Why I Ditched Call of Duty for Rainbow Six Siege

When I played the Rainbow Six Siege beta last summer I wasn’t sure that I would like the game that much. I was very much a Call of Duty player, and had been ever since the launch of the Xbox 360 and Call of Duty 2. I was a beast at that game, and continued to hold my own against the youngin’s all the way through Black Ops 3… but it was getting stale.

The Call of Duty games started trying to be something they were not. They added jetpacks, ridiculously unbalanced kill streak rewards, and abilities… It was no longer the Call of Duty I loved so much… it was becoming something else.

And I totally get that it would have become boring if it just stayed exactly the same also, so I definitely give it up to the developers for trying to make it feel new year after year, but I think the game has just run it’s course.

Even when Titanfall came out in March of 2014, it felt different enough to hold my attention. It had jetpacks and wall running and mechs, but it wasn’t a Call of Duty game, it was Titanfall, so it felt like those things were supposed to be in the game. When those things were introduced to Call of Duty, it didn’t feel like a Call of Duty game anymore. And it might have actually been a good thing, if it wasn’t in the Call of Duty series. And I know I’m not the only one that feels this way, which is evident by the decline in Call of Duty sales over the years. I think Call of Duty Infinite Warfare will do decently well, but only because they are packaging it with a remastered version of Call of Duty 4… that’s probably the only reason I’m going to buy it…

So while the Call of Duty experience was dwindling, I was super excited for Black Ops 3, which is why I didn’t feel that I would like Rainbow Six Siege when I played it during the beta period. The game was fun, but I was used to the fast paced action of Call of Duty, and Black Ops 2 was one of my favorite in the series, so naturally I was excited for Black Ops 3.

Black Ops 3 came out on November 6, 2015 and I was immediately hooked. I was playing a few rounds every day, whether it was before work or during my lunch break, and was even streaming some of my matches. The game felt better than Advanced Warfare did, and definitely had that Black Ops feel to it. I honestly didn’t think I was going to buy Rainbow Six Siege at this point…

I figured Rainbow Six Siege would be a Gamefly game, or at least one I waited for a sale before I purchased, but for some reason xMrBelding1 was able to convince me to buy it on launch so that we could play together.

When we first started playing it, I wasn’t a fan at all. The fact that there were no respawns, that the game was super slow paced, that I had to plant bombs (which is never a mode I played in Call of Duty), I just didn’t like it. Not to mention that the game was rushed to release and it was pretty damn broken when it came out on December 1, 2015.

For a while I still continued to play Black Ops 3 and was still holding my own even though a lot of these kids had a lot more time to play, and get good, but I still found some time to play a couple rounds of Rainbow Six Siege a week.

Fast forward a couple months and Ubisoft starts releasing free maps and operators, as well as making huge patch updates (in addition to minor updates), and the Siege was starting to come into it’s own. I was really starting to enjoy it a lot more compared to Call of Duty.

The slow paced, strategic element of the game was much more appealing to the fast paced insanity of Black Ops 3, and the idea of actual teamwork, made Siege slowly take over all of my game playing time. It just feels like more of an adult game. I find that I’m not being matched up with a lot of really young kids (of course there are still some), and most of the time people actually use their mics to communicate with the team as opposed to just spewing racist garbage. It’s just so much more enjoyable when your team gets a win and you get a few kills. There’s a better sense of accomplishment than just running around killing a bunch of people in Call of Duty.

I can honestly say that I have not played Black Ops 3 in probably 6 months in any capacity. I have zero desire to play an FPS that isn’t Siege at this point (although I am looking forward to Titanfall 2).

As mentioned above, I do have Titanfall 2 on pre-order, cause I loved the first one, but I keep going back and forth about Infinite Warfare. This might actually be the first Call of Duty game I don’t buy on launch day, although I’m sure I’ll end up buying it at some point when it’s on sale.

Rainbow Six Siege is extremely cheap these days, I highly recommend picking it up.