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Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Extraction
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Extraction
2021 | Action, Shooter
The latest game in the immensely popular Rainbow Six series has arrived with Rainbow Six: Extraction.

The series features intense squad-based action as players form teams to infiltrate, extract, eliminate, and survive various missions.

Using stealth, tech, weapons, and patience; players have to find the best way to enter a location, avoid or eliminate enemies, and complete objectives while working as a cohesive unit.

This time around the enemy is a parasitic alien race and players must form three-person squads or venture through the locales solo or with a single partner.

Players will select an operative; each with a primary and secondary weapon and two tactical devices such as grenades, mines, revive shots, armor, and drones. As time goes on and players level up; new technology can be researched and used as having the right loadout is essential. Players will also have unique skilsl ranging from gun emplacements, medical, cloaking, and more which can be used in a limited situation and must be replenished as the missions unfolds.

Missions are set in three zones such as New York, San Francisco, Alaska, and more become available as players reach a certain level and naturally they become progressively harder and more intense.

Each zone has random missions and when players select a locale, difficulty level, and their operative; they will encounter missions ranging from elimination, extraction, scanning, and targeting specific strategic locales.

The enemy is very cunning and ruthless and can cloak, shape-shift, and explode amongst their myriad of hostile actions, and players must attack, evade, and work with one another to complete the missions and survive. At the end of a level; players can opt to enter an airlock and move to the next segment or return to an exfiltration zone to end the mission.

This is where the real tactics of the game come into play as health is limited as can be ammunition so players who encounter a difficult mission where they sustain damage or lose a player have to make a hard choice. Players do not die in the game as they are enveloped with a stasis foam should they sustain enough damage.

As such the remaining team must decide to carry the downed player to an Extraction Pod or leave them behind so they can carry on or they can flee to safety. This is not always an easy decision as seeing your team decimated and barely making it to safety with only a small amount of health makes even the most determined player think twice about venturing back in.

Should a player be lost; their experience is deducted from the player and will remain deducted until the character is rescued on a future mission. Seeing your roster of skilled Operatives reduced to a couple of unproven newbies is very humbling and thankfully the maps are very detailed and engaging as players will get very used to playing in the locales frequently before new areas are made available to them.

The action of the game is intense as players can use stealth or run and gun depending on the mission and the variety of enemies and missions is good.

I do wish the Quick Play would allow players to select the skill level they would like to play in and that there was a server list to select from; that being said; at $39.99 and available on Game Pass; Rainbow Six Extraction is a great deal as the cross-play enabled game ensures plenty of players to venture into danger with but like the best games of the series; having the right group of players is essential as I have lost many players due to wild cards not following mission objectives.

Intense, engaging, and deeply entertaining; Rainbow Six Extraction delivers even if it does differ from what fans have come to expect.

4 stars out of 5
  
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Call of Duty: Black Ops II - Apocalypse
Call of Duty: Black Ops II - Apocalypse
Shooter
As we inch closer and closer to the November release of Call of Duty: Ghosts, fans can get a taste of some more maps for Black Ops 2 through the latest DLC.

 

Apocalypse is the fourth and final set of map packs and is contains some very clever new and reworked offerings which should delight even the most jaded fans, some of whom complain that the DLC is often more of the same.

Like the previous map collections the players are limited to either Mosh pit or Hardcore Moshpit that puts teams of players in a series of online games where the objective is varied. There is the usual mix, Team Deathmatch, Hardpoint, Kill Confirmed, and Demolition modes and the mode as well as your teammates change with each map.

 

Accessing the new maps is easy as once you start in multiplayer mode; the option to select Apocalypse is shown on your menu. Players who have the previous map packs which are not required to play the new ones, will be able to access them in the game mode of their choice now as they would for the maps that came with the initial release of the game.

As time unfolds the map packs become part of the collection and players will simply select the online game they wish to play and if the server supports the new maps, then they will be included. However for the first few weeks of a DLC release, the option to select it is included.

 

The first map I played was called POD which is set in Taiwan and is focused on a failed modular community. The map is a tight area set between an ocean, mountains, and an overgrown forest which has sprawled over into the community.

As such the circular and spiral buildings are impressive though snipers will be upset that they cannot scale the buildings to setup kill zones.

The close-quarters will keep your twitch reflex on high alert and enemies can and do appear at a moments notice.

 

The next map is called “Takeoff” and I had a real blast playing this one, literally. It is set on a Space Shuttle launch site in the Pacific Ocean. The futuristic setting has a great mix of open areas, plenty of cover, and very detailed interiors.

I was tasked to set and diffuse bombs during my early attempts on the map and finding choke points and kill zones early allowed me to not only accomplish my tasks but to setup ambushes and traps along the most likely routes that the enemies would take.

 

Up next is “Frost” which is set in frozen Amsterdam and challenges players to navigate not only the frozen canals and streets of the city as well as the enemy onslaught. The central bridge of the map is always a point of contention and the ability to use the intersecting canals to get around is also a new dimension to explore.

I took a beating early in playing this map, but by my third time around I was able to rack up some kills by using the canals to get around choke points and lobbing grenades upwards to enemy groups and then emerge guns blazing in the confusion.

The map has many buildings that have a fairly generic look but the focus here is on outdoor combat in the snow rather than battling in building interiors.

 

The final map is entitled “DIG” and it is a reworking of Courtyard from Call of Duty: World at War: The map is set in a circular manner in an archeological site and contains plenty of open areas and scant cover. Some areas are abundant in walls, debris and other areas ideal to sneak up on an enemy but many others leave you in the open for long moments as you wait for a barrage of gunfire to take you out.

I did well on this one the first time out by locating choke points and using grenades to pin an enemy in and following up with my team as we attacked them in groups of three.

 

Of course no DLC would be complete without another battle with the Undead and “Origins” delivers in a big way. Set in carnage strewn World War 1 No Man’s Land of trenches, bunkers, and more, the undead are relentless.

Players must work with one another to start up some generators and survive but of course there is more to it than this. For one, the enemies are intense and seeing the zombie masses in spiked helmets and other attire from the era as well as the gigantic robot makes for a very surreal site amongst the trenches.

Origins takes players back to where the first Zombie mode began and is a prequel of a type as it explains where all of the Zombie chaos that has been a fixture of the Treyarch Call of Duty games began.

I loved getting the Zombie Blood Reward which caused the undead to see me as one of their own which was even more rewarding when I opened up amongst them in close quarters.

 

Even with two of the maps being reworked ones, Apocalypse feels fresher than many of the other DLC maps in that the designers have attempted to give players something new and different. There is only so much that can be down with map packs but the clever mix of locales and features as well as the best Zombie mode to date.

http://sknr.net/2013/10/16/call-of-duty-apocalypse/