Rainbow Six: Siege. Overview and introduction to the game base.

This is an in-depth review of the game, where I not only talk about the pros and cons of the game, but also go into its details. So, if this doesn’t look like a review, then forgive me, write your comments in the comments, I will take everything into account. Rainbow Six: Siege, undoubtedly an important link in modern tactical shooters. But how many people know that before it became multiplayer, the series was also a shooter, but from a third person and with an emphasis on a story campaign?. But in 2015, a French company Ubisoft, familiar to us from the series Assassin’s Creed, Watch Dogs, Far Cry, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell and others, suddenly sharply turned the course of the games line. But did they manage to refresh the series??

Gameplay

The gameplay involves five-on-five combat in a limited, enclosed space. Before the start of the match, players choose their operative (we’ll look at them in more detail later) and their spawn location. The main action is preceded by a preparation phase: the assault squad controls drones in order to find the target of the raid. Defenders must strengthen destructible walls, place stationary shields, their devices and similar actions that will help them defend. There are several tasks for the attacking side:

1) Disposal of charge. In the manner of deactivating a bomb from Counter Strike: Global Offensive. The assault squad plants a deactivator, which, after some time (sorry for the toftology), neutralizes the bomb. By the way, the defenders have an anti-deactivator designed to destroy an already installed deactivator. Sorry, I couldn’t find synonyms.

2) Hostage rescue (I don’t think it’s worth explaining here, but there are some nuances here). The round can be won by the attacking side in three cases: rescuing a hostage, killing the defense, or killing a civilian by the defenders. The latter can happen for many reasons: an accidental ricocheting grenade, a newly modified Tachanka that will burn a hostage to ashes, an incorrectly thrown C4, and much more.

3) Holding a position. In the latter, you and your team will, oddly enough, have to capture and hold a container with chemicals for some time. The enemy team must prevent this by neutralizing the attackers. If the tackle has started, the defense must also move to the point. This will put a pause on the attackers’ intentions to seize the container.

Operatives

It would seem like an ordinary shooter like CS, what’s interesting about it?? At a minimum, the gameplay is diluted by hero operatives with their special devices, which can turn the tide of the match. At the moment there are 29 of them on each side of the barricades, their devices and special skills are different, although in many ways they are similar. They have different abilities: installing security cameras, destroying fortified walls (we’ll talk about destructibility later), installing stun mines and much, much more. Operatives also have their own kryptonite: hard-breachers (heroes who are capable of blowing up fortified walls are afraid of the current on these very fortified walls. Examples of hard-breachers: Thermite, Hibana, Ace. Conductors: Bandit, Kaid. Operative Amaru knows how to break into windows and onto the roof from the very first seconds, and Frost knows how to set snare traps that injure and prevent the enemy from even crawling away in order to become a victim of this insidious Canadian. Accordingly, Amaru flies out the window, and Frost’s snare is waiting for her there. Warden is a defense operative with fancy Glance glasses that help him see through smoke and recover faster from being blinded by a flashbang. And Glaz, an attacker with a thermal imager on a rifle, is also able to look through the smoke and this gives him an advantage. Nobody sees him – he sees everyone. And Warden is just capable of resisting this at least a little. There are many more such connections that can be found, but I don’t think that the blog should be extended from a review of the game into a review of the relationships between the characters. Operatives are divided into several classes.

1) Anchor. Defense operatives sit exclusively on the point, pushing back enemies. Examples of anchors – Tachankin, Smoke.

Lord Tachanka has been redesigned, and now you see him in a completely different guise, but in the picture he is old.

2) Roamers– defense operatives move around the map, catching the enemy by surprise. To be a good roamer, you need to know the map by heart. Examples of roamers: Caveira, Vigil.

3) Rushers– attack operatives with non-team ability, preferring to work alone. Examples of rushers – Amaru, Nøkk.

4) Not rushers– attack operatives https://jabibetcasino.co.uk/bonus/ with command ability feel comfortable in a team. Examples of non-rushers – Twitch, Thatcher.

