Video game Rainbow Six Siege is great with friends but slightly less so on your own.
By Jordan Ryder
Rainbow Six Siege made me sad. I’m usually not a team player, but this is one of the few games I’ve picked up that made me wish I had a crew or was part of a clan and could have four to five people available to make a team.
Siege is at its core a competitive team game. Five-on-five teams — one defending an objective, the other playing offense — battle using small-squad tactics. The defending team spends the start of the round preparing battlefield, blocking doorways, reinforcing walls (because they will get shot through), and erecting barricades. The attacking team gets to scout the area for 30 seconds via drones before going in.
I was surprised with how well everything worked in Siege. I don’t think I’ve played a shooting game this balanced since Titanfall. Offensive and defensive teams have a range of characters to pick from, each with a selection of weapons and abilities, and none of them are overpowered. For example, a handful of characters have riot shields, which provide exceptional cover for them and for anyone standing behind them. But the tradeoff is they can only use sidearms, which are weak and inaccurate, preventing them from mowing down the opposition from behind the shield.
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Besides coordinating as a team, the other tactical element is a fully destructible environment. Nearly every wall, ceiling, and object can be shot through or blown up eventually. I must say, it is terrifying watching the walls literally crumble around you from bullets being blasted through. It’s a double-edged sword, though. With help from teammates, it’s easy to pick off someone through a thin wall, but the same can happen to you at any moment.
The other principle mode is Terrorist Hunt, a series staple. A team of players face off against notoriously brutal AI foes. The same problem persists, though: You need a coordinated team to deal with the sheer volume of enemies with any success. There is an option to play this mode solo, but I found there are way too many enemies for a single player to face on her or his own and not get flanked and overwhelmed.
There is a single-player tutorial mode, but it’s pretty dull and after the first handful of levels, has taught you all you need to know. I’d recommend playing the first few to get used to the game’s quirks (such as how every enemy always takes one more bullet than you think it will) and then switching to the real game.
I struggled scoring this. Not having a single-player experience can make a game feel like a shell, but I recognize that Siege was designed with one goal in mind: team-based competition, and a well-designed one at that. So it feels wrong to fault it based on that.
I guess I’ll give it a recommendation and go back to playing Fallout by my lonesome.
7/10*
*If you have enough friends for a team.