Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege

The multiplayer is superb when it comes together, but the game lacks enough variation to be a true classic.

Rainbow Six: Siege delivers on what it promised to be: a well-made, multiplayer-focused, team shooter. To criticize it for not having a stronger single player experience is accusing it of a pretense it never made, and consumers will decide whether the product has broad enough appeal to warrant its price.

Siege is both unforgivably callow and inarguably satisfying. Like parades or fireworks, it’s a vision that’s only fun if you can forget where it comes from and where it points to.

The multiplayer core at the heart of Rainbow Six Siege is a great foundation. But given its lack of infrastructure around the mode and severe lack of meaningful modes to buttress it, Siege feels slight when compared to its past entries and the other big-name first-person shooter franchises it competes against.

One of the best multiplayer experiences of the year, but the cost of entry and the lack of content make it a harder sell then it should be.

Rainbow Six: Siege is visually poor, technically underpowered and multiplayer only. It's very far from being a great game, but with the right friends could be an heartbreaking fun.

Rainbow Six Siege is a good FPS at its gameplay core thanks to good level design, but the lack of content and imprecise controls makes it a completely forgettable game.

Rainbow Six: Siege has the basic pieces in place to offer that experience but sabotages them by forcing the illusion to rub against the real world in ways the fantasy isn’t prepared to handle. More often than not, playing Siege, one doesn’t feel like a soldier. You feel like a player. And that’s precisely what this game doesn’t want.

The core of Rainbow Six Siege is great – it’s a game I want to absolutely adore. But it’s just not a game I can recommend right now. Not at this price. Not with Ubisoft’s chicanery.

Siege can feel cool and inhospitable, but when the conditions are right and you're playing with friends, the game's tense gameplay and measured pacing makes for a refreshing, cerebral contrast to the run-and-gun hyperactivity of most online shooters. [Feb 2016, p.104]

The game’s multiplayer foundation is undoubtedly solid, but it lacks supporting elements that would compel esports enthusiasts, let alone Rainbow Six fans, from investing time in Siege many months from now. Whatever time you do manage to spend, there are rewards to be found through tactical planning and execution that you can’t find in any other shooter.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege has the polish of a big budget release, but the amount of content that one expects to see from a low budget free-to-play game.

Beyond the basic freeform variety with which players can infiltrate each of the 10 maps, there's no compelling reason to do so.

Without a single player campaign and only a small selection of effectively interchangeable game modes, Rainbow Six Siege is a game with a fairly limited scope. However, there’s still a solid and very enjoyable tactical shooter at its core, especially when played with friends, and it’s one which will only grow over time as Ubisoft add more maps and content.