Rainbow Six Siege Review

Rainbow Six Siege:

Synopsis:

A high action fps multiplayer that brings a sense of camaraderie and team cohesion in order to generate well thought and innovative tactics.

My Experience with Rainbow Six:

It was Christmas 2006, and the Xbox was at large. Everyone had one as it was the new innovation in video games and gaming in general. I was unaware of it until my brother received one. Bundled with Fifa 07 and Rainbow Six Vegas, he was ecstatic with the thought of not having to play Wolfenstein Enemy Territory on our pathetic Packard Bell PC. I shared a room with him so i constantly watched him play. I finally got my first chance to play as he left for work. We also received an Xbox headset so I got to play with my friends. I was amazed of how much fun the original was. The sheer thrill of competing in 5v5 hostage situations. That was early 2007. Since then two sequels have been released, one of which is Rainbow Six Siege.

First Impression:

When first playing I instantly knew i would have a sort of bias as I grew up with the older two games. But this was so different but so much the same. The game basis was the same 5v5 multiplayer, Attackers vs Defenders. However, one change that I found hard to cope with was an implementation of classes and ridiculous amounts of customization. Gun skins, trinkets, camouflaged tactical gear. Sure the graphics are improved but you kind of expect that after years on innovation.

Mechanics

The guns worked in a very different system now, it worked of a hit registration system which was fed back to the player in the form of hit markers. This signified when you hit an enemy making it easier to trace enemies and know when an enemy is dead. In the older variations of the game, this didnt exist and you had to keep one eye on the screen and one on the kill notification list to see if you had dispatched of your enemy. I enjoyed this change. Leaning mechanics were implemented, however this mechanic has been present in many AAA shooters such as the latest Call of Duty(s). But they were crisp and didn't have much impurity to them and didn't give 'peekers' unfair advantages and didnt give the people defending an advantage either. Glitches involving creating minimal surface area to be hit whilst still being able to deal high amounts of damage where completely obliterated by adding the ability to shoot through weak material cover such as wood and plastic and making the guns firing point lower so that when firing from tall cover will cause the player to shoot the top of the cover as they are now firing out of their weapon rather than from the players perspective. The older games also failed to fix bulky movement and mechanics and therefore felt slow and uncontrollable. Siege however, fixes this problem by adding agility to the character making the games movement feel revitalized. Supression systems have been added making characters slower when being fired at and adds a blurred edge screen in order to create a remarkable sense of realism. However, when reviewing this game I played on PC rather than a console such as PS4 or Xbox one and there was one glaring problem, a perfect internet connection was required. This creates alot of problems with connectivity and the mechanics being so specific and precise. As the game is tactical and competitive any sort of lag or delay can have a massive effect on the end result of the game.

Classes/Class Profiling

Upon purchasing a new class, varying from the British SAS to the Brazilian BOPE, you are shown a short clip showing the personality of the character you have purchased. This gives the player an idea of how they should play their recently bought class. I think this is a great idea as it adds more player investment into the game and can give the entire game a personality. I didn't get a chance to play all classes but I did play multiple classes ranging from Ash to Castle and everything in between. One thing I found is that all classes are very balanced and even when you are new to the game, you start with a class called "Recruit" that even has its advantages and can be placed above other classes in sheer strength making it fair on newer players to the game. However, there is a small Pay2Win-esque feature in the form of paid classes in the game which in the short term seems unfair but you begin to realize that all classes are fair and that even the expensive classes have drawbacks.

Community

Whilst playing you begin to realize that communication is key and can make the difference between an average team and an elite team. However, meeting people who are willing to communicate is very rare and when you do they tend to be quite bitter in defeat and arrogant in victory. Now this isn't at fault of the game developers or the makers but its a game in which it requires communication with very little of it.

Graphics

Considering this games release date being so soon after games such as Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3 and even sharing a release date as the heavily awaited Just Cause 3, the graphics seemed on par with everything released near or on the same date. The graphics on console seemed to have very little to no problems with any problems tending to be issues with the consoles themselves. On PC, the game was very well optimized with very little frame rate issues. The graphical options were well set out and the game with all settings at the highest possible, it wasn't a very demanding game.

Overall

I believe that this game was a great successor to the prequels and did them justice. To say that this game wasn't enjoyable would be a lie from me, but the lack of a single player campaign made me upset. I believe that this game overall is worthy of a 9/10 due to great gameplay with minimal software errors and minimal glitching aswell as great balancing and enjoyable matches.