By Parker Sublette
Staff Writer
Overall, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, while incredibly enjoyable, falls short in several important areas. The game lacks heavily in single-player content and contains many game-breaking bugs. However, Siege’s entertaining multiplayer and strategic game-mechanics certainly help to make the player forget some of its glaring issues.
Siege adds itself to the long running “Rainbow Six” series of games.Siege having been produced and developed by Ubisoft Studios Siege continues the tradition of the Rainbow Six line being a multiplayer based first-person shooter.
Siege is split into three basic game modes; Scenarios, which are both the tutorial and the only real source of single-player gameplay, Terrorist Hunt, a mode in which you and up to four other people attempt to complete objectives against waves of NPCs, and Multiplayer mode, where you and four other teammates face off against another squad of five players.
The multiplayer mode is split two ways, attacking and defending. During matches one team must defend an objective, be it a bomb or a hostage. Before the match starts the defending team is given 45 seconds to set up defenses while the attackers try to scout out the location of the objective. The strategic style of play which comes from this gives Siege an exciting twist most other first person shooters lack.
On top of its strategic gameplay, the multiplayer is complimented by an innovative system in which the player is able to unlock and use different characters or “operators” each with their own unique equipment and traits. There are ten different operators for both attacking and defending, making it so each team works together differently from others, providing even more unique strategic value to the multiplayer.
Since the gameplay is so heavily dependant on teamwork, playing alone is incredibly difficult. While there are in-game sources of communication, it is incredibly difficult to find a match in which the 4 other random people you are teamed up with are all communicative and strategically competent. While not the fault of the game developers it does make playing multiplayer less enjoyable and subject to a more limited style of play.
However, playing with a group of four friends as opposed to four random players not only makes the strategic side of the game easier, but also makes multiplayer much more interesting. It’s logical that someone would rather team up with friends rather than strangers. So even though playing with friends isn’t required, having other people one is familiar with to play alongside is a much more enjoyable experience that Siege incorporates successfully.
As expected from a modern first-person-shooter (FPS), Siege’s single player is so underwhelming it almost isn’t worth mentioning. There are only 2 real sources of single player, one being the “Scenarios” gametype, which are essentially glorified tutorials, the other being the “Terrorist Hunt” mode, which when played alone is nearly impossible to complete. While it is to be expected from an FPS to have limited singleplayer, it’s disappointing to see just how limited it is.
In addition, Siege features broken textures, heavy amounts of server lag, and people walking through walls. These are just a few of the bugs to be found in Siege’s multiplayer. Though these bugs are not an occurrence 100% of the time, bugs like these that could have easily been fix during beta testing show that the developers should have thought about delaying release till said problems had been fixed.
All in all, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege is an incredibly entertaining multiplayer game when played with friends, but lack of single-player content and easily fixable bugs and glitches damage just how entertaining the game is. The smart move with Siege is to wait for the game to be on sale in a few months before purchasing.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege was released December 1st, and is available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC for $60.
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