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Reading Time: 6 minutesSpillover, the first of many limited-time Crisis Events, is available to play starting today in Rainbow Six Extraction.
This protect-the-objective mode pits a team of three operators against hordes of enemies until the deployed Dissolution Agent canister can neutralize an area’s contamination. The contamination type affects the kind of alien Sprawl that will come at you, so you’ll need to bring a variety of gear (and strategies) to effectively deal with the situation — bullets alone won’t cut it.
Credit: Ubisoft
Preparation and communication are key if you want to succeed across all three phases of decontamination. So far, I’ve only been able to complete two phases before needing to extract. Once a team member goes down, it becomes exponentially difficult, so it’s better to get out and fight another day.
With the launch of Spillover, a new operator — Zofia — also joins the alien-fighting efforts with her multi-purpose grenade launcher. Zofia is playable in the main game as well as special Crisis Events.
Spillover is just one of many planned in-game events, and all players who log in during the Crisis Event will have a chance to earn an exclusive Auto-Turret REACT tech — a piece of gear that will definitely make holding objectives much easier.
Rainbow Six Extraction is available now via Game Pass on Xbox Series X | S, Xbox One, and Windows PC, as well as on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Stadia, Amazon Luna, Ubisoft+, the Ubisoft Store, and the Epic Games Store.
Play Spillover in Rainbow Six Extraction
Review: Rainbow Six Extraction Delivers Tense, Tactical Action for FPS Fans
This new shooter blends Rainbow Six Siege with Back 4 Blood for a unique take on co-op stealth strategy
Rainbow Six Extraction
When you’ve been playing video games for several years, it’s rare to encounter a game that feels genuinely different. But with Rainbow Six Extraction, Ubisoft has managed to blend elements of several iconic first-person shooters to craft a unique co-op experience that’ll test your nerve, your wits, and your skill in equal measure.
At its core, Rainbow Six Extraction feels like an expansion of the popular online shooter, Rainbow Six Siege. That game’s cast of operators and their unique abilities are carried straight over, along with key gameplay elements like the recon drone car, the ability to shoot through walls, or erect barricades to keep out hostiles.
But this is a very different game from Siege. Three players team up to take on various missions set in an apocalyptic world infested with demonic, murderous aliens. The maps are similar in size and style to those in Siege; mostly indoor environments comprising rooms and corridors spread out over three distinct zones.
Credit: Rainbow Six Extraction
Players must infiltrate these zones in order to fulfill their objectives before either extracting to collect their rewards, or continuing to the next zone to take on another more challenging objective.
Whether you’re gunning for a high-value target, clearing an infestation of pulsating alien pods, or activating a series of scanning devices, it’s important to work together, pick your battles wisely, and make full use of your character’s gear and abilities. This is certainly not a run-and-gun shooter.
High Stakes Play
Credit: Rainbow Six Extraction
Core to the entire experience is a nail-biting perma-death system. The game doesn’t do a great job of explaining this, but it’s critical to the whole game. You have a team of operators that you pick from at the start of a mission. Completing objectives earns XP points and levels up that operator individually (as well as unlocking guns and gear).
However, when you die in a mission, your operator remains “MIA” and unplayable until you mount a rescue mission. And if you fail the rescue, you risk losing thousands of XP points and rolling back levels on that operator.
This is a fascinating mechanic, because it raises the stakes, and with it, the tension of every mission. It’s like Left 4 Dead meets Dark Souls. Death in Extraction is costly, so it places a greater sense of pressure on you and your teammates to succeed.
Choosing Between Fight or Flight
Credit: Rainbow Six Extraction
There’s extra weight placed on every decision. After a tough shoot out, do you risk proceeding to the next zone for another objective and bigger rewards, or do you extract early and bank your XP before you lose everything? Mix with this a horde of creepy enemies and the dark, sinister tone of the missions, and the result is an incredibly tense, but fun co-op shooter.
In one scenario, you have to activate three devices spread out over various parts of a facility. But there’s a strict time limit to activating each one, and running from one device to another can very quickly get you overwhelmed and killed.
Credit: Rainbow Six Extraction
My team and I decided it’d be better to split up, each man waiting by a device so that we can guarantee we activate them quickly. The problem is, once we turn them on, what follows is a mad dash to regroup before one (or all) of us meet our doom. It’s especially fun when one player doesn’t entirely agree with the chosen strategy, and a debate ensues over what to do.
Extraction’s clever design brings about these contentious discussions in every mission, as more aggressive players lobby to push deeper and deeper into the pits of hell for the most lucrative rewards, while the more cautious vote to play it safe and leave while they’re ahead.
When Failure is Actually Good
Credit: Rainbow Six Extraction
Even when things go wrong and your team falls, the silver lining is that I think the rescue process is the most fun thing to do in the game. Heading back into a beast-filled lair to extract a fallen operator is a chaotic, tense, but incredibly exhilarating ordeal.
Credit: Rainbow Six Extraction
As one player prises a foam-covered body from a grotesque alien spire, the team must fending off hordes of incoming monsters while also shooting pods and bombs to destroy vines that hold up the soul-sapping structure. Once free, the body must be carried by one player back to the extraction zone, while the other two work to escort them safely. It’s a total riot, and lots of fun.
Should You Buy Rainbow Six Extraction?
Credit: Rainbow Six Extraction
Rainbow Six Extraction blends the co-op monster shooting action of Back 4 Blood (or Left 4 Dead if you’re old like me) with the compact maps and iconic gunplay of Rainbow Six Siege, and spices things up with the XP-rescue mechanics of Dark Souls.
The result is a tense, foreboding, tactical shooter that’s a blast to play with friends, when communication and co-operation can be achieved most easily (and the Buddy Pass lets two friends join you for free for 14 days). Thanks to cross play, friends can connect from any platform, and it works well. If you’re able to, try to convince at least one friend to get the game with you because it’s that much more fun to laugh, scream and panic together over the in-game voice chat.
It’s also an added bonus that this isn’t a full-price game. Rainbow Six Extraction feels like it could have been a big DLC expansion for Rainbow Six Siege, but at $39.99, you really can’t complain.
If you’re ready to take on vicious alien hordes with friends, here’s where you can buy both physical and digital versions of Rainbow Six Extraction:
Mike Jackson
Mike Jackson has been writing for high-profile publications for 16 years, primarily in the video game industry, but also covering tech. Mike is an obsessed video game hoarder with hundreds of games spanning a 30-year collection. An entire room in his house is dedicated to Super Mario, and he thinks the Nintendo Switch is “the best invention in human history.” Counseling may be necessary.