Rainbow Six Siege is undeniably fun. The quick matches split between attacking and defending are just open enough that each one feels different, and no matter how skilled you are you can always be bested.
Every in-game event in Rainbow Six Siege puts a new spin on this gameplay formula, and Grand Larceny was no different. It switched out all primary weapons for shotguns, and changed the objective to guarding or stealing gold from locked safes.
It was chaotic, screwing with many of the dynamics between Operators that the game is built upon, but it also highlighted a gap in the game mode roster that Ubisoft needs to fill.
If that hasn’t offended too many of the purists out there, let’s get into the Rainbow Six Siege Grand Larceny review.
Old But New
Grand Larceny introduced a brand new game mode, Stolen Goods, which was a lot shorter than the standard game modes. There was no hostage, bomb, or even a preparation phase, just a building full of cash. Said building was a special version of the Hereford map.
Players simply chose their Operators, and then went about either attacking the building in order to steal the loot, or defend it from those very attackers. As you’d expect, the teams switched half way through to bring balance to each match, but three quick wins was still a shortcut to victory.
Hereford was the perfect spot for Grand Larceny, and not just because Ubisoft tarted it up with a new theme. The floors and walls were mostly wood, meaning they were breakable. This meant that it was easy as both an attacker and defender to simply shoot through the floor to have a safe fall down to you.
While most of the content in this event was familiar, the Operators, their abilities, and the map, it felt fresh and fun because of the new rules imposed on it.
Attackers
When attacking, a few Operators really began to stand out by the end of the event. Amaru became my favorite, because her Garra allows you to grapple onto high ledges, and ascend to a building’s roof fast.
I found that I had the most success with Amaru because the defending team never expects attackers to come in on the top floor. The generally accepted tactic was to break in through the lower floors and work your way up.
However, Finka also saw a lot of attention, because her Adrenal Surge can revive players from a downed state, and give them an edge in the heat of combat.
While I’m sure I was about as successful as an attacker as I was as a defender, being on the attacking team always felt like more of a slog. Defenders can easily secrete themselves away in the corner of a room, and when you’re looking for safes to crack, you don’t always check your corners.
With that said, if defenders were ever too overwhelmed, and chose to cower and hide, it was easy to crack the three safes required for victory.
Defenders
I definitely had the most fun in Grand Larceny as a defender. My go to Operator was Pulse, and nobody else ever seemed to pick him. His Cardiac Sensor makes it possible to track attackers through walls, up to a certain range.
This meant that all I needed to do was find the location near the most safes, pull out the Cardiac Monitor, and look out for signs of enemy life. Any pings I got were automatically sent to my team, and the attacker was quickly dispatched.
The only issues that defenders face are when a safe is in a room without a destructible floor or ceiling. At times I found that I could detect an attacker in the room below, but I had to drop down through a different room in order to shoot them.
Likewise, if a safe ever started off, or fell into, a room without a destructible floor, it was much harder to defend. The best spot for safes was always the lowest floor, because it had plenty of items in the environment to hide behind, lying in wait for an attacker.
Just Shotguns
While Operators retained their abilities in Grand Larceny, the new map meant that they were incredibly hard to make use of in these intense, fast-paced matches. That’s why I only opted for Operators with abilities that could be put to use, not ones with abilities that I enjoyed using.
The event also pulled out every custom weapon that an Operator might have, and replaced them with shotguns. I didn’t find this too much of a problem. Shotguns deal a lot of damage over quite a wide spread, even if their range is pants.
The Shotguns only rule meant that everyone had to get in close before they took their shots. You wanted to down your enemy in that first shot, otherwise they could down you with their response.
This led to many battles in which you’d see an Operator move into a room, and simply blast away at the wall in front of you in the hopes that you’d hit them. Sometimes the operator would drop down a hold in the floor, in which case you could still fire away, and probably kill them too.
The shotguns also aided themselves to creating new opportunities. As I’ve already mentioned, blasting holes in the wall was commonplace, as was shooting the safes down to the lowest possible floor. But you could also shoot the floor in order to escape a foe.
Creating new pathways with your weapon doesn’t feel like Rainbow Six Siege, but it does feel like Grand Larceny. In a way this highlights the essence of the event. It’s all about being as dirty as possible with your tactics, dropping down a hole in the floor, only to blast your enemy in the ass through the floor of the room that they saw you in.
The Loot
As with all in-game events, Grand Larceny had a collection of 30 or so cosmetic items. These were all themed around 1920s bank heist gear, smart brown suits, lavish gold-inlaid weapons, and style. I didn’t purchase every item in the collection, but I wouldn’t blame anyone who did.
The Ubisoft Club also put on a large number of promotional challenges. I found that these pushed me to play a few more matches, even when I’d told myself I had to stop for the night. I wouldn’t do that for standard cosmetics in the game, but these looked really good.
Bring Back Stolen Goods
The main thing that Grand Larceny has done is highlight a massive gap in Rainbow Six Siege’s game mode roster. I understand the appeal of the core game modes, but with all of their phases and tactics, they can sometimes just take far too long to be exciting.
Stolen Goods is a fast-paced game mode that gets you in and out of a match in under 10 minutes. I know that doesn’t sound great to everyone, but for me, this is perfect. It’s the entire Rainbow Six Siege experience, just cut down to the basic elements, and thrown into a single game phase.
Verdict
Rainbow Six Siege has had some astounding in-game events, but Grand Larceny feels like it’s worthy of making a bigger impact on the game. With the Outbreak game mode, which debuted in 2018, players thought it was so good that Ubisoft is now making an entire game based on it.
Grand Larceny didn’t differentiate itself from the base game enough to become its own standalone release. However, it did show that there’s a much more refined Rainbow Six Siege experience out there, and it’s a lot of fun.
Hardcore fans of the game may not agree with me. I definitely see the appeal of the team tactics and phases of the standard game modes. Grand Larceny offers something different though. Much like the time period it was inspired by, it’s swish, sophisticated, and it doesn’t let you get bored.
If Ubisoft bought Stolen Goods mode into the main game at some point in the future, I wouldn’t be surprised.
