Title: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Status: Closed Beta
Release Date: 1/December/2015
Official Site: http://bit.ly/1LZ8CMb
Steam Page: http://bit.ly/1JzXeoc
Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a
look at the multiplayer strategic first person shooter, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow
six: Siege, developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the same guys behind Watch Dogs, Far
Cry 4 and numerous Tom Clancy titles including Blacklist and Conviction. Siege
is a game about tactics, strategy and using every utility available to your
advantage in numerous Siege situations.
Siege’s closest relation in terms of base
gameplay is Counter Strike, both games have teams of 5 taking turns in
attacking and defending attempting to wipe out the other team or complete the
objectives. However that’s just about were the similarities end with Siege
opting for complexity and gadgetry as opposed to simplicity and gunplay.
At the start of the round each team will
have a short setup phase that for the defenders entails barricading doorways,
reinforcing walls and generally preparing for the attack. For the attackers,
they will be piloting little spy drones attempting to find the objective and
observe the defenders set-up. Once the short set-up phase is over it will
mostly be the attackers moving in on the objective while the defenders lay in
wait. The defenders do have access to the buildings numerous cameras so they
can try to find were the attackers will be coming from but otherwise they will just
have to wait for the attackers to come to them. Creating holes in walls or even
in the barricades can give you line of sight advantages while not revealing
your entire body to any approaching enemies however as an attacker, a hole in
the wall or barricades is quite obvious and being a breakable wall taking a few
blind shots through the wall can land you a couple of hits on an enemy. Once
eliminated from the round you can still assist your team by spotting enemies
and their movements using cameras and un-pilot able spy drones from the set-up
phase.
Each side has their own set of standard
gadgets that they can use to their advantage along with their unique character
based gadget. For the defenders they have deployable bullet proof shields to
hide behind or even to block off certain areas of a room, razor wire that
requires the enemy to move very slowly while traversing and finally remote C4
that can easily thin out their attack. For the Attackers they have frag
grenades that can be used to clear out rooms of gadgets and defenders, flash
grenades that when caught looking directly at the grenade blinds for quite a
lengthy amount of time and finally a breaching charge that can be placed on
barricades and breakable walls to destroy them in one blast. The attacking team
also has a very unique weapon with the riot shield that is almost
indestructible in the right hands. With the riot shield you can only have a
pistol as your actual weapon but any enemy directly in front of you will have
an extremely hard time shooting the person holding the shield or anyone else
behind them for that matter. The pistol isn’t a bad weapon either with the
games extremely quick kill time with only 1 or 2 shots being enough to down an
opponent. It has been a source of some contention within the community with
players asking for a way to deal with attacking teams playing mass riot shields
and just brute forcing their way onto the objective. The strategy can be
countered somewhat with remote C4 and a certain characters gas grenade, however
it is extremely hard to get these counter measures in the right place and at
the right time to be effective. The shield strategy does need a better counter
and would probably be ideal to have a weapon like the shotgun be able to 2 shot
and destroy the shield or perhaps even nerfing the pistol accuracy while not
aiming down the sights. It is something that will need a lot more testing and
with this type of highly competitive game I fully expect frequent balance
patches to deal with these kinds of things.
The gunplay in siege is honestly a little
disappointing, feeling more like call of dutys gun play of spray with very
little recoil then something that takes skill to be good. The problem stem from
the game combat being close quarters so most of the guns in game are SMG’s with
a lot of them feeling very similar to each other. It also doesn’t help that the
games hitbox and weapon damage system is also very similar to Call of Dutys
which promotes a spray and pray play style due to only 1 or 2 shots downing
players, the only time you would need to be really accurate is when trying to
shoot the exposed parts of shield bearers. At the moment Sieges competitiveness
isn’t found in its gunplay instead it’s in the games communication, gadget
usage and positioning. Speaking about positioning, micro movements are almost
impossible to do in siege as even the slightest hit of a directional key
will move you quite drastically which
can make it hard to just lean your head out of cover instead of your whole
body.
Another important part of the game is its
character feature and this is a lot better than the games gunplay although
there are some areas or rather some characters and their gadgets that could use
some more work. Firstly though, let’s go over what the character system is
exactly. When you first play the game you will have no character unlocked,
instead you will play as a recruit with no special gadgets. By completing a
game, depending on you and your teams performance you will earn renown, an in
game currency that can be spent unlocking characters or alternatively can be
spent upgrading and customising one of your existing characters. The rate at
which you obtain renown, you’re almost assured a character unlock every 2
games, at least for your first few character unlocks as the price does add upon
itself for each character purchased in each units selection. The unit selection
being outfits like the FBI, GIGN and other branches of law organizations. With
so many different characters to select, 7 in total for each side, there are
going to some character that are better than others. There are some that feel
like they are meant to counter gadgets that are still to be added to the game
like IQ, a character that is able to detect enemy electrical equipment. She
doesn’t really have a solid use that you would expect from ability like that
where she would be able to locate claymores, trip mines or traps. Instead she
can only detect things that are either blindingly obvious to players already or
equipment that has already served its purpose like signal jammers. IQ is an
example of just a couple characters that there purpose may need to be looked
at. Other factors to consider when selecting characters outside of their
available gadgets is their stats of which there are only 2, move speed and
armour.
The customization of characters is reserved
to gun add ons like scopes, silencers and grips along with cosmetics in the
form of gun skins and patterns. The gun add-ons are fairly cheap costing around
half a games worth of renown to purchase, the cosmetic skins however are a
little bit pricier requiring you to play around 10 games to be able to unlock.
I would love to see some sort of cosmetic customization available for the
shields in the game, both the riot shields and deployable shields but the gun
skins are enough already really.
During the closed beta phase there were 3
game modes available to play, 2 multiplayer competitive modes and 1 Co-Op mode.
The 2 multiplayer modes were honestly very much the same with the Disarm Bomb
mode having 2 bombs in different rooms that can be defused while the Secure
Area Mode has 1 area that can be captured by the attackers. It is a little
worrying as to how different the multiplayer modes will be as we have already
seen the hostage game mode showcased numerous times that has very similar game
play as these other 2 modes. The Co-Op mode however called Terrorist Hunt
Classic does provide a different experience where a team of 5 players take on a
building full of AI terrorists. The mode can be extremely difficult especially
if you get caught out by the suicide bombers that will rush your position.
Other features of the game include
character lifetime statistics where you can see your kill death ratio, wins and
more to do with that particular character. I would expect later on that there
would be competitive rankings along with something tied to your overall account
level which doesn’t do anything at the moment. There will be a total of 20
different operators available to play, 4 for each Special Forces unit. There
was only 14 operators during the beta phase, the ones excluded included Glaz
that has a sniper rifle, Tachanka with a mounted Light Machine Gun, Ash who can
deploy breaching charges from a distance and Thatcher with EMP grenades along
with 1 other unannounced operator for the spetzsnaz forces.
Altogether Rainbow Six: Siege provides an
exhilarating strategic experience with many of its features and mechanics
really well polished. The game does have a much slower pace than most other
shooters requiring slow cautious movement and set-up but when the breaching
begins it does quickly step up a gear in terms of speed and intensity. The
gunplay is an unfortunate downside to the game with guns feeling very similar
to each other and simplistic mechanics that promotes spray and pray rather than
skilful aiming. If you’re after a really well polished strategic shooter that
is competitive and relies on good communication then Rainbow Six: Siege is
definitely worth a look however you should take into consideration that there
won’t be any single player mode.
No comments:
Post a Comment