Rainbow Six Siege

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows PCs (Steam Deck YMMV)
Current goal: Learn new (to me) maps and improve my aim

It’s been a while since I’ve played Siege. This pseudo-hero shooter was once a nightly game for me, taking up far too much of my free time without shouldering me with any guilt for the hours spent because it was so often a wonderfully engaging, unpredictable, tactical showdown of aiming and wits. The game is expected to get a big makeover this summer with Siege X, but as I’ve drifted from it for some time, so much already feels different to me. The game has gone through a wide variety of changes over the years, not all of which have been received well by the community.

This week, I decided to jump back in after a few years away, and I’ll certainly be logging some hours this week—and I can all but guarantee those hours won’t be spent scoring aces, much less many victories, or probably even kills. Things are different for sure—and there are maps and characters I have zero knowledge of. Yet, despite various tweaks and changes, it still feels like Siege to me. It’s still an unforgiving game that tasks you with making intentional actions, forcing you to balance thinking a few steps ahead with keeping your head on a swivel for that random roaming Cav, or sudden need to address a damn Montaigne who’s boxed themselves into a corner over the defuser.

I am rusty as hell in this game, yet I still find it such a fascinating shooter to study and learn from. Maybe it’s the brutal lethality; maybe it’s the intersection of destructive environments and unique gadgets creating exciting emergent moments in a match. It’s probably all of that and more. Dying or getting outplayed in Siege so often comes with a lesson of “I need to be careful around that specific door a bit more” or “holy shit, that’s a clever way to use a C4.”

But while I’m looking forward to digging into those tactics again to pull off some “holy shit” moments of my own, I think I’m gonna start by learning the new maps first and maybe working on my aim because good goddess is it all over the damn place. — Claire Jackson