Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Extraction

I went in expecting something close to Left 4 Dead with a Rainbow Six skin, and what I got was considerably stranger and more divisive than that. Extraction is a tactical, stealth-first co-op shooter built around three-player squads clearing alien-infested maps in structured runs called Incursions. Each Incursion splits into three connected zones, each with its own randomized objective - capturing Elite Archaeans, extracting downed allies, clearing Sprawl nests - and after each zone you make a real decision: push deeper for more XP and rewards, or pull the ripcord and extract with what you have. That risk-reward loop is the game's best idea, and for a while it genuinely works. The shooting is tight. If you have any time with Rainbow Six Siege, you will recognize the weapon handling immediately - responsive, punchy, and more lethally satisfying than the alien setting might suggest. The operator roster gives you 18 characters to develop, each with their own gadget and progression track. Lose an operator mid-Incursion and they go MIA, locked out until you run a rescue mission to retrieve them. It is a clever system on paper that punishes recklessness and rewards patience. In practice, the grind to unlock later operators and upgrade abilities through the challenge system is where a lot of players check out. Here is the thing the mixed Steam score reflects honestly: this game lives or dies by your squad. Solo play is punishing in ways that feel unintended rather than designed - environmental hazards like Blinding Spores that teammates can shoot off you simply cannot be countered alone without burning specific abilities. The AI does not fill the gap. Play with two communicative friends and the tactical rhythm clicks into something genuinely tense, the kind of session where you are whispering over voice chat about whether to push for the third objective. Play with randoms or solo and the experience deflates quickly. The 13 objective types cycle fast and repetition sets in hard after a few hours, which is the loudest complaint across every review this game has received. What Extraction does exceptionally well is atmosphere. The Archaean enemy types - from the stumbling Grunts to the Sprawl that coats floors and alerts nearby enemies to your position - create genuine tension when you respect them. Rushing gets you killed; creeping through a darkened map, using melee takedowns to stay quiet, planning extraction routes - that is where the game earns its keep. The problem is the game never fully builds on that foundation with enough content variation to sustain long sessions. Thirteen objectives, seen within a couple of hours, asked to be repeated across maps that start to blur together is a design problem post-launch support did not fully solve. If you and two friends want a few weekends of tense PvE co-op and you are comfortable with the idea that the well runs dry faster than you would like, there is a genuinely solid game in here. If you are buying solo or expecting Siege-level longevity, the mixed reception on Steam is telling you something worth listening to.

Alex · Scout Team

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