My Favorite Game

I've been writing these blog posts for about six months now, and I've intentionally avoided the topic of my favorite game as I wanted to get comfortable with this system of reviewing before I talked about it. A lot of the games I review on this blog are games that I play for anything between a week and two months, or play on and off with large stretches of inactivity. But I definitely have a favorite game: if you had decided to check what I was playing or had last played at any given time over the last two years there's probably about a 70% chance that you would see Siege. It has consistently been my favorite game for over two years, and I don't see that changing any time soon. So, finally, here it is: my Rainbow Six Siege review, why it's my favorite game, and what problems still exist in it. As usual, I will be grading based off of a 10 point scale in a couple of categories, before moving on to my personal love for the game and finally looking at a bit of constructive criticism.

First off is core gameplay. Rainbow Six Siege didn't create many brand new individual aspects in the game, but what it did do was combine a bunch of pre-existing ideas with one or two new ones in a way that created something completely new. The first idea here is head shots. Most shooter games will have head shots deal more damage, as it rewards skill and makes the game more interesting, but anyone who plays Siege will tell you that head shots are king. This stems from one simple reason: all guns in Siege, with one special exception, kill instantly on a head shot. This changes things drastically because you die way faster in Siege than in a game like Call of Duty or Battlefield or even CSGO, which Siege is often compared to. This, combined with the way re spawns work, require you to play with much more care than in games like CoD or Battlefield. The re spawn system works off of rounds: each game takes place between two teams of five on one map in a series of rounds. Each person only gets one life per round, and the two teams alternate attack and defense. There are three gamemodes in Siege, but the main one (and the one I will be talking the most about) is bomb, where attackers have to plant a "defuser" (a small computer-like object) in one of two bomb sites. Anyone who has played CSGO will quickly recognize this game mode as almost identical to CSGO's main bomb mode. The first team to win four rounds wins the game, but if the score gets to three-three then you go into a best of three overtime. The next big trait of Siege is its operator system. As of the writing of this article Siege has 44 playable operators, split between attackers and defenders. Players unlock characters with in game currency, or buy a season pass, which unlocks all the DLC (downloadable content) operators for that year (8 total). Each round every player can choose one operator, each of which has his or her own set of weapons to choose from, an operator-unique primary gadget and two options for a secondary gadget. The final thing that Siege does differently is destructibility. Many modern shooters incorporate destructibility into their games, but Siege takes it to a whole new level. Not only can many walls be shot through, but holes can be broken into walls, hatches in the ceiling and floors can be blown open, and walls can be reinforced to prevent attackers from braking holes in them. At their core, all of these aspects work very well to create a smooth, fun, enjoyable game that would be fun to play even without the higher strategy aspect. I give it a 9/10 on core gameplay.

So what do all these things combine to create? They don't just create an enjoyable shooter experience, they create a tactical strategy shooter that seems to be in a genre of its own: sometimes it plays like a classic shooter, sometimes it plays like an RTS (real-time-strategy) game and sometimes someone comes around a corner and suddenly you're playing a horror game. Just like head shots are king in winning individual engagements in Siege, strategy is king for winning games. Gadgets and destructibility are combined in a series of counter and counter-counters, creating a deadly game of "who's going to get the edge". As an example, on one of the base maps in Siege, house, there is a bomb site in the garage. The garage door is destructible and is often one of the first things that the defenders reinforce (each team member gets two reinforcements). If the attackers think that the defenders will defend garage, then chances are they'll bring a Thermite. Thermite is an operator who has two explosives that he can set on walls, opening up a large hole even in reinforced walls. Now if the defense thinks the offense will bring a Thermite (or Hibana, the other operator that can get through reinforced walls), they could bring a Mute, who has four little jammers that he places on the ground. Each one has a jamming range, and any electronic device belonging to the offense that comes within the range of the mute jammer will  be jammed and become inactive until someone removes it from the jammers area (in the case of a Thermite charge, you pick it back up off the wall). But the offence is probably expecting this, and so they bring Thatcher, who throws EMP grenades that disable the defenders' electronic devices, thereby countering Mute. Now if the defenders have a very talented Bandit they can do something called bandit tricking, which involves placing Bandit's gadget (a car battery that electrifies metallic objects and destroys attackers gadgets that touch the object) on the wall as Thermite places his charge. If done correctly, the Thatcher grenade can't destroy the battery as it isn't placed until the exact moment that the Thermite charge starts to go off, thus destroying it. Assuming the Bandit tricking doesn't work, the wall is now open, and you move onto the next phase of strategies, counters, and counter-counters involving smoke grenades, actual grenades, tasers, planting the defuser, people that have gadgets that can see through smoke, and so on. As you can see, this game gets ridiculously complicated very quick. And that's just one bomb site, on one game mode. House has two other bomb mode sites (areas you can defend), four hostage sites and four secure area sites. House is the smallest map, (most maps have four bomb sites), and there are a total of 18 maps, each of them with their own sites, strategies and play styles. I give Siege a 10/10 on strategy.

