is and how we need to assemble a team comprised of the finest personnel from all end game international police forces to put a stop to this terrorist tomfoolery.

Siege is different from other Tom Clancy games in that it’s a cooperative, (Or highly competitive) objective, team based shooter with several angles to it. You can either play as attackers, or defenders. The goals of both sides seems pretty obvious, how you go about doing these things is what makes Siege a unique experience.

 

Both attackers and defenders have unique character options from the aforementioned international police forces, or Operators. Where currently, every police force has two of each (With more promised by Ubisoft) that are unlockable (Or purchasable) through in game Renown points. Every character has one special trait that can help the team blast through walls or heavily reinforce them, set up deadly poison gas traps or disable them, and everything in between.

 

Defenders usually have an object to defend, like a bomb or a hostage, where they need to hunker down and reinforce and plank up surround windows, doors, ceilings and floors as the attackers do everything in their power to undo all of the above and secure their objective, which is either to disable the bomb or extract the hostage, or simply to kill everyone. With a randomly generated level threat and objective layout never being the same twice to keep all fronts guessing. Where’d you blast through the front door and go in guns blazing in one scenario, you can choose to rappel up buildings and smash through windows instead, it’s all really up to how creative you’re feeling.

 

Game rounds are usually pretty short, with a maximum average of ten minutes per game, it’s easy to pick up and put down if you’re in a rush and is definitely an adequate time killer if that’s what you’re after.

 

Where it’s clearly an entertaining and solid experience at first, the game has the tendency to get a bit stale if you don’t have a premade team to play and coordinate with, as a game for both sides can go far more smoothly through an organized effort than everyone smashing balls to the wall and going rogue.

The game is not without its bugs, AI enemies can sometimes be stupidly accurate in their efforts to gun you down that they can sometimes even knife you through walls, or shoot you through impenetrable reinforcements because your appendages are clipping through them due to lack of solid collision rendering. But the game is young, so I’ll let you judge whether or not that’s a deal breaker for you.

Ubisoft has promised a slew of content headed your way including new maps, operators, weapons, skins, and retextures (available free to everyone with a season pass, or purchasable with renown or actually money depending on content for those without one)

 

Overall, I am impressed with the Siege, and look forward to seeing where Ubisoft takes it. Shooter of the year? Highly unlikely, but definitely a game worth at least playing at a friends