I actually had a critical thread in mind, but I'm trying a new thing called positive champ. Now again, we all know that Champ hates everything, especially video games, so consider this the twilight zone. A What If Champ liked video games thread. A Positive Champ.
Positive Champ likes himself some Rainbow Six Siege. In fact dare I say, it might actually be the best a tactical shooter has been since Rainbow Six actually was a fucking tactical shooter. You see the PC cats always had a level of reasoning to why they didn't care for games like Rainbow Six Vegas, it was a dumbed down game in comparison to what Rainbow Six used to be.
It had less forgiving shooter gameplay, it had a planning phase in single player instead of look at this cover based shooter we made. Don't get me wrong the Vegas games were certainly better than wank like Black Arrow, but in an attempt to to solidify the series to the console audience it made too many adjustments to make it more like Halo.
The thing is there always was a way to streamline a tactical game to make it work on a pad, no one really made the effort to do it. I mean things like Socom were rad, I'm actually a big fan of Socom 2 on the PS2, but even that was a bit too simplistic for its own good. For all its tactical aspirations in marketing, it was an arcadey shooter.
But Siege is a different beast, and I would argue the PC cats that were dismissive of Siege for not being a plan and attack game are missing the beauty of how Ubisoft basically dumb locked into a bitchin mp formula.
How they got about it is simple, they made it a class based game. But not like Ubermensch class based stuff of Battlefield or Call of Duty, more so it's about what Team Fortress or Overwatch do, but with less absurdity. They are characters, the guns aren't necessarily the thing that make the mp go, it's their kits. It's their tools, it's how they compliment each other in handling obstacles.
Siege takes a lot of basic set ups of mp games, the save hostages, or disarm bombs thing or what have you. You have a team on defense, and then you have an offense team. The planning phase is the offensive side going out and sending drones/rc cars usually to scout the area for potential enemies, where the objective is on the map, barricades, etc.
Defense team? Actually bunker up and set up your traps.
The game has a destruction engine where just about anything can be shoot through. But you can die very fast in this game, not necessarily one shot, one kill stuff for body shots, but a quick time to kill, and headshots are what they are. Clean ass one shot, one kill. The game actually has a reason for lean and peak, because you want to position yourself to be hidden as much as possible, as opposed to exposing so much of your body. That's where the destruction comes in, you can actually morph your space to not only give you cover, but also create some new line of sights to take advantage of. Thing is they can shoot you through shit, so it's a catch 22.
There are characters who in Reinhardt fashion should be holding up a shield and be the front line for their squad, because it's 5 v 5 and everyone dies so fast a level of coordination with the team is required. Lone wolfs need not apply.
The kits allow defensive players to set up booby traps, help revive from a distance, give teammates more armor to work with, eliminated detonators. Why? Because offensively you have stuff like detonaters to breach barred up corridors and what have you. Or like EMPs that negate the thing that negates breaches.
It's all one weird counter after the other, and makes the game both methodical and takes advantage of the emergent nature of multiplayer games where a lot of on the fly thinking is made. You dying is huge in Rainbow Six, because losing the guy who needs to take care of barricades walls can swing the match entirely, and because it's no respawns the stakes are sky high. It's not like Overwatch and TF2, where eh, I'm sure our Sniper learned his lesson and will come back and not make the same mistake twice. In tight matches you can't make that mistake once.
Yeah Ubisoft's bullshit is definitely there. Microtransactions, it took forever for the netcode to be where it is, everytime they throw in a new character they basically ruin the balance of the game (Blackbeard phase anyone?), but the fucking core mechanics are excellent.
It's how you properly streamline a game for a "mass" audience or whatever. You find a way to take the "thrill" of the action sequence, and now put in systems that would reward the players who want to think and be strategic. And as a result Rainbow Six isn't a twitch game like CoD, or a I saw you first the video game like Rainbow Six. You have to coordinate with your team, you have to be willing to be patient, you have to place your shots instead of spray and pray, you have to actually do your job based on what class you built.
And you have to do this in a tight space that is highly destructible, in a time limit, while having to deal with an objective and not Team Deathmatch.
And for me it hasn't even been a result of me playing the game a lot on my PC, and I own the game. My love for the game grew by constantly being at a friends and shooting the shit with him while we played Siege on his PS4.
So look at all the things it overcame
- It's a multiplatform FPS built with gamepads in mind
- It's a modern day game presenting itself as "tactical"
- Ubisoft made it
- It had like 356 terrible betas
And it ended up being a bitchin game. The game played life on hard mode, and proceeded to kick life's ass.
You people: Champ can I get a too long didn't read?
Champ: The title literally is the too long didn't read, you fucking idiot
You People: This isn't system wars material.
Right. Congratulations consolites, you got your first good tactical shooter since your existence, oh except it plays better on PC anyway so it's not much of an achievement : (
There, happy?
Do you like spicy food?
Are you a wings on the bone or boneless person?
Favorite candy?
Did you know that I can't believe it's not butter is actually margarine?
Log in to comment