This incredible variability is one of the huge reasons why I have loved Siege for so long; Siege has so much replay ability. You never have the same game, not once. With 44 operators and 18 maps, everything is different. While there are absolutely common strategies (or the meta as it's referred to in many competitive video games), these strategies change depending on how the other team plays it, as I explained in the previous paragraph, or on how your teammates play it. As an example, that Thermite from the last paragraph could've chosen to go for a hatch instead of the garage, forcing the rest of his team to change their entire strategy to accommodate. In my first review on this blog, I complained about how Fortnite has very little replay ability and gets boring quickly. The reasons for that were simple: every game took place on the same map, with everyone running roughly the same strategies, the meta only changed every few months, and the special gamemodes were about as infrequent as meta changes. Siege is everything that Fortnite isn't in that aspect. The chances of getting the same map twice back to back are slim, let alone playing multiple games on the same map; every team seems to have their own strategies on how to defend/attack certain sites; the meta is almost constantly changing, at least in small ways and frankly Siege doesn't even need special gamemodes (though they will release them roughly every four months, coinciding with holidays or special events). I give Siege a 10/10 for replay ability.

I've stated a lot of the reasons that I love siege in these last three paragraphs, but I think there is some expanding to do. I absolutely love strategy. I was that kid in Minecraft who planned out the most efficient way to do everything and even before I found video games I was the kid who played chess at every opportunity. I have spent countless hours in Siege just messing around in a custom match, either on my own or with one or two friends, trying to find new strategies and new ways to defend sites, or new walls that I can blow up to get an angle on someone that they'd never expect. Second reason is the playerbase. Now there is definitely toxicity in Siege, which I will address in my "complaints" section, but by and large the public Siege community is incredible. If you're looking for help, there are people out there that are more than happy to help you. This is incredibly important, as Siege has the steepest learning curve of any game I've ever played, and possibly the steepest learning curve of any shooter game. I'll use Shroud as an example. Shroud is a professional video game content creator: he makes videos about video games and streams him playing video games for a living. He's also been in a couple of professional esports leagues, most notably Cloud 9's CSGO and PUBG teams. He is commonly referred to as the god of shooter games, and his hallmark is being able to get into just about any shooter game and instantly be one of the best players in that game. He recently (about six months ago) started playing Siege, and he's still in the low platinum range (Siege's competitive mode has a series of ranks that go copper, bronze, silver, gold, platinum and diamond). For reference, I'm high gold, just a couple ranks below him. So how can I, a relatively average gamer, be nearly as highly ranked as Shroud, the god of shooter games? Strategy and map knowledge. I've been playing Siege for two years, and at this point the only maps I don't know like the back of my own hands are the two most recent ones. I'm also quite familiar with strategies on all of the main maps, and I understand how to use strategy and destructibility to my advantage. Because of that, I could, in theory, compete with Shroud and not get absolutely owned despite the fact that he would win every single gunfight that started on even footing. That said, the gap between the two of us is growing fast, as Shroud is an incredibly fast learner and regularly plays with people who have been playing Siege since it came out, including some pros. The final reason I love Siege so much is its pro scene, which is incredibly active. I won't go into the organizational details like I did with Overwatch, but I love watching it in the same way that high school football players love to watch the NFL or even college football. Siege is my sport (though not my physical activity) and I love it for that. Also if you're interested in watching some high level Siege gameplay, even just to see what it looks like, the Six Invitational will be live streamed on the 15th, 16th and 17th of this month, with the finals taking place at 2:30 p.m. EST on Sunday the 17th. If you're an active Siege player, the reveal for the upcoming season will be streamed at 1:30 EST the same day.

