Console Corner: Rainbow Six Siege review

Rainbow Six Siege is a prime example of when your biggest strength also leaves you hamstrung.

Let’s kick things off by firstly saying that Rainbow Six Siege is a beautiful thing.

It is undoubtedly one of the best games of the year and with more maps and plenty of downloadable content on the way in four separate installments promises to live long into next.

But as brilliant as RSS is, it will also be a hugely frustrating experience for people who don’t live in Utopia.

You know the place where you have all day to play games, loads of friends who are online at the same time as you and a perfect broadband connection.

Ubisoft, like many developers nowadays, has scrapped a campaign mode in favour of throwing everything at the online multiplayer experience in RSS.

Tellingly, though, the price remains the same.

Siege’s online multiplayer is fantastic, there are no ifs or buts about it. It is the ultimate game of hide and seek, with guns... lots of big bad guns. You form small teams and the objective is to attack or defend.

The build up of anticipation while defending is like nothing I have experienced before. A mixture of excitement and fear as you secure your room and wait for the attackers to plot a way in.

Attacking is just as exciting and if anything more rewarding if you do manage to locate the bomb and defeat the defending team.

And this brings me back to my point about it being a game made for Utopia. That’s because if you haven’t got lots of friends playing Siege then you are instantly at a disadvantage. The game is all about communication and the teams that know eachother best and communicate best invariably win.

If you’re being matched with random people and one of your internet connections drops things can get frustrating.

That aside though this is the game most FPS fans have been waiting for - minus of course the single player mode which would have pushed this into 9 or 10/10 territory.

Graphically it is nothing to write home about, especially in the wake of the likes of Star Wars Battlefront. But it doesn’t need to be.

RSS is a well constructed, strategic shooter with excellent maps which break up under gun fire and fast, fun battles.

Terrorist Hunt is another superb addition but will not distract your attention away from the multiplayer for too long.

Once you start playing RSS it is very hard to stop.

Now if we can just persuade developers to start thinking about gamers who enjoy single player campaigns again.