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Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield
by
Jolex Del Pilar
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
The team returns to the gaming world of counter-terrorism with a graphics upgrade and a few more tricks up their sleeves.
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Title:
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield
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Platform:
Pentium III 800, 128MB Ram, DirectX 8.1, 32mb videocard. |
Publisher:
Ubi Soft
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Developer:
Red Storm Entertainment
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#
of Players: 1-16
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Genre:
Action
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Origin:
United States
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Expected
Release: Out now!
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Grapevine:
"The Rainbow Six experience has always been rooted in its gameplay." |
It's hard to believe that Rainbow Six has maintained itself as a viable license for so long. Maybe it's the intriguing view of counter-terrorism that the game depicts, or maybe it's the "thinker's approach" to the game that attracts gamers, whatever it is, the game is still here after 5 years in an industry where games can appear and disappear within 6 months.
I got my first look at the game at last year's E3 (E3 2002). That's where I first learned that Raven Shield wouldn't be developed by the same team that had done the original R6 and the subsequent Rogue Spear. Instead, this game would be going to Ubi Soft Canada in Quebec. At first I was skeptical but, this being one of my favorite series of PC gaming, I went in opened minded. After playing the final version (Patched 1.1), I'm glad that the spirit of the series has been maintained while adding a few aesthetic and mechanical changes to the gameplay.
The aesthetic changes were few but they are worth explaining. First off your gun, represented only as a targeting reticule in previous games, now has a graphical representation ala Half-Life or any other recent FPS game. This isn't a big change but it does cut down on your total viewable screen as the bottom-right quadrant is partially occupied by a "gun" graphic. The rest of the graphical changes are generally positive. The whole graphics engine has received a major upgrade. This is both a good and a bad thing. On the positive side, the game now looks fantastic. The game features higher-rest textures and much better lighting effects than previous versions of the game. However, it comes at a cost. Not only is the minimum system requirement for the game now an 800mhz PC (Rogue Spear ran fairly well on a 300Mhz PC), you need a fairly decent video card to get the most out of the new graphics engine. I tried the game on two cards, a GeForce 4, and an old ATI card that was more representative on what would be on a common 800Mhz home PC. The GeForce 4 displayed the new graphics engine flawlessly. The common ATI card however struggled. This card did meet Red Storm's stated minimum requirements (32mb, DirectX 8.0 compatible), however it struggled even on the lowest graphics settings with very erractic performance. Clipping, lost shadows, lighting artifacts galore, you name it, the graphics engine completely ran over the pitiful ATI card. Now this wouldn't be a problem had it been any other game besides a Rainbow Six title. Unfortunately that is not the case. What made the previous Rainbow Six games so great was that, notwithstanding a few A.I lapses, the graphics engine and general coding was seamless. The previous games would work on just about any system near the minimum at a fairly respectable frame rate. This is the first game to not follow that same trend in the series. Trying to run Raven Shield at anywhere near the stated minimum would be an exercise in futility, even with the lowest graphical settings. Personally, this is a trend I do not like.
However, supposing you do have the hardware, the game is pretty. The aforementioned lighting effects, shadowing, and texture details makes for one pretty game. The environments didn't seem much biggest than previous games, but they did look a lot better.
With your mouse, you can point at doors and give quick commands like "open" or "open and frag" to your team members.
One thing that made Rainbow Six a good game was the details and general mood of the game. The original was a very intense experience. At any given time you could be shot and the game would be over. No health packs, no quad-damage, just you, your gun, and your wits. Fortunately, this has not changed. Raven Shield is as tense as the previous games and perhaps more so due to slightly improved A.I. Tangos will now react more realistically to sounds and noises they hear. No more wildly running tangos, these guys will calmly investigate a scene and linger around for a few seconds before going back to their post. The general animations have gotten a lot better too. Tangos will yawn, scratch themselves, and even look over their weapon while idle. When you actually do get the drop on them, the tangos fall in much more realistic ways than they did in Rogue Spear. No more twirling ballerina deaths, they just stop and drop. Like previous games, Raven Shield makes great use of sound in terms of mood setting. You will hear footsteps, silenced shots, and whistling tangos. It's all here and adds greatly to the overall environment.
The menus and briefings have benefited from some aesthetic touches. In the briefing stage, small video clips will play in the background which show real-life representations of the hardware you will use in Raven Shield, nice touch. The 3D planning map is just as easy to use as in previous games. One interesting touch is when you lay waypoints during planning; you can actually see what your operatives will see at those particular waypoints. Before you just had to guess that the nondescriptive line would be a wall, but in actuality it would be a gate where tangos would mercilessly shoot through, dropping your guys like sacks of potatoes. Now you can see exactly what your guys will see at those waypoints.
Speaking of hardware, some things work differently in this game than in previous games. Before heart beats sensors, the mythical R6 tool, used to employ a tiny radar screen that represented tangos as red blips. Many complained that this was highly unrealistic, and in actuality it was. If you had that technology some argued, why not just place tons of these outside a building instead of bringing in hand-held units in with the operatives. In Raven Shield, the heart beat sensor now works as sort of a sonar or radar system. You can still tell if there is a heart beat behind a wall (represented by a radar-like pinging on your screen) but you will have no idea on whether it’s a hostage or a tango. This reduces the usefulness of the all-powerful heart beat sensor without stripping it completely of its utility.
The new thermal sight for sniper rifles is really cool.
The other non-technical hardware (guns, frags, flashbangs) are all pretty much the same as they were in previous games. A few new guns here and there (heavy machine guns) but nothing extremely out of the ordinary.
Multiplayer hasn't changed much from Rogue Spear. Along with the regular missions, you can play Tango hunts and team squad modes with friends. Ubi Soft offers an online play service if you don't happen to have friends (who like the game like you).
The Rainbow Six experience has always been rooted in its gameplay. Regardless of the new graphics engine and other aesthetic additions to the game, does it play as well as previous games? The answer is yes. Whether it's raiding an oil refinery or rescuing hostages from a multi-level building, Raven Shield maintains the CQB/CT feeling and mood from previous games of the series.
Raven Shield will probably satisfy 90% of previous Rainbow Six fans. The other 10% might be turned off by certain changes (gun showing on screen, new PC requirements), but on the whole, there will be a lot of converts from previous games.
--- Jolex Del Pilar, Rainbow Six fan since 1998!
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