Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction’ (‘Extraction’) is an online multiplayer tactical shooter. It does not stray far from this one-line description. This spin-off game borrows 18 of the stupidly brave operators from ‘Rainbow Six Siege’. We choose one of the operators based on their special abilities and enter head-first into dungeons of parasitic aliens. We then shoot at pulsating veins that birth disgusting alien creatures, lock some doors, and attempt to escape. Unless First-person shooter is your passion, this is not a game that you would play to “cool off” after a tiring weekday.
In ‘Extraction’, each mission involves completing three objectives in three connected sub-maps. The objectives, and the placement of the aliens vary on every entry. The objectives typically involve destroying nests, placing devices, or saving agents. At any point during this arduous journey, we can choose to “extract” and escape instantly from a horde of attacking aliens. The cost is just the wasted effort, which is not rewarded with experience points.
‘Back4Blood’ is a game that’s most like ‘Extraction’. Only, ‘Back4Blood’ is quick to give us an ‘A for effort’, with its simplistic hack-and-slash approach against the enemies. ‘Extraction’ is a bit more demanding, expecting us to have graduate-degree expertise before a single-mission is executed to perfection. It forces us to be tactical, providing us with a range of very fancy devices to this end.
There are reconnaissance drones, reinforceable doors, and sci-fi operator abilities—ranging from holographic decoys to adrenaline boosters. It is necessary to master the learning curve with these devices, especially since we risk losing operators permanently to the parasite (unless we rescue them later, a nightmarish mission).
My mediocre shooting skills would not allow me to continue playing this game, but it has its persuasions. The most compelling of these persuasions is its cooperative gameplay with cross-platform capability. It’s us against the aliens, and “us” can execute coordinated attacks from across consoles—PC, Xbox, or PlayStation.
There is also a lack of pressure, in the sense that we don’t play against foul-mouthed people online. The compensating pressure involves a time limit and the fear of being clawed by a monster. 4/5 dentists would agree that the game is disturbingly painful. Play it only if you’ve already spent over 100 hours on first-person shooters.