Hero Equipment

Also, the heroes have a variety of weapons. Namely: pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, submachine guns, machine guns. Each type has its disadvantages and advantages: the machine gun has an excellent rate of fire and magazine capacity, but takes a long time to aim and reload. Sniper rifles do a lot of damage, but are not suitable for tight and often winding corridors. Weapons can be selected before the round, there are 2-3 of them of different classes. Often, if you take a shotgun into the main one, then the secondary one gets a mini SMG, a rapid-fire weapon with brutal recoil. I personally never learned to control it. And if you choose a machine gun, SMG or assault rifle, the best option for you will be a pistol. It has high damage and is also quite fast-firing, although not automatic.

With the exception of the main device of the operatives, which is always unique, the characters also have additional devices: grenades (fragmentation, smoke, flash-noise), a penetrating charge, which we will talk about a little later, mines, C4 explosives, a shock grenade. Important: mine and penetrating charge are available only to the attack team, and explosives and impact (that’s the name of the shock grenade), respectively, only to the defense.

Summing up this section, I can say that the heroes’ devices can turn the tide of the match, and a timely used enemy device can return it to normal. The gameplay, with the exception of a small number of modes, is interesting, and 58 very different operatives add a lot of variety, because you don’t know who the enemy has taken and how he will use it.

Interactivity, destructibility.

Destructibility plays one of the most important roles in gameplay. It’s everywhere here: floors, walls, hatches, windows, doors. With weapons and melee attacks, everything is only partially destroyed, although windows and doors are broken out with three blows from the hand. Hatches and walls will be destroyed quickly and noticeably only by penetrating explosive charges activated remotely.

Although there are operatives designed to break through walls, like the previously mentioned hard-breachers, as well as Ash, which places a charge remotely, with a trigger. As mentioned above, hatches and walls can be reinforced – metal sheathing can be applied to prevent the formation of a passage by a conventional charge. Operation Shadow Legacy added an enhanced charge – a device that makes a large hole in a sheathed wall. And it was also said above that they can also be destroyed without this device, and on a larger scale, only by special methods. Although the melee attack does little damage to walls, they can help you. By hitting an unsecured wall with your hand a couple of times (Important: not on a door or window, a gap will form there when hit) you will create the so-called pancheol. It makes it possible to see the enemy through a small hole, which gives some advantage. Also, panchhols can be created on the floors in order to open the entrances to the building on the floor below yours. There are also bullet holes – the same as panch-holes, only smaller and formed by a bullet. I see no point in dwelling on them. Also, there is rotation – creating a transition from one charge to another by destroying the wall between them. Most often, the charges are indeed separated by a wall, but at some points there are places where such a passage is not required. Rotation is done using an Impact, C4, Shotgun, or other tool that can cause significant damage to the environment.

As you understand, destructibility here, of course, is not as large-scale as in the Just Cause series, but it probably plays one of the key roles in the gameplay.

Lor, the fullness of the universe

ACHTUNG: In this section, a game will play its role, which seems to have no effect on the rainbow. I’m using it only as an example, and it would be stupid to compare these two games.

Since the game is multiplayer, and the player needs to be attracted to something other than the gameplay, which may well get boring over time. And, of course, there is no story campaign here. What remains?? Of course, the universe and its details. Among the examples of decent lore in online shooters, I would like to mention Overwatch. The brainchild of Blizzard gives us crumbs of card details, a little more short films and comics. There are also stories, but we are delving into a different topic. I wanted to say that the information there is presented more visually (with the exception of stories). And Rainbow, for the most part, gives us a huge personal file of the operative. It’s really huge. There is his life story (well, something that, of course, is not classified), a psychological portrait of the hero created by Harry, the team psychologist and recruiter, who replaced Six (this is the call sign, real name is Aurelia Arno)

. Each personal file contains not only the biography and psychological portrait of the hero, but also an analysis of his device, which was carried out by another operative from the Rainbow squad. The heroes came from real special forces units of various countries. GIGN– Intervention Group of the Royal Gendarmerie of France, BOPE– elite military police of Brazil, particularly Rio de Janeiro, FBI SWAT and other units military units representation in the game exist. There are exceptions, but the vast majority of divisions are absolutely true. Let’s talk about a short film. Only one has been released so far- "Scalpel and Hammer", telling about the complexity of coordinated work of different generations. The short film is interesting, stylish and reveals the Thatcher character as a seasoned warrior who does not trust new technologies. No comics have been delivered yet, but given Ubisoft’s steps to expand the game’s lore, anything is possible. Maybe not any time soon.

