Rainbow Six: Siege’s new Outbreak mode is everything we want out of Left 4 Dead 3

There are several reasons to play Rainbow Six: Siege’s new event game mode, Outbreak.

There are several reasons to play Rainbow Six: Siege’s new event game mode, Outbreak.

For starters, it’s a very welcome, dramatic change of scenery from the strategic and deliberately slow-paced gameplay of Siege’s normal PvP modes. It’s chaotic, messy, action-packed, and in other words, a whole lot of fun.

Secondly, and perhaps more impressively, it’s remarkably similar to Left 4 Dead—and for any fan of the zombie-slaying franchise that kicked off its own era of zombie games in the early 2010s, that’s very good news.

The new event game mode is split into two basic types of gameplay, attack and defense, which sounds an awful lot like Siege’s normal mechanics—but trust us, it’s different. There are several different maps and scenarios that you can get queued up into, but the goal of each zone boils down to one of those two circumstances.

When attacking, you’re sent off into the quarantine zone with your squad to make it to some objective. When you reach the objective, you’ll enter a safe zone, where you’ll have to close the zombie-proof door behind you and prepare to open the door on the other side of the room to venture further into the map. Meanwhile, your characters will let out sarcastic, witty quips or banter with one another.

Does that sound familiar? Yeah, because all of that’s also in Left 4 Dead.

There’s also a possibility that you’ll be sent out to retrieve something, or someone, before making it to your next safe zone, which is another common theme in Valve’s zombie-slaying franchise.

When on defense, the similarities keep coming. You trigger some sort of event, and then you sit around and wade through hordes of zombies while you wait for the event to finish. You could be waiting for a thermal charge to detonate, or you could be waiting for a helicopter to come and pick you up. Either way, it functions basically the same with only small differences.

Yeah, that’s also like Left 4 Dead—but don’t get us wrong, that’s not a bad thing. Fans of the decade-old zombie franchise have been waiting for a third installment since the second game came out in 2009. And so far, we’ve been dealt nothing but rumors.

Mixing the stellar graphics, defense mechanics, weapons, and unique tools at each operator’s disposal in Siege with the core gameplay fundamentals of Left 4 Dead has produced a winning formula. We’re just a little sad that the event only lasts for one month.