Rainbow Six Mobile‘s limited closed beta begun as of 12 September for limited countries. It being a competitive game isn’t my cup of tea, but since it’s available, I might as well try, right? Besides, perhaps my experience with it could give you a baseline of expectations.

OPTIONS

It being a competitive shooter, the options are what I consider key. They’re basically as follows:

• HUD Customization Tool: Most buttons on the screen can be shifted around with size scaling and opacity
• Gameplay: Auto swapping, hipfiring, auto-vault, Tactical Focus (auto-shoot), aim assist, input steps for weapon, deploying, throwing, display ammo counter arc, show network status
• Touch controls: Sprint lock, alternate fire button display, lean / flip slider behavior, left / right double tap
• Sensitivity sliders
• Language: Subtitles on / off, menu language in English, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, and spoken in English, French, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese
• Audio sliders with options for voice chat and adjusting microphone volume

The HUD customization especially is a highlight since many games typically don’t have these, whether they’re mobile titles or otherwise.

PRESENTATION

There’s no graphics options, so what you see is what you get right now. It’s fine, decently detailed, and you can spin the Operator on your homescreen around to see their fit. Since it is in beta, I think my sound cuts out when I play an actual game which isn’t ideal.

I don’t have any particular comments on how it looks besides the UI feeling a mite cluttered on a small screen.

GAMEPLAY

My first impression is “heavy”. It gives the feeling of being slow and methodical as you first head out to your next position. I do wish there was an actual training are that I could move around to get to better grips with the controls, which I suppose I can hope for post beta. You see, there’s also quite a few buttons on the screen and I’d really like a space outside of a match to try things out. There’s the Training playlist but what I’m asking for is a sandbox.

Before a match properly kicks off, Attackers come with drones for default to scout and Defenders get the time to set up barricades and barbed wire. Then it’ll be off to the races, with Attackers rappling in or breaking down walls, and Defenders huddling at the objective.

Unless it’s a headshot, both allies and opponents can get downed and revived unless you double tap. Everyone should be able to revive once you get close to revive, but I found this prompt to be quite finicky. Other buttons on the screen include the lean buttons, your gadgets, melee weapon, both your weapons, all the necessary info, basically.

The game comes with an auto-shoot that requires you to hold down the aim button and it’ll fire as soon as it detects an enemy. As convenient as this is, I find the recoil on mobile is fairly brutal, requiring you to make some allowances even with a function some might consider to be against competitive integrity. It helps newer people (me) play with some level of competency.

When it comes to Operators, you can obtain a number of Tickets that let you trial an Operator during a match. With enough Tickets and games under your belt, you will be able to permanently unlock them. If you happen to be last pick and someone took the Operator you were planning to unlock, well, too bad then. Operators are also separated into Attack and Defense types, so if you had wanted to bring someone like, say, Ash, to Defense, that is not an option.

The in-game shop is currently not available so I can’t check the rates on the Operator Tickets because the rarer ones require more Tickets to trial – therefore unlock – them, and there is Platinum you can get to unlock the Premium Battle Pass. Speaking of the Battle Pass, the free track seems to get you everything essential so the Premium option isn’t “necessary”, at least for this stage.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

As far as I can tell, it seems like a pretty good entry in the Rainbow Six series, bringing the Siege gameplay to more people around the world. After completing a round, my phone feels quite hot, which is yet another thing that would probably be better optimized closer to launch.

I’ll keep an eye out for now, and see how its own scene might grow.