Rainbow Six: Siege is a game that represents some trouble for a writer, for no matter what colorful words I may put to the page, I can never quite depict the tension of an actual match. If you've been paying attention, you know this isn't exactly the Rainbow Six you've played before--the vibrant single-player settings of

Miraculously, we survived, even though the overwhelming amounts of debris flying throughout the room had convinced me that we were sure to fail. That left one more bomb to defuse, and so we initiated the measured crawl toward our second goal. The five of us chose to split up, two of us monitoring the direct entrance, which was protected by a clump of barbed wire, while the other three made their way upstairs, then back down to a secondary entrance. It was a successful strategy: my closest teammate and I fended off the few terrorists that tried to make a move, and our comrades moved into the room through the second entrance, slashing away the barbed wire that filled the area.

I decided to amp up the aggression, and slinked quickly from door to door, downing every baddie that dared to enter my line of sight, all while the incessant beeping reminded me that the bomb has yet to be neutered. The excellent AI put up a struggle, of course, but team Raven Shield defused the bomb and won the match, leaving me to gloat for leading the team in kills, though not in total points earned. It may not have been my greatest shooter moment ever, but in a game as consistently nail-biting as Rainbow Six: Siege, every one of those killed felt earned. And when the game is released to the public on October 13, I look forward to earning even more.