E3 2015 – Busting into Rainbow Six Siege

It’s time for Rainbow Six Siege to come out. It just needs to be out on shelves already. Seriously. Seven years after the release of Vegas 2, us couch counter-terrorism freaks are itching for a chance to take out some tangos for the sake of freedom and the videogame way of life. And heck, Siege is looking to be very much worth the wait after checking it out as a closer of yet another E3.

Last year, I sat down with the fine folks from Ubisoft Montreal and checked out a very early version of the game that only featured a single stage and put two teams against each other. It was an exciting demo nonetheless that showed off many of the features that are completely new to the franchise, mostly related to the breaching of walls and its heavy influence on confrontations.

There’s also the fact that we also got to see a little on the single player story during Ubisoft’s press conference, featuring Angela Bassett as a tough as nails Six, the leader to the Rainbow team. The demo itself didn’t touch on that at all, but it’s good that the little that was shown during that presentation was about as crazily Clancy-esque as possible, which is about as pertinent to this game as it could possibly be.

Multiplayer wise, this year’s demo’s focus was on the fan favorite Terrorist Hunt, which is probably the most played multiplayer mode out of the Vegas subset of the franchise. Our team faced off against a few waves of enemies that had taken over what seemed to be an embassy.

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The chaos of a breach is incredible. Breathe in and out!

Before we got to engage, we were tasked with picking out our load-outs. Each equipment setup provides a different approach style to the mission, with my personal favorite, the shield and handgun, being my obvious pick. Every one of these load-outs has a name tied to a different nationality of counter-terrorism, as well as a character type, which I assume is directly associated to a main story player.

Like previous Rainbow Six games, we had the choice of where each team member would infiltrate the building from, which in our case, for the first go at it, ended up being a gas station across the street. It ended up being as good of a choice as any, because we ended up going up the embassy’s roof and taking it over floor by floor.

The T-Hunt mode in the demo went beyond simply taking everyone out, as it involved the dismantling of a bomb and the resulting storming of terrorists as soon as we began working on the damn thing. It all went to crap soon after, with the entire team down, what seems to be my yearly tradition with these demos.

Still, even though we lost, it was clear that Rainbow Six Siege is going down fantastically well. While not exactly the most revolutionizing demo in terms of improvements to last year’s, it’s clear that Ubisoft Montreal is on the right path. The shooting in the demo felt a little better than Vegas‘, which was already incredibly tense to begin with. If you’re anywhere familiar with those games, you’ll be right at home with Siege. Keep an eye out for our release coverage soon!

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