GOO TIMES

RAINBOW SIX EXTRACTION is a thrilling but messy take on zombie co-op

- Morgan Park

Rainbow Six Extraction was announced in a world we no longer live in: The world of 2019. Back then, the co-op Siege spinoff was called Rainbow Six Quarantine (ha!). It was an unlucky time to be making a game about a virus, but a great time to bring back the co-op zombie shooter. Siege’s Outbreak event was an excellent taste of what Left 4 Siege could be, and I hoped Extraction would blow that mode out into a collection of campaigns.

Three years later, not only is Extraction one of many co-op shooters on the block, but it’s hardly recognizable from the original Outbreak campaign. It’s the anti-Left 4 Dead—a precise, grueling survival game about keeping your head down and never poking the bear. If you do, Extraction’s sadistic AI takes over, eager to punish the smallest lapse in judgment.

It’s a mean game that can produce some great thrills, but its strict rules make some awkward design choices stick out. Extraction is also a smaller game than I anticipated—Ubisoft’s decision to lower its price to $50 and introduce it to PC Game Pass at launch really makes sense now. I really liked mastering each of the dozen objective types and maps, but missions start to get samey pretty quickly.

SCREECH AND CLEAR

Extraction missions are, at their core, maps with three objectives randomly pulled from a pool of 12. Objectives have to be tackled in order, with each one occupying its own chunk of the map.