It’s been a long time since I’ve played Rainbow Six Siege with any modicum of regularity. We had it as a regular Tuesday night fixture for months, if not years, back in the early days, with myself, Special Guest Pete, MPV Gray, Million Man Ian and the lone wolf Jake. I’ll not claim to ever be any good, but we developed quite a team rapport and would win as often as we’d lose. It was always a blast though, so with Rainbow Six Siege X celebrating the 10 year anniversary – and with the game still going strong – I was offered a chance to check out the new game mode and updates slightly ahead of time. I quickly realised that if I was no good at the console version, I sure as hell didn’t stand a chance on PC, so now I’ve spent some time on all three platforms playing it, it’s time to see if this ever evolving game is worth jumping into now – first time or not.
I’ll get this out of the way early – I am dreadful at Rainbow Six Siege. What was once an average skillset has deteriorated to frankly embarrassing levels. My first couple of hours back were filled with quick deaths and lots of spectating. However, once I got back into Siege X’s rhythm, I actually managed to get a few kills (albeit with a lot of spectating as well).
When the going’s good, there’s a lot to love about Siege X. The game is packed with modes, operators and loadouts, and hopping into Bank as Ash or Fuze was like visiting an old friend. Operators are all uniquely handled, with different base stats, weapons, extras and those all important abilities. There are far more operators to choose from now (I think we stopped playing not long after Hibana was added…) and it was great to see across all my sessions that the full roster was being used. If you’ve got a squad to play with regularly there’ll be a lot of fine tuning who plays who, and how you go about the objective based rounds.
Maps Bank, Clubhouse, Border, Chalet, and Kafe have all seen specific improvements to their visuals, with new lighting and shadows, materials and destruction. If I’m perfectly honest I couldn’t really tell what had changed fully, but again it’s been a long time. Regardless, it looks great and playing on a Series X rather than Xbox One really makes the game pop. The rest of the game looks and plays great too, though hasn’t seen as much of an update as of now.
So if you’ve played Siege before, know this is the same game but improved in almost every way. I’ve really enjoyed getting back into the flow of it, and am hoping to get the band back together to play a bit more often. If you’ve not played, this is the best time to jump in as now only are there all manner of updates, with Siege X it’s actually now Free to Play. Of course, MTX are all over the shop but then that was the case anyway, so having an easier way to check it out is a long overdue touch.
Other than new destruction and improved visuals, Siege X comes with one big addition; Dual Front. This is a stark change for the gameplay of Siege as it removes the strict one life, hardcore rules of the main game in favour of a small-scale Battlefield-like approach. Teams increase to 6 players a piece, respawns are enabled, we get a 30 minute time limit, and each team has three gradually unlocked areas to capture, and three to defend. Capture all the other teams’ areas for the win, or – as was the case in most of my games – lose all ours and, well, lose.
Dual Front is definitely faster paced than the old rounds, and while the operators remain within their skillsets and specs, the fact we can respawn as any of them after a death encourages experimentation. I enjoyed using new operator Osa, her portable, placeable shields got me out of a few scraps, and her weapons felt great to use.
Capturing a point requires getting to it (no small feat) and hacking it, which then requires us to defend the area while it completes. Grab one, and the second area opens up for us to assault, and so on and so forth. Needing to defend our own areas means the team is often split up, and it can be agonising picking a slow operator like Fuze only to realise we need to run very slowly back to our area to try and stop the capture. But again, when things go our way it’s a very enjoyable game mode and one that will be great with a group of friends co-operating.
And that’s the kicker. Siege X is about as good as Siege has ever been in my eyes. There’s so much variety to choose from, and it’s the kind of online MP game that can easily suck days and days of your time. But. To get the most out of it, we really need a group to play with. Across the three platforms I played it, I struggled to find any team that had mics on, let alone worked together to get an objective. With 5 or 6 people just going it lone wolf style, it’s very hard to get much done, and even harder to win any rounds. Not impossible, but I found either people not playing objectives, or simply harassing others for not following their uncommunicated plan. No review score from me today as I’m too bad at the game, but grab some mates, spend time learning its mechanics, and it’ll be hard to beat Siege X as a solid recommendation for your multiplayer game nights.
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