Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege Reviews
Is it so wrong to expect more from video games? Is it asking a lot for a game to have polish and substance around its cool central idea? These might seem like questions with obvious answers, but this is what we need to ask when titles come out that feel more designed to print cash than they do to sustain a player base.
This could have been a triumphant return for Rainbow Six, even with the true single-player experience stripped out, but bad decision after bad decision helps to bury the potential and leave Siege D.O.A.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege is a very attractive game that clearly had some effort put into the visuals. Beyond that, the title offers more tactical gameplay than most shooters on the market. The biggest sin that the game commits is that it just offers so little overall content. Whether the game sustains a minimum community to continue being playable while Ubisoft gets the content up to scratch through that promised free DLC remains very much up for debate.
Rainbow Six Siege doesn't feel like modern day shooters, instead it's quite different. In some ways, it's refreshing. At other times, it feels like you're either constantly grinding for Renown, or watching a spectate screen.
As it stands, Rainbow Six Siege is a game with some fantastic moments brought about by smart design choices. The problem is, everything else around it isn't what it should be, making this an experience you can postpone till an inevitable price drop.
The game can be enjoyable, but the barrier to entry is so high that it's hard to recommend.
Speaking of being a moving target, one notable issue that holds Siege back from excellence is its less than ideal hit detection. There is an odd and often frustrating discrepancy between the amount of successful hits you think you got versus what the replays claim you got. Assuming Ubisoft has big competitive gaming plans for Siege, this issue needs to be at the top of the fixes list for the next patch.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege has the polish of a big budget release, but the amount of content that one expects to see from a low budget free-to-play game.
There's nothing quite like Rainbow Six Siege competitive multiplayer for shooter fans. It can be incredibly fun despite some its shortcomings, but those shortcomings are visible in a number of important areas that keep this good revival of the popular Rainbow Six franchise from being great.
Without a single player campaign and only a small selection of effectively interchangeable game modes, Rainbow Six Siege is a game with a fairly limited scope. However, there's still a solid and very enjoyable tactical shooter at its core, especially when played with friends, and it's one which will only grow over time as Ubisoft add more maps and content.
Rainbow Six Siege is already fighting a difficult battle trying to enforce a more methodical vision of a competitive shooter. It's a minor miracle that Ubisoft Montreal has built such a solid foundation in that regard. But the bizarre progression hooks Siege borrows from free-to-play games, its dearth of content and its network problems make for an awful lot of frustration to overcome in search of those rare moments of unit cohesion.
It's a shame that, yet again, unrestrained lust for money on the part of a publisher has worked so hard to undo the goodwill earned by the developer's hard work. The core of Rainbow Six Siege is great – it's a game I want to absolutely adore. But it's just not a game I can recommend right now. Not at this price. Not with Ubisoft's chicanery.
Matches here feel legitimately sophisticated. Each encounter will likely only use a fraction of the gizmos or locations on offer, allowing for substantial variation and applied skill. A well-performed match feels like an authored military thriller, precise and cruel.
When you zoom in on the true core purpose of Rainbow Six Siege, as an exclusively online tactical multiplayer shooter, the game makes a hell of a first impression. Though its features are fairly limited, what the developers chose to focus their efforts on, is exceptionally well put together.
Call me nostalgic, but I miss the great 'Rainbow Six' campaigns of yore. The franchise has been rebranded as a different kind of game, similar to its predecessors but with more style than substance. A few days of casual play with 'Rainbow Six Siege' is quite enough to sample most of its charms, and while I enjoyed it, I doubt it will remain lodged in my memory for very long.
And yet, it sometimes doesn't seem like enough. As intricate as the multiplayer is, the lack of a true campaign or other content beyond terrorist hunt leaves the entire Rainbow Six Siege package of offerings feeling somewhat light, especially in comparison to something like Call of Duty: Black Ops III, which has a campaign and zombies to go along with its signature shooter experience. The same goes for the Halo series, which was built on the backbone of a space odyssey while also forging a multiplayer identity. It's not a question of quality with Siege but a question of value, and for players like me, sometimes the question is harder to answer than it should be.
Rainbow Six Siege is tactical fun, but the lack of substance hurts the overall experience. It won't take you long to play everything Rainbow Six Siege offers, but what it does it executes very well. You may get bored sooner than you'd like, but you'll have plenty of fun before that happens.
Redefined for a new gen, but still Rainbow six
The multiplayer is superb when it comes together, but the game lacks enough variation to be a true classic.
Precise to a fault, Rainbow Six Siege sees the franchise embarking on an intriguing and highly entertaining premise. The lack of content can be a nagging issue though unless Ubisoft really starts stepping up.