From all of the above, we can understand that in most cases, our beloved French studio Ubisoft works on heroes not only quickly (this is a pun, actually), but also efficiently, with care for a high-quality story that should not collapse because of a couple of careless words spoken in the personal file of a new operative.

Maps and game modes

The cards here, as in all games, are essentially the decoration for our battles. But there are quite a lot of cards here, they are varied, some are bad and some are not. I’ll give you an example of a card with an excellent design, but not suitable for the game in which it is located- Tower. She’s nice to look at (pun intended, Glaz is a sniper character), but she doesn’t suit the pace and play style of many due to her sheer size.

Map Favella much better in terms of gameplay. It is very winding, a defender with a shotgun or some kind of attacking mine can be waiting for you everywhere.

What you fall for depends on your side in this fleeting war. We’ve sorted out the examples, there are eighteen more maps, and they come across depending on the modes you enter. Not the modes we talked about at the beginning. There are four multiplayer modes – beginner, quick play, unrated, and of course, rating. Beginner is available to you right away, this is a mode for those who have just downloaded the game, completed the training and went online. And the game carefully considers him among the same newcomers. Quick game is essentially the same thing, only it does not close after the player reaches level 50. Starting from the tenth level, a non-rating becomes available to you – the same as a rating, only without, oddly enough, the rating itself. Well, we know that when you’re ranked, you snatch victory with your teeth so that the numbers in your profile are bigger and you can brag about it. All of these modes have maps that the other doesn’t have. The last two mentioned have more maps, since a beginner does not need to know many maps (yes, Ubisoft?). So in the new arrivals mode there are only three maps. There are fourteen of them in fast, and twelve in rated and unrated, respectively. Personally, the policy of the French company is not clear to me. The maps also contain interesting places, events and details. So the Villa card is one continuous reference to Ville Monteriggioni from the Assassin’s Creed series of games (or more precisely, to the trilogy Ezio Auditore sends the card). There you can find the well-known haystack, the logo of a fictional gaming organization, painfully reminiscent of the symbol of assassins, and you can even spot the most secretive killer in the distance.

The Tower map contains many figures of Tibi operatives and a secret room. You can find a lot more such facts, but I’ll just say that Ubisoft hides secrets in good quantities and quite well, because the IQ figurine is quite difficult to find, and I’m generally silent about that very secret room.

Cons

But no matter how beautiful the rainbow is, it has its drawbacks. Let’s start with, oddly enough, the engine. Surprisingly, a game in which shooting is the most basic mechanic that should be polished to a shine, is created on a game engine in which the number of guns is minimal (I’m talking about the Anvil engine used in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and Unity). This leads to a problem with registering hits: you can hit the enemy in the head at least five times, and no damage will be caused. This is most felt when playing as a sniper, where you neutralize the enemy with the minimum amount of spent ammunition.

Also, one could highlight sound problem, which shows itself when played with headphones. Let me explain: a game in which the gameplay is quite slow, where you wait for the enemy, relying not only on your eyes, but also on your ears, should give you good sound. But sometimes it happens that you clearly hear the enemy to your right, and he comes at you from behind or to the left.

Perhaps now you will see a quibble, but I speak not for myself, but for quite a large number of people. Most information about the world is provided text way. Although this doesn’t bother me in any way, reading is good, but there is a group of players for whom this “multi-book” is not interesting.

Card problem: in the last year of updates, namely the fifth, not a single map was added. Instead, they simply changed existing. Yes, the Chalet has begun to look better, and the House is quite good, but you always want new sensations, not the old and explored far and wide.

Servers. They very often hang, break and take a long time to load when entering a game, match, or exiting it.

Despite all the advantages of the game, such as tactical gameplay or the variety that the heroes bring, the above disadvantages simply do not give me the right to give the game “Amazing”. Although this is "Commendable" game, I happily recommend it for purchase, and don’t let the rating waver you. And, by the way, the new blog editor is simply chic, because it works and looks decent.