Ubisoft released a “lore gameplay trailer”, yes, but that was a ruse.
Occasionally a colleague will send you webcam footage from a helicopter or a base.
The people in the footage are wearing hoodies.
This means they are relaxed.
Their faces are full of concern.
A look over the shoulder.
What was that rumble?
That’s not to say the game is simply a re-skinned Siege - far from it.
Although I wouldn’t say Extraction is, as those meerkats from the telly say, simples.
Even on the easiest difficulty, the game presents a significant challenge.
Whatever unit you’ve got going on, you’re guaranteed a much better time.
With that said, Extraction rewards patience.
Slip-ups are fine and often funny, but elation is reserved for teams with a work life balance.
The sort where craic only follows periods of knuckling down.
Jovial japes come after pings and calls of “There’s ammo over here!”
and all of you stalking corridors very, very carefully.
The game’s missions demand high levels of concentration, you see.
It’s risk versus reward, essentially.
Make it through all three tasks alive and you’ll earn loads of EXP.
Failure isn’t catastrophic, but it certainly won’t reward you with mega-bucks.
How moreish are Extraction’s missions?
Fairly replayable, by my calculations.
Plus, ramp up the difficulty level and there’s a chance that aliens gain mutations.
They might leave slowing gloop behind them or each have blinding spores attached to their limbs.
The curve issteep, mind, but it ramps up the tension nicely.
Coated in black alien gunk, maps lie dormant at first.
Nests squirm on walls.
Bloaters scurry on all fours.
Colossal Titans stand guard.
Brilliant fun lies in maintaining the hush and carefully severing the connection between the alien hivemind.
I like that they’re focused on forging tactical advantages, as opposed to blasting aliens to bits.
And what do you get for your efforts?
This feeds into Operators and Milestones.
When Operators level up, their abilities get better.
For instance, Pulse’s tablet may get better detection range.
A favourite of mine is simply: you get one more charge of something.
They’re simple benefits with a big impact.
As for Milestones, these act as your overall levels, sort of like a battle pass.
As for those tokens, they can be spent on unlocking new grenades and drones and the like.
Levelling is a touch sluggish, but it’s rewarding enough to compensate.
I think of Extraction as a dip in, dip out FPS.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, by the way.
An end-game mode called Maelstrom Protocol aims to add some greater replayability to proceedings.
It’s a ranked mode that sets you weekly challenges, with limited resources.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the chance to try this out, but it sounds fairly promising.
Of course, you earn ranked points too, but this is a PvE game at heart.
Sometimes that’s all you really need, isn’t it?
