Rainbow Six: Siege was released on December 1, 2015. It was developed and published by Ubisoft for the Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows PC. Rainbow Six: Siege is a competitive, tactical, multiplayer-focused game. Although many people are opposed to multiplayer oriented games, including myself, this may be one of the few good enough to warrant your attention.

Rainbow Six: Siege is my favorite multiplayer game. I purchased the original gold edition in April of 2016. Only the First expansion had been released. In addition to the base 16 operators, only 2 additional operators and one additional map had been released. Even at this stage, I constantly found myself using something new. Out of the box I believed there was enough content to warrant a purchase. I know this is an unpopular opinion but I never saw a lack of content. Granted, maybe first at release this may have been a problem but I personally never experienced this problem. One common criticism thrown at multiplayer games is that you need a full team to enjoy the game but I feel differently. I don’t play with a full team. At most I play with one other friend. Many argue that communication and teamwork suffers but the community has found other ways to communicate with each other than vocal communication. The gunplay is very solid. There are imbalances but Ubisoft on the whole has done a very good job of keeping operator abilities in check. The result of this is a much greater emphasis on skill. This game has a huge learning curve. Your first few games will be brutal and you have to be prepared to fail until you get comfortable playing in different scenarios and get the hang of the game’s mechanics. From a technical standpoint the game is very impressive. On consoles you can run it with a locked 60fps with no screen tearing or with an unlocked framerate (usually sits around 65-75fp) with some pretty strong screen tearing. Obviously on PC your performance will depend on the strength of your computer and the refresh rate of your monitor. This is especially impressive considering the dynamic and highly destructible environment that often results with a lot of debris flying around with a minimal performance hit. On a graphical level Rainbow Six: Siege is impressive enough to warrant praise but isn’t the best available.

Although I love Rainbow Six: Siege, it has problems. Like I said earlier, there are imbalances. Some operators have lackluster abilities or have been nerfed so hard that their viability for play is drastically hurt. Overall it’s not enough to ruin the game but it definitely is noticeable. Another problem is ammo pools for different operators. Some of the older operators get a few clips of ammo while some newer operators get double what the old ones get. This causes some operators to get picked for no reason other than their ammo count which negates the wonderful abilities some of the operators offer. The biggest issue is a lack of new modes. No additional modes have been released since launch. The current offer is still extremely fun but that hole does not go unnoticed. Single-player content has also been neglected. I fully understand that single-player isn’t the focus of Siege but it feels like a missed opportunity to make something to do outside of online matches. Even a bot match mode would allow those suffering online to hone their skills in a private environment without the ramifications that come with poor online performance.

Overall Rainbow Six: Siege has become a giant of online gaming. The third season is rolling in soon with an interesting “Outbreak” co-op event. I highly suggest buying Rainbow Six: Siege is you want something more complex than your “Call of Duty” mold shooters and are willing to put up with the difficulty curve.

9/10