I mentioned that I'd jumped into the Krahulik Family Server for a few rounds of the new Rainbow Six, or… the newest Rainbow Six, which at this point we sorta gotta say is the old Rainbow 6 because it came out in twenty fucking fifteen. A couple things to note: even as a proponent of technology in general, and even with science fiction as a guide, the ubiquity of technology in family communication still shocks me a little bit. And two, playing games with the younger cadre - ones who haven't aged out in decrepitude, filth, and loss - is pretty baller if you like winning.
I was trying to explain it to someone the other night, someone familiar with a broad spread of indie paragons but not clued in to this venerable lineage. Clearly, it has mean shooty people. For some, that might be less appealing than a polygonal Dwarf or a young girl who collects difficult to reach strawberries. I think there's a lot more to this game than these guns. Which, I mean, it does have. I think it might be the most interesting shooter to watch played, and it's one of the more interesting ones to play yourself, because so much of the game is fundamentally about information.
All competitive games are to some extent, but the way you learn this information and the way you use it are the game. There's more than seventy Operators, divided between attackers and defenders in completely asymmetrical pools, and they all hit the information space in some oblique way - with their own levels of knowledge or capacity to obscure it. A particularly psycho one has an ability to reveals your location to him, and he reveals his location to you. It also limits him to a dueling pistol? It's incredibly hardcore shit.
The round starts with attackers running around with drones trying to find out where they're even supposed to go, while defenders reinforce walls. This is important, because terrain destructibility is at an all time high. The real whackjobs, sweats in the parlance, routinely kill people through walls which is why hardening these points to minimize angles is key. But then you have certain attackers called "hard breachers" that specialize in reinforced zones. Did you ever play Slapjack? It's like Slapjack, where every class and counter gets layers over the top and then you start dealing from the bottom. Some rounds with the boys begin with an aggressive "home makeover" period depending on the map, where they shred and sculpt the walls in very specific ways. It's not a safe worksite, and it only becomes less safe as time goes on. You can't come in off the street and do this. You must enter this temple with humility and respect.
Did I mention that it is also a shooter? Somehow? It plays like a multiplayer puzzle game. How it ever got published at all, and how it was allowed to endure, is a story I need to discover.
(CW)TB out.
