It is with HUGE thanks to Game Pass that I was able to get RS6 Extraction on Day one. This is also House Shineys First AAA title of 2022 and having loved the first RS6 game (released nearly 7 years ago now!), I love it so much I am painfully only 3(?) trophies off the platinum, but as I have always found in any PvP game that involves guns and new maps – the minute you take a break is the minute you fall behind. So its been a while but I have been following this game since it was first announced.

You can see my first play of Rainbow Six Extraction here.

What isn’t included in my first play is the 35 minutes of sheer frustration in getting my Ubisoft connect account to talk to my Xbox game pass account properly. It was only after a few password resets, using two different browsers and deleting an account that it finally worked! I will however try not to let this initial frustration cloud my overall review of the game, but at one point I had a hit wall and Ubisoft FAQ’s were just an endless unhelpful loop that I nearly just snapped and it was a toss up between abandoning the game entirely or buying it so I could still play it on release day. It was clunky & unforgiving. In the end, despite encountering this error, the game was finally and happily sat waiting in my Ubisoft library – taunting me. I finally understood all the moans from gamers past about Ubisoft software adding a hurdle of irritation.

So how is this different to the first game?
Its in OG RS6 you were PvP in co-op squads, now you are Co-op against PvE. Much like Back 4 blood or Aliens FTE. It seems to be a thing now where games want you to work together against a common enemy and we do we love co-op games in house Shiney.

You get some familiar specialist operators as you did to RS6, they each have specialist weapons, which provides a good mix and match for fire teams. You can, if you want to, also play this game solo in an offline lobby – which provides a much richer single player experience than OG RS6 did (and I like the fact its called Lone Wolf).
Operators Ash and Thermite are missing from playable as they seem to be ‘in charge’ which is a huge shame as Ash my initial RS6 favourite, followed by Frost who is missing from the game entirely (and the stream was NOT happy about that).
Also, why does PULSE get the best skin I have ever seen in an FPS? I want to be a cat with any of my players I would have paid for it immediately too! Dammit.

Plot is fairly simple, set a bit in the future the Chimera parasite has caused an outbreak in New Mexico and spread, so you end up going through essentially 12 containment zones, which is much more varied than both Division 1 & Division 2 in the scope of levels but less detailed as you’re limited to set areas in both to set containment areas.

You start off in a VR training mode that doesn’t complete to 100% until you have done the 3 main objectives and the subsequent 6 others.

After that you can go through the 6 areas, with 3 different spawn locations and each of those have set containment areas with 3 zones. So far, even after 3 hours of play and completing the VR I am still stuck in the New York area, presumably until I finish enough objectives to progress -which is harder than you might think for solo co-op with randoms, especially when everyone is nicking pickups or shooting things before you get a chance to scan them. Its VERY repetitive in that sense and I can see me (eventually) getting bored because of the slow progression.
The jump in difficulty from VR to real play was also fairly unforgiving and I lost operatives early – but I really like the MIA or injured status on the roster for the operatives.

The feature we were looking forward to the most, the ‘Buddy pass‘ feature, was not available from day one. So I feel my experience really suffered from a lack of a solid team to play with. Its really fucking annoying because we were so excited for this feature as it was a seriously good selling point it meant I could have played with Duck straight away without us both needing Game pass or a copy of the game – but alas it was not meant to be.

With this early touted feature disabled I was thinking back to Division 2 when Duck and I completed the main game only to have the final area locked to us for the better part of 3 weeks, and when we finally got it, we walked it so fast I was pissed off at the anti climatic end. I feel this is going to go the same way. I will get so far ahead with levelling up my characters if I play it enough that by the time this is released and I can invite people… what we will be the point? Way to screw the pooch there Ubisoft.

Overall, its an okay game. I am struggling without a good solid fire team and without being able to invite them with the promised buddy pass system I will either have to keep slogging in solo mode OR trust randoms. I am not blown away by this game, it doesn’t have the wow fact the trailer promised and seems to be yet another victim of AAA over-hype but at least it works. Its better out of the gate than both Aliens FTE and Back 4 Blood, which whilst isn’t the highest praise, is still better than most day one games from 2021.

Shiney Rating
3 paws out of 5
This is great game for those of us with Game Pass but without being able to invite friends I am missing my usual squad. Its an okay game with lots of repetition but isn’t a bad start as far as AAA 2022 titles go.