Rainbow Six: Siege (BETA)

IT’S HAVOC!

I wasn’t sure if I should do a post on this considering how little time I spent playing this beta. But it certainly wasn’t through lack of trying. Because in the 8 or so hours I ‘played’, I’d guess that 4 or so was spent staring at a non-responsive matchmaking screen.

I only heard about the beta on what was intended to be the last day. Fortunately it was extended for a few more, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I’d liked the look of that original demo they showed at E3 a few years ago. It’s a shame that’s not the game I actually got to play.

Siege feels like an inferior CS:GO. What was promised, and what was originally shown, appeared to be more of a strategic, tactical based team shooter. You know, something more in line with the original Rainbow Six games. In reality, Siege has all the strategic and tactical nuance of a Call of Duty title.

Movement and weapon handling felt very, very odd. I got used to it, but movement in particular never felt quite right, especially when attempting to climb or vault over obstacles. It lacks a fluidity that results in simple actions being far more awkward than they should be. The guns have a recoil that also feels a little off. Although to be fair, I might have just needed more time with the game to become familiar with it.

That said, hit detection definitely feels off. Several times I was certain I’d hit an enemy only for there to be no reaction. It always seemed to be when the enemy was prone, however, so maybe it’s just an issue with the stance. Graphically, Siege looks decent. Like the recent BOPS3 beta, its visuals do the job but they’ll hardly blow you away. Technical performance seems solid.

The beta included three modes. One was a solo or co-op versus the AI mode. You just shoot bots. Some of them run at you and explode. That’s about it. The other two modes were a team bomb and ‘secure area’ mode. They’re pretty much self-explanatory. There were three maps to play across, and the maps were certainly one of the better elements with multiple levels, rooms and entry points.

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More positives include the destructible environments and the ability to blow open windows whilst hanging upside down before swinging into a room like John McClane. That shit is fun. Unfortunately, matches rarely last long enough to appreciate the maps or the destruction physics. Often matches are over in 2-3 minutes, quickly devolving into short, deadly shoot-outs.

A big part of this problem seems to be the way the maps place objective points, such as in the bomb mode. There are two bombs, but they’re often placed within close proximity, and that’s where the action will generally kick off. But it doesn’t really last very long, and the teams – 5v5 (although often due to the shoddy matchmaking it would be 3v5 or 4v5) – aren’t really big enough to make full use of the maps.

Each round has an annoyingly short preparation phase, particularly if you’re on the defensive. If you were expecting a more slow paced, thoughtful style of shooter, you’ll be sorely disappointed. With one or two exceptions, matches in Siege are determined entirely by twitch shooting, with many players choosing to remain prone and camp corners because it’s so easy to be randomly killed by stray shots through walls.

The menu systems in the game are needlessly convoluted and slow to function, especially when trying to customise an ‘operator’. These are your classes, and you’ll spend ‘renown’ on unlocking various upgrades to each. I didn’t have enough time with the game to fully explore what was on offer but honestly, it didn’t feel like the operators really made much difference to the experience. You’ll be just as successful rolling with the default recruit class as long as you’re quick on the draw.

IT’S HAVOC!

But as I said at the beginning of this post, I spent so little time actually playing the beta that it’s hard to really judge it. The matchmaking during my time with the beta was f**king terrible. I’d spend 4-5 minutes just to join a team, only to then spend another 4-5 waiting to find an opposing team, which then never appeared so everyone just quits.

Even when I’d find a team, it would often connect me to a match just finishing and showing the final score, before kicking me straight back to the matchmaking screen. And then I had problems with getting kicked due to server errors, or during host migrations. It seemed it would take about 5-10 minutes just to get into a full match from the beginning, but the match would often be over in less time than it took to connect and load.

And even once the match was done, staying in the same team was hit and miss as I often got kicked back to the menu due to an error. Oh, and there was also a bug that halted loading matches before they began, forcing whoever was hit by the bug to quit and causing an imbalance in the teams. Hell, the game doesn’t even address team balance at all. In one game it was just me versus 5 others.

I know this is only a beta, but with the game’s matchmaking in such a shoddy state it doesn’t bode well for the full release, especially not with all these other bugs and errors. Overall, what little I played of Siege was disappointing. Even ignoring all the connection issues and the shit menu and operator/upgrade system, simply in terms of its gameplay, Siege just wasn’t very fun.

It’s a shame, because there is potentially a really enjoyable tactical team based shooter in here, somewhere. Something closer to what they originally unveiled. But since then, for whatever reason, we’ve ended up with a shoddy mixture of CS:GO & CoD that’s not half as fun as either.

IT’S HAVOC!