Rainbow Six: Raven Shield (PC)
Tom Clancy goes over the Rainbow for more tactical anti-terrorist action.
By Dan Ackerman

PLATFORM: PC

PUBLISHER: Ubi Soft

DEVELOPER: Red Storm

GENRE: Squad Shooter

ESRB: Mature

SCORE:

Game years are a lot like dog years. Things tend to move at an accelerated pace (except for release dates) and both technology and gameplay styles go out of fashion almost overnight.

Since 1998 – a long time ago in game years – Rainbow Six has been the brand name to beat in the genre it helped to create – tactical squad-based first-person shooters (try saying that five times fast). In the years since then, other games, from Hidden & Dangerous to SWAT 3 to Operation Flashpoint have all capitalized on this mix of strategy and action.

Both the Flashpoint and Rainbow Six series spring from the overactive mind of Tom Clancy. The Stephen King of the cloak and dagger set, Clancy seems to have a new entertainment product of some sort on shelves on a weekly basis – books, games, movies – you name it, he’ll sell it.

Most of the Clancy games fall into a rough universe of the near future where unrest in former Soviet states leads to mayhem and intrigue. In Raven Shield, the latest installment of the Rainbow Six series, we get an oddly out-of-touch storyline that substitutes the usual terrorists with clichéd neo-Nazi types out for world domination. You control the elite anti-terrorist squad out to stop them.

This switch in baddies takes a lot of the timeliness and realism out of the game, which was always one of the main selling points. But once you get past this, you end up with a solid gameplay experience, albeit one that might leave beginners a little mystified.

The appeal of the game – to some – is the complex planning stage. There you get your mission briefing, assemble a team of up to 10 people and set up the plan they’re going to use.

You do this by tracing “waypoints” on a map, color-coded for each team, with special instructions along the way for things like breaching doors, throwing grenades, etc. For a newbie, it’s a daunting task – one for which there is very little guidance in the manual and no online help at all.

It’s an acquired taste, and until you get a good feel for what a mission needs, there’s almost no chance you can set up a decent plan on your own. Fortunately, each mission comes with a default plan you can load up and go. These are generally so complicated, that they make you think you could never come up with something like this without help.

Even if you use the default plan, you’ll have to spend some time studying it and learning what each team does, or you’ll be lost once the mission starts.

Once you enter the mission phase, Raven Shield resembles many other first-person-shooters. In this one, the emphasis is on stealth and caution, as one bullet can kill. And once you lose a team member, they’re gone for good.

You can switch on the fly between teams and members of a team, while the AI takes over whichever characters you’re not playing. In fact, if you’re caught on a section, it might be better to switch to another team member and let the AI handle the situation – they usually play much better than you.

Raven Shield plays almost exactly like the previous Rainbow Six games, so you’ll know what you’re getting. Graphically, however, it’s gotten a major upgrade, working off the newest Unreal engine. So textures and environments look very up-to-date. But, you’ll still find yourself in a lot of warehouses or industrial plants surrounded by wooden creates, like just about every other game ever made.

Your team is comprised of a wide-ranging group of agents, including several hard-hitting female members. In actual gameplay it really doesn’t make that much of a difference, but it’s refreshing to hear a female voice crackle over the radio occasionally with a spirited, “Tango down!”