Rainbow Six Mobile Alpha preview: A solid start in bringing the FPS to mobile devices

This past week, I received access to Rainbow Six Mobile, which is presently in the Alpha phase of development. During this Closed Alpha, there were two modes available, which were tested across a great variety of phones.

While the game still has a long way to go, and while I still have questions, it played very well and was a blast to get into.

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A look back at a few days of excitement with Rainbow Six Mobile

Fans of Rainbow Six Siege will get to see a pretty familiar layout when it comes to the main menu, and that’s a good thing. Visually it looks pretty great too, for a mobile FPS. Rainbow Six Mobile is still very much a game in its Alpha phase of development, so many things will probably change in the future.

I had access to the game for about a week, being able to play two modes and two maps. Admittedly, I was hoping to play more than just those, but I understand since it’s early development.

Maps and modes that were playable

• Secure Area (Bank)
• Bomb (Border)

Out of the two modes, Bomb/Border was the most fun for me. In this particular mode, players have a selection of Operators for attacking, as well as defending, and each of them felt useful and fun to play. The Operators used are present in Rainbow Six Siege already, so they will undoubtedly feel familiar to players.

Attacking operators

• Ash
• Sledge
• Thatcher
• Thermite
• Hibana
• Ying
• Twitch
• Glaz

Defending operators

• Bandit
• Jager
• Mute
• Rook
• Valkyrie
• Smoke
• Caveira
• Kapkan

I was glad there were 16 playable characters, but I can’t help but wonder how this will be monetized once the game goes live. How many Operators will players start with? There’s not supposed to be any cross-play or cross-progression that I’m aware of, so it will be interesting to see.

The gameplay is solid, and the matches were mercifully short. There’s one thing I don’t want in a shooter on mobile, and that’s the presence of lengthy, tedious matches. Each character felt like they could have a potentially viable spot on the team.

In both attack phases, players had the opportunity to do scouting via drones and scan for the target as well as enemies. The feature serves a great purpose in gathering intel, and also figuring out possible routes for an attack.

It also allows the enemy to figure out where players will potentially go. So, it was a nice double-edged sword.

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Fun, but far from perfect

One thing that did frustrate me was the size of the buttons. I realized all too late that I could adjust these in the settings. I would frequently miss-tap or accidentally tap two things. More than once I tried to rotate my camera, only to start shooting, giving away my presence to the enemy. Occasionally, I would try to climb over a hurdle and wind up squatting behind it.

Neither did the game have any measure of a useful tutorial nor did it explain what the various buttons in the game did. If you couldn’t decipher it by what was in the image, you were on your own. Thankfully, most of them were pretty self-explanatory.

It's very satisfying to come back and win, but it's even better to just stomp a team down (Image via Ubisoft)

I imagine that will come in the future, when the game is closer to release. The game actually played very well though. The targeting and scoping felt solid, and the matches were intense, fun, and fast. Even as someone who doesn't play a ton of mobile shooters, I had a blast.

One thing that bothered me was the movement speed, though. When scoping or squatting, this slow movement speed made a lot of sense. But the general walking speed of the various Operators in Rainbow Six Mobile infuriated me. They would take their sweet time going anywhere. While these matches were only a few minutes long, there was no time for ultra slow walking.

The game is exciting to play, even if the walking speed is a little frustrating (Image via Ubisoft)

I don’t think they need to run, but perhaps a bit of an increase in the movement speed would go a long way in the future. Again, this is an Alpha, so there’s still tons of room to improve things.

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How did Rainbow Six Mobile look and sound?

As viewers can see in the above visuals, the game is not ultra-realistic. The graphics are almost cartoony in their presentation, and that fits just fine on a mobile device. The characters look cool and unique, but they're not as visually striking as Rainbow Six Siege on PC and console.

Again, this is an Alpha, and these visuals might change over the coming months. The music is largely unmemorable, though. It's a jazzy little tune in the main menu and when it comes to character selection, but that's it. I will say that I enjoyed the sounds of the gunfire, reloading action, and the characters dropping their one-liners at the start of a stage.

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Final verdict on Rainbow Six Mobile's Alpha test

I loved playing Rainbow Six Mobile during this Alpha testing phase. It felt good, it felt fun, and the various guns and characters were all solid. You could definitely tell when a player was a bot, but thankfully not all of my matches were filled with them.

I’m also curious to see how this game will grow for further tests. My main complaints were, frankly, the slow speed of character movement and the size of the buttons. At least one of those could be fixed in-game during the test.

Rainbow Six Mobile is still young, but it's an incredibly fun experience (Image via Ubisoft)

When it comes to Rainbow Six Mobile, I’m also very interested to see how much common ground it will have with the base game, Rainbow Six Siege. Whether it’s about brand-new Operators, new maps that aren’t available elsewhere, or cosmetics.

The game still has some way to go, but it felt very good so far. It was especially satisfying to round a corner and drop three players back-to-back.