So we're here. I've hinted throughout the video that Siege has some issues, and this is where I'll state them. The first is teammates. As I stated earlier, each team has five players. There are two ways to set up your team of five. The first is to invite one to four friends into your in-game "party" before you begin the matchmaking process. Whether you do this or not, the next step is to begin matchmaking. This will do three main things: it will find a team to face you, it will find teammates to fill any empty spots in your team, and it will put both teams in a server after assigning one to the blue team, one to the orange team, and choosing one of Siege's maps. It's a pretty standard matchmaking system, and my issue with it doesn't stem with the actual matchmaking system but rather with teammates. In all multiplayer games there is a team aspect, and getting bad teammates can be frustrating. For me, the reason that this is a problem relatively unique to Siege stems from the fact that Siege is so strategy based. It's hard to be strategic when two of your teammates have no idea what they're doing and one other teammate is doing things (accidentally or intentionally) that get in the way of your strategies, even if your fourth teammate is perfectly competent and knows what to do. Using the same example that I gave earlier about the garage on House, it's almost impossible to get the garage door open if your teammates don't know what they're doing but the enemy team does,as you need at least a Thermite and a Thatcher, but probably a Capitao or Glaz as well. There is a solution to this, which is referred to in the Siege community as five-stacks. Five-stacks are groups of five people that joined a part together before matchmaking and probably play with some regularity together. The problem with this is where do you find a five-stack? First off, you need four other people at relatively the same skill level as you. Too low and they won't help at all, two high and they'll either get all the action and make the game boring or not do well and complain about how no one else is pulling their weight. Which leads to the second criteria: your teammates should ideally be people that want to work together and won't blame their problems on each other. Congratulations, you now have a five-stack. You get in a game and... hold on. Why is everyone trying to pick Ash? Of course. You forgot the final criteria: team synergy. Many people have characters that they prefer to play, sometimes to the point of only playing two or three characters, or "maining." So now you need to go back and either find new teammates that are willing to play different characters or convince your teammates to learn new characters, and if you've ever played Siege then you know there is nothing on this planet more immovable than an Ash main who is fixed on playing Ash. I hate five stacking. Even on the rare occasion that I've found four other people that fit the above criteria, someone has something they have to do after a couple of games, or none of us are ever on at the same time, or someone loses interest in Siege... the list goes on. I do have a solution that I think would work very nicely for me, but I don't think there is a reason to fix this problem. Siege is, at its core, an esport. It's a game that was built from the ground up to be played competitively, and that's what five-stacks are: competitive teams. The real solution is a mindset change. If you're playing with five-stacks, then your rank is a reflection of your team's skill, synergy and success. If not, then your rank simply doesn't matter. Would it be awesome to be diamond? Absolutely. Is it going to happen? No. Ignoring the fact that I'm not nearly good enough for that even with a good team, it takes an incredible player to solo-queue their way to diamond. The second problem with Siege is toxicity. A lot of people in Siege are toxic, and Siege allows for it. The game has something called friendly fire, allowing teammates to hurt each other. At higher levels this simply adds to Siege, forcing you to be more careful so as not to accidentally kill or hurt teammates. At lower levels, when solo-queuing, this simply means its not at all uncommon to go multiple games back to back with an intentional teamkill in every game. Reasons for teamkilling vary greatly from someone messing up your strategy, to you just being mad at someone because they don't know what they're doing, to someone having the defuser and not planting, etc. Ubisoft has changed their rules regarding teamkilling, though. If you teamkill the same person twice in the same game, you get an instant ban. If you teamkill two different people with headshots or in the first 45 seconds of a round, instant ban. If you down the same person twice, instant ban. All of these bans change, starting at thirty minutes and working their way up to a full week (I'm sure it goes further, but that's the furthest I've ever seen). Both of these problems have been solved pretty much as well as Ubisoft can solve them, but they are a part of the game, and something worth noting if you plan on getting it.

Well, here it is. My Siege review and why it's my favorite game. I've spent a lot of the latter parts of this article complaining, but Siege is my favorite game, and all good comes with a bit of bad. That's just the way it works, and I'm willing to put up with it in exchange for an amazing game. I give Siege a 10/10 overall, tying it with Red Dead Redemption as the two best made games I've reviewed so far.