Three years later, and not only is
Extraction one of many co-op
shooters on the block, but it’s hardly
recognisable from the original
Outbreak campaign. It’s the anti-Left
4 Dead – a precise,
gruelling survival game
about keeping your
head down and never
poking the bear. If you
do, Extraction’s sadistic
AI takes over, eager to
punish the smallest
lapse in judgment.
It’s a mean game
that can produce some great thrills,
but its strict rules make some
awkward design choices stick out.
Extraction is also a smaller game than
I anticipated – Ubisoft’s decision to
lower its price to £40 and introduce
it to PC Game Pass at launch really
makes sense now. I really liked
mastering each of the dozen objective
types and maps, but missions start to
get samey pretty quickly.SCREECH AND CLEAR
Extraction missions are, at their core,
maps with three objectives randomly
pulled from a pool of 12. Objectives
have to be tackled in order, with each
one occupying its own
chunk of the map.
Your squad of three
(or just you, if you’re
flying solo) are dropped
into these locales with
no other context than
the current task at
hand. There’s no
campaign with
connecting goals like ‘find the safe
room’ or ‘cross this rickety bridge’.
You simply do the job and get out
with as much XP as possible. During
the first ten hours, when I was
learning how each objective worked
and trying out operators, the sparse
format worked. Every mission was
throwing one or two obstacles my
way I hadn’t seen before, be it a new
alien enemy (called Archaeans) thatcan plant sneaky flash bombs or a
modifier that makes the black Sprawl
goo slowly coating every surface
hazardous to step on.
I also died a lot early on, way
more than I usually do when I pick
up a new FPS. It took a while to
realise you can’t play Extraction like
other co-op shooters. Where Back 4
Blood is about managing hordes
while running to the next goal,
sprinting around a building full of
Archaeans is asking for death.
My squad was always better off
when we crouched or walked
everywhere, carefully choosing
which enemies to engage or avoid.
The format is seemingly inspired by
the stealthy gameplay of GTFO, a
survival horror co-op shooter that
recently escaped Early Access.
operators can go down in just a few
hits from Archaeans, and even if they
survive an encounter, they can never
get lost health back permanently.CRIT CHANCE
Thankfully, thousands of hours of
Rainbow Six Siege-reflexes come in
handy. Extraction’s shooting and
movement are identical. It feels
pretty cool to methodically clear
rooms and one-shot kill basic grunts
in the head. Every gun that isn’t a
shotgun comes with a suppressor
that you should never take off.
I’ve had countless close calls
where I walk past a doorway, get
spotted by an Archaean and snap to
a headshot before it can make a
peep. I was also surprised at how
much I enjoyed dealing with the
Sprawl – black ooze that rapidly
spreads as nests are disturbed. The
sound of it crawling its way across
every surface is gross and I never got
tired of shooting it to ‘draw’ a
navigable path through a room.
Once my squadmates and I got
into a groove headshotting
everything in our way, stealth-killing
nests to halt enemy spawns, and
shooting the nasty black stuff, the
lower two difficulties (of four total)R
ainbow Six Extraction was announced in a world we no
longer live in: the world of 2019. Back then, the co-op Siege
spinoff was called Rainbow Six Quarantine (ha!). It was an
unlucky time to be making a game about a virus, but a great
time to bring back the co-op zombie shooter. Siege’s
Outbreak event was an excellent taste of what Left 4 Siege could be, and I
hoped Extraction would blow that mode out into a collection of campaigns.GOO TIMES
RAINBOW SIX EXTRACTION is a thrilling but messy take on zombie co-op
By Morgan ParkOperators
can go down in
just a few hits
from
ArchaeansNEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
A co-op Siege spin-off
with alien zombies
EXPECT TO PAY
£40
DEVELOPER
Ubisoft
PUBLISHER
In-house
REVIEWED ON
RTX 3060, Ryzen 7
5700G 3.8Ghz, 16GB
RAM
MULTIPLAYER
Co-op
LINK
bit.ly/3BmkY3rBLOATER
Of all the eight
Archaeans, none
gave me more
trouble than these.
Shoot the glowy bits
to detonate them.ROOTER
This sneaky gremlin
crawls on four legs
and sends a binding
wave at players in a
straight line. It’s easy
to kill though.SPIKER
Spikers aren’t a
major threat in a
straight up fight, but
their weird gun arms
make them very
dangerous indeed.TORMENTOR
These guys burrow
underground and
pop up just long
enough to throw
slow-moving bombs
at your face.MEET THE BADDIES
Avoid these Archaeans at all costRainbow Six Extraction
REVIEW