Rainbow Six Siege & Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Two rather different games but I’m having to choose between the two and I’m amused by the idea of “2 games, 1 thread”.

So, thoughts, experiences on those games?

How’s the gameplay?

Is RS:S a better Counterstrike? Is it a campfest? How is the destructible environment feature?

How is it walking through the streets of 19th century London?

Do both require going through UPlay?

Both games recommend a GTX 760 GPU. Isn’t that fairly high?

I see that the minimum CPU requirement for ACS is an Intel Core i5 2400s @ 2.5 GHz / AMD FX 6350 @ 3.9 GHz, does that mean it’ll refuse to work on a Phenom II X4 955 at 3.2GHz?

Maybe watch some gameplay videos on YouTube?

I can only speak to R6:Siege, not your other questions.

It’s Rainbow 6 meets Counterstrike. The gameplay is a good mix of tactical and fast-paced, which is kinda how the old R6 PvP games were, but with a little more freedom. The destructibility is gimmicky; only certain walls and doors can be destroyed, unlike games like Red Faction where you could destroy just about everything and sometimes bring down a whole building. It opens up a few new avenues of attack, for sure, but it’s not completely freeform like “maybe I’ll just blow up these columns and crush everyone in that safe room”. More like “I can go down one of these two hallways, or make a third one through this blastable wall.” You can’t just arbitrary blow a hole in the floor and go down, as another example; you have to find specific “trap doors” to place explosives on.

The saddest part is that I’ve played every Rainbow 6 game since the first, but I will be skipping R6:Siege (except the beta I played) because it has no campaign mode. It feels a lot like CoD/CS/Payday, and takes away the tactical planning and execution that IMO was the heart of Rainbow Six. It was an attempt to mainstream a niche genre (the tactical planner/shooter, which really was only filled by R6 and the now-defunct SWAT 4 series) by making it faster-paced and more competitive. I played the beta and just felt sad that they took away the the campaign.

IMO the best part of R6 was always the set pieces, where you have to think and use good teamwork and flashbangs and snipers and silencers to overcome overwhelming odds. R6:S takes away most of that and just makes it mostly based on reflexes, luck, and progression – the more you play, the more powerful your equipment, kinda like R6 Vegas but even more punishingly so. Every game is basically: run into a building, shoot as many things as quickly as you can, die, grind xp for better gear, rinse, repeat. It’s nowhere near as tactical as the old games. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but IMO it sacrifices depth for shininess. In fact, I think Payday is more Rainbow 6 than Siege is.

It’s still FUN, mind you, but just dumbed down and with limited lasting appeal.

I would buy neither. I liked the 2006 Rainbow Six: Vegas game, but Siege seems to have all of the worst features of a free-to-play arena PvP game, but with full price tag. It doesn’t have a campaign mode to help extend its lifespan when people start moving onto the next arena PvP game, and it locks content behind a grindwall and offers to let you pay to grind faster.

Syndicate is an Assassin’s Creed game, and I’ve only heard people say good things about 2 and 4. Certainly the metaplot does not interest me, and the yearly releases seem to have taken a toll on the quality.