I got by fine most of the time, but it kept me from winning one particularly painful 1v2 scenario that I almost clutched with a sniper rifle. It was a pretty bumpy ride with the biggest fps dips happening whenever the action ramped up. I didn't notice any difference when using picture-in-picture, but that's only because my performance was already inconsistent on an RTX 2060. That tracks with Nine to Five: the developers I played with told me the picture-in-picture mode could hinder performance. It's a neat system that Siege fans have requested for years, but has never happened because the performance cost of rendering two viewports at the same time is too high. The same maneuver isn't quite possible in Siege (you'd have to watch them on camera and then exit that view to control your character). At one point, I used the picture-in-picture view to literally watch an enemy approach the wall I was hiding behind and easily take them down as they entered my view.

You can fly the drone around like normal, but you can also leave it to monitor an area and watch its live feed from a picture-in-picture window on your HUD. I really like Nine to Five's twist on the traditional hovering drone that I've flown in dozens of games. The absence of some of Siege's more outlandish intel tools like footprint scanners, laser cameras, or bomb drones leaves a bigger emphasis on the core info-gathering power of the single flying drone you get each round. You won't run into too many surprises as long as you know that drones can spot you, doors can be barricaded, and auto-turrets are a thing. It's not quite as pure as CS:GO's unchanging arsenal, but it's also not the overwhelming avalanche of character-specific abilities and tools that new Siege or Valorant players have to contend with. The heavy 'Man of Steel' armor, for instance, can carry more tactical grenades and absorb more damage while the standard body armor I used most of the time could bring more passive abilities like reduced fall damage or an automatic alert when you've been pinged by a drone. Any weapon can be selected by any player, but which gadgets and abilities are available to you depends on your equipped armor set (the closest thing Nine to Five comes to specific classes or operators). The gadgetsĮvery player can carry a drone, a few secondary gadgets, and usually a few passive abilities. I'm skeptical of this approach as a fan of mind games, but maybe a predictable pattern will emerge once I have hours of each map under my belt.

Since the location of an objective is random, you can't really play the same mind games you would in Counter-Strike or Siege to anticipate which bomb site the defense will favor.

Rainbow six siege tactical maps