Rainbow Six: Siege Review (PS4)

I am loving Rainbow Six. Initially underwhelming it bubbles with brilliance the more you get to know it. Environments are incredibly well detailed with small touches – paperwork and glasses left on desks, an employee of the month plague, someone’s wallet in a store or piles of cash and drugs in a biker den. The sound adds to what is a rich environment, footsteps, some ‘battle chatter’ and dogs barking, ships creaking on a dock, distant sirens or helicopters.

Siege invokes memories of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. It’s multiplayer only (aside from a few tutorial missions mentioned above) but the attack/defend situations make tense rock/paper/scissors class differentiators the key factor in deciding matches – assuming your team works together. It seems to have attracted the right crowd too, mostly folks playing seriously and not gun-running. The level of excitement and tension and difference in pace is unique to Rainbow Six: Siege vs. the current explode-a-thon lineup of FPS titles this year. As such it has me hooked, and may well end up being in my top three games of the year.