Rainbow Six Siege Review

If you want a chance to test out new operators with a group of people without going into PvP, Terrorist Hunt is a mode that returns from previous games. This lets you play with up to four teammates co-operatively against the AI on a playlist that randomizes maps and objectives, which helps to keep things fresh. The quality of this mode varies depending on the objective type; simply hunting down and killing all of the terrorists is a bit tedious, but trying to locate and defuse two separate bombs while fending off waves of enemy reinforcements is good fun. There are even defensive missions that can get quite chaotic and intense thanks varied enemy types like suicide bombers and some who will make use of riot shields.

The meat of the experience is of course the competitive PvP, and this is where the most fun is had. Defending is fantastically tense as you listen to the enemies walking around through walls and breaching doors, windows and walls nearby, unsure of when they will finally burst into the room where you cower. Attacking feels dangerous as you bash holes in windows and peek through, rappel up the sides of buildings and down through skylights as you attempt to find a weak point in your enemies’ defenses. The movement feels smooth and the animations are quit good; you can roll onto your back while prone and see your legs sticking out in front of you.

All of this is great, and if there wasn’t an ugly side to Rainbow Six Siege, It would easily be one of the best and most refreshing tactical shooters to arrive from a major studio in a very long time. My first twenty or so hours with the game were full of thrilling, heart-pounding moments and exciting discoveries. Sadly, there are some fairly serious issues that hold it back. I’ll get to the technical side of things shortly, but first would like to talk about a design choice that greatly inhibited my enjoyment.

The gunplay in Siege is good, with fully automatic weapons having an appropriate amount of recoil. Most of the characters have a good deal of body armor, meaning it takes quite a few shots to drop someone. Even then, they will not be dead; a player will first enter an ‘injured’ state, giving team mates a window to revive them. That is, unless you hit them in the head, at which point any weapon will instantly kill someone with a single bullet. This might not seem like a big deal for a tactical, realistic-leaning FPS, but given the cramped quarters, destructible walls and prevalence of fully automatic weapons, you will find yourself constantly dying to head-shots, sometimes in some very frustrating ways.

There were times when as the attackers I was approaching the objective, discovered the defenders hadn’t reinforced one of the walls, and sent a burst of bullets through it. More often than seemed reasonable, I would end up killing some unfortunate player with a lucky headshot. This seemed to happen to me just as frequently; at one point, a player with a shield randomly shot his 9mm pistol through a wall, one of the bullets happened to make contact with my head, killing me instantly.

Once I became aware of this issue, I began to realize just how frequently you die this way. Often I would get the jump on someone, and they would get lucky when their weapon’s recoil randomly sent a bullet flying into my skull. For a game that focuses so heavily on teamwork, tactics and coordination, these instant deaths undermine what Siege does well, and lead to some pretty extreme frustration. One defending operator can shoot a medic-pistol to instantly revive a team-mate from a distance, while another can put down additional armor for defenders; both these abilities are made almost useless due to the prevalence of headshots. I swore I would quit the game from frustration on a few occasions, and this is coming from someone who enjoys the likes of Arma, Red Orchestra 2 and Insurgency; but it is testament to the quality of the core gameplay that I kept coming back.

If lethal headshots don’t sound like a problem to you, the technical issues most certainly will. Playing with friends is certainly the way to go with Siege, but myself and many I played with frequently had trouble connecting to each other. I was also disconnected from matchmaking lobbies and games on a somewhat regular basis; this is particularly problematic for ranked matches where you are forced to wait a short time before you can search for a new match if you leave mid-game. Even worse are the sound-bugs that crop up during multiplayer; my sound would occasionally break entirely, meaning I had to complete rounds in total silence.

This is a real shame because the sound design is some of the best around, and is crucial to success. You can determine enemy locations based on footsteps, and in ranked games, there are no grenade indicators, meaning you need to listen for the distinctive clinking sound of a grenade or flash-bang when it is thrown into a room. Having no audio puts you at a severe disadvantage. But when it works, and you've got a nice pair of headphones, your tactical senses are bound to be heightened.

While the visuals in Siege aren’t industry-leading, the game does look good, especially when the explosions start and dust and debris fills the air. Matches take place at different times of day which alters the mood of each game, and the eleven maps are in nicely varied locations that all look distinct. The game also runs superbly; I never saw the frame rate dip below sixty on the highest settings, though I did experience one crash.

Even though I think that at its core Rainbow Six Siege is one of the best and most refreshing tactical shooters to come out in a while, it is difficult for me to recommend it in its current state. The amount of content feels a bit thin for the price tag, and the technical issues are more prevalent than they should be. However, Ubisoft are planning on releasing a good deal of post-launch content including new maps and operators for free, and will continue to update the game. If Siege develops a reasonable community and has its problems fixed, it will be a must-buy for any tactical shooter fan.