Previously called Rainbow Six Quarantine, and renamed in light of the on-going global COVID-19 pandemic, Rainbow Six Parasite eschews the realistic approach of the hugely popular tactical shooter it is based on for a game with glowing parasitic alien organisms that turn people into mutant zombie monsters. There is an on-going ‘Technical Test’ for select players, which was meant to happen behind closed doors, so to speak - though the system requirements of the game based on this test are public. We’ve had a smaller leak already, but that was only a couple of seconds long as opposed to this recent stream that pushed an hour. Many of the gameplay staples of Rainbow Six Siege are present here as well, such as destructible environments, buildable barricades, drones and some returning operators; those confirmed by this leak include Alibi, Lion, Vigil, Ela, Finka, and fan-favorite Tachanka. Based on what we’ve seen, there is a lot of Left 4 Dead DNA in the gameplay design, alongside the obvious traits lifted from the limited-time Outbreak mode in Siege, the popularity of which spawned this spin-off in the first place. Essentially, each mission requires operators to gather intel and tissue samples, with the maps divided into sections with airlocks in between that act as safe zones. As you progress through these sections, each one will ramp the difficult up compared to the previous one. Operators will face a variety of mutated, infected enemies - so far, we’ve seen ones called Archaeans, melee enemies with multiple variants. These opponents are a good showcase of limited stealth elements present, as their heads glow depending on whether or not they’ve spotted you. Archaeans, in real life, are a specific type of single-celled organisms, and they definitely don’t have huge blade-arms. Players who get stuck in a combat area after the airlock is sealed or fail to reach the extraction point can be rescued by their teammates. In these cases, those players who did reach the safe zone must venture back into the area and find the unlucky operator stuck in a “archaean tree”, which is a clump of infected biomass attached to their body. Since this is a technical test demo, there are a lot of finer details missing from the game. Many of the voiceovers are simple text-to-speech instead of actually voice acted, and there are many animations that seem like they’re placeholders.
