Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege: PS4 Review

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege: PS4 Review

Platform: PS4
Released by Ubisoft

First person shooters don't come with more prestige than under the Tom Clancy umbrella.

The latest, Rainbow Six Siege, comes at a time when the world's reacted to real-life terrorism and sieges in Paris which gives it a sort of unwelcome prescient sheen that's hard to shake off.

But just managing to shake it off, it does.

You play a member of a counter-terrorism team in a predominantly online game, that's aimed at giving you control of situations and seeing how you react in them. It's all about tactics in many ways and ensuring that your team survives.

Alternating between attack and defence, there's no denying that Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege is a tense game and will rely on you using some smarts rather than blundering in and firing willy nilly. Playing through levels helps you unlock equipment and operators, and helps you realise the potential of the team and its players.

And it's really here in the online multiplayer that Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege comes into its own.

Forced online means that you have to play with others or with friends and it's a little trickier if you're a solo player by nature. Picking a good team helps a lot, as you can't respawn in the middle of the game - once you're gone, you're gone. Which ensures that you play the game in a way which feels real and serious, something the Tom Clancy games have always done. The team works best with the headset environment, there's no denying that with the team out scouring the sites and scoring intel, it gives you an extra insight into what's around.

While there's been a few issues connecting to the server, it's been no worse than in Battlefront, and hasn't really prevented the play from coming to the fore.

If you're after a deep-dive immersive game this festive season that appears to have chilling overtones of current world events, then you can't go much further than Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege; it's tautly executed and thrilling.