A team-based first-person shooter with a ton of potential

Jan 3, 2015 09:41 GMT  ·  By

Our incoming 2015 series focuses on the most important game launches of the next 12 months, and next up we talk about a really interesting team-based multiplayer first-person shooter, Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege.

What we know

The game is set to come out sometime in 2015, heading to Windows PC and the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One home consoles.

The premise of Rainbow Six Siege is a simple one: there are two teams, one of them tasked with infiltrating a certain perimeter and eliminating threats, and the other with boarding the place up and making a clean getaway with their hostages / stash / whatever.

The game is tailored to appeal to competitive shooter fans and relies on synchronization and teamplay more than on individual skill, with both teams having a set-up stage before the action starts, with the cops infiltrating remote-controlled camera drones in order to scout ahead, and the bad guys having the necessary time to set up fortifications to make things more difficult for the SWAT team.

Ubisoft showed some footage from the upcoming first-person shooter wowing pretty much everyone, not only due to the great-looking visuals and smooth gameplay systems, but also because of the unprecedented level of freedom afforded to players.

Why it matters

The game engine allows players to fire through thin walls and even demolish them, enabling them to experiment with various setups and scenarios, in order to enjoy a more emergent type of experience.

Previous such games usually operated in a more limited manner. In Counter-Strike you can shoot through walls, but you can't make holes and peek inside a room, nor can you make another entry point by using explosives.

This means that doorways and a few select windows are no longer the only entry points into a fortress, which opens up a whole new level of variety when it comes to the moment-to-moment gameplay and the decisions that players have to make.

In addition to this, the development team stated that their main goal is to make everything responsive and for player action to take precedence over anything going on on-screen, making any input instantly translate into action.

Another subtle addition to the shooter is the ability to lean everywhere, not just around cover, potentially unlocking new lines of sight and enabling gamers to be much more flexible and mobile when approaching certain scenarios.

The ability to create new and unique vantage points together with the robust destructibility engine will most likely translate into a great in-game experience, making every second tense and every course of action unpredictable.

In addition to this, given Ubisoft's recent troubles, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege is also a chance to prove that the company is able to release a game that is playable from day one.

Rainbow Six Siege screenshots (7 Images)

Rainbow Six Siege
Breach the perimeterUse drones for scouting
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