This Week In Games: Will Rainbow Six Extraction Wind Up Left For Dead?

This Week In Games: Will Rainbow Six Extraction Wind Up Left For Dead?

It’s now the second-last week of January and that means it’s time to get the Q1 release slate rolling. Funnily enough, it seems like there are only two dates this week that anyone wants to release their game — the 18th and the 20th. This week, the AAA world is all about Rainbow Six Extraction, a three-player PvE shooter that mixes the proc-gen survival of Left 4 Dead with the tactical SWAT gameplay of R6 Siege. It is accompanied by some choice Game Pass drops, and several indie delights.

So, what’s coming out this week?

January 18

 

Nobody Saves The World (Retail, Game Pass)

An action RPG by the creators of Guacamelee!Nobody Saves The World treats Diablo-style character builds as a shapeshifting mechanic. Your character can assume numerous forms and identities to complete whatever quest may lie ahead of them. This one looks like a lot of fun, and I like the playful spin it puts on the genre.

Surviving the Aftermath

A new game from Paradox Interactive and Iceflake Studios, Surviving the Aftermath is a post-apocalyptic colony builder. Your goal is to build a functioning, defendable city to protect your little cluster of humanity from the ravages of the wasteland. It’s been in early access for a while now but finally arrives at 1.0 this week. Great time to hop in and check it out. Hard to believe Bethesda hasn’t spooled up something similar with the Fallout name on it if I’m honest. If that game turns up a year from now, you’ll know where they got the idea.

January 20

Blackwind

This just looks like a fun little mech-based action RPG/dungeon crawler. You are a giant robot, you blow things up, you upgrade your robot. What’s not to love? I’m a simple man. All I’ve ever wanted in life is a Gundam I can pilot. Blackwind understands me on a macro level.

Rainbow Six Extraction (Retail, Game Pass)

This week’s major release is Rainbow Six Extraction, a game about a containing a serious contagion, developed as the world attempted to contain a serious contagion. So close to home was the subject matter that Ubisoft quietly changed the game’s original name, Rainbow Six Quarantine, mid-stream.

None of that is a failure to look ahead on Ubisoft’s part, of course. Games like Extraction are set in motion as much as half a decade prior. There was, of course, no way to know a real-world pandemic would alter its development trajectory, much less a core part of the game’s identity.

It’s also dropping day-and-date on Game Pass, so if you have an active subscription you can jump right in on launch day.

Hitman Trilogy (Game Pass)

All right there in the title line. The entire Hitman: World of Assassination Trilogy is coming to Game Pass this week. That’s so much game. I can’t explain to you how much game that is. I’m personally obsessed with IO’s most recent Hitman trilogy. I will likely have Hitman 3 with the entire trilogy’s worth of content installed on my Series X for the remainder of the hardware generation because I return to it weekly and tick off another challenge. This is a perfect moment for anyone who has never tried these games to dip a toe in, risk-free. Treat it like a rogue-like. Learn from each run, accept failure when it happens, and become a better assassin.

This drop comes at the perfect moment, as Hitman 3 enters its Year 2 content phase.


And that’s it for this week! Anything we’ve missed? Let us know what you’re keen to pick up in the comments below.


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