Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3 (Xbox)

A standard mission will start you off with a situational briefing and overview of your objectives. After the briefing you'll pick your team of up to eight operatives in as many as three different fire teams, and then outfit them with a wide variety of realistic weaponry. You can choose to map out a mission plan for you and your AI-driven team mates, or you can just drop into the mission and figure things out on the fly.

Raven Shield allows for cooperative and competitive online play, but unfortunately there's no mechanism that allows you to play cooperatively with friends through missions in a linear order with the storyline intact. This missing feature aside, cooperative play is still a great feature, and a refreshing break from standard death match play.

There are several significant improvements in Raven Shield, most notably the use of the Unreal graphics engine. It's vastly superior to previous games and provides crisp, clean graphics that are beautiful enough to help suspend disbelief--a feat that's typically more difficult for games with modern settings. New controls in Raven Shield such as incremental door-opening and fluid movement controls allow for much stealthier (and thus more fun) movement around the map.

Rainbow Six: Raven Shield should appeal to anyone who favours realism in games and is tired of fast-paced but mind-numbing first person shooters. --Jon Grover

This really isn't the game I exspected it to be. I invisioned a Splinter Cell game but with a team of operatives instead of the one. If you want a stealth game buy one of the Splinter Cells (very good games all of them). Furthermore, as FPS's go this wasn't very good and apart from the film at the beginning the graphics weren't very pleasing either.

The one thing (apart from the film) that I liked was the Zulu command thing, it could have been good...


Go, go, gooo!!   July 26, 2005
DVD Fan (london, United Kingdom)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I fairly new to xbox and this was one of the first games I bought due to reviews, and high opinions of the game. I glad to say I think the game is great. Very realistic locations, detalied graphics and weapons and lots of fun to be had. You have 14 missions basically to shoot terrorists and defuse bombs rescue hostages. Some missions are great especailly like the Villa, Penthouse and The Rock rip off of Alcatraz sneaking into the shower area just like the film! I maybe new to xbox but think this early game is great value for money. You have a traininning mode for newbies to the gerne, practice any mission, or use a location just to hunt down terrorists. You have to be careful to as enemy AI is very good spotting you early, running away and investigating noises. You can choose your rifle and other weapons before the mission depending on what tactics area you are in, wide open spaces sniper rifle, close quarters sub-machine gun etc. You can also use night vision and thermal goggles to add to the fun. This is great fun and an Xbox live game to with new maps to download and hours of fun to be had at a bargain price. Scope this out!


Underwhelming, annoying   April 11, 2005
dhbooks
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

Before you read further, I have to warn you that I didn't actually finish the game - I played about a third before trading it in.

I didn't like the game at all, even though I was a huge fan of the original game and it's various expansions. The first thing that annoyed me was the fact that the planning stage of the mission was left out - meaning that you could no longer craft tactics prior to starting.

I also felt that the game was hugely linear compared to previous efforts. The first mission is a prime example of this, with the only deviations being when a path briefly forked before rejoining.

The graphics weren't anything near the standard that I would've expected from Red Storm - the same company that gave us the brilliant Splinter Cell - and the voice acting started to bug me about five minutes in.

It felt like Rainbow Six-lite, and whilst some elements were fun, it felt like a game with potential rather than a top quality tactical squad shooter. You'd be better off going with Ghost Recon.


Counter-Strike beater!   July 29, 2004
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

Wow! Definitely the most absorbing and engrosing first-person shooter I've played on the X-Box. I only got round to buying this recently at the reduced price and boy was it worth it.
This is one of the most hyper-realistic war FPS games I've ever played.
***Enemy AI is outstanding (enemies are intelligent enough to shoot their hostages if provoked, seek the nearest cover, shout for backup and run away or retreat when outnumbered). There are lots of terrorists to shoot too so rarely a dull moment to be had! And head shots are lethal, needing only one well-aimed shot. This also means the difficulty level is very high, and with only 2 save points allowed per mission (with large maps to get through), and a team of limited abilities (if you don't send them to cover when under fire they'll get wiped out very quickly), it means the going gets frustratingly tough at times, especially on the highest "Elite" setting.
***The choice of weapons and equipment is impressive, and with a few additions. There are the usual knives, pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, grenade launchers and automatics of course, but there are also new weapons like chain guns (e.g.M203), explosives (e.g.Claymores or remote charges) and several types of grenade for different uses, (including tear gas with the appropriate effects on your vision!).
***The animation is smooth and the graphics engine is excellent with some impressive light and shading effects (based on the Splinter Cell engine - you'll recognise some of the "moving curtain" effects from there).
***Sounds are of a high quality, with an atmospheric orchestral soundtrack, not to mention realistic sound effects - including human voices from your team members ("Contact! Tango rear!" for example) and crackling interference on the mic. In fact, when you use the headset, you can give voice-activated instructions to your team, which works surprisingly well. It gives you a hell of a kick to shout "Open Flash & Clear" to your team at a doorway, and watch them charge in and clear up all the terrorists! Clever stuff.
***Single player is addictive as hell - great cut-screens develop the storyline and characters nicely. It also serves as a kind of briefing before the next mission. There are various (up to 3) objectives per mission, but your route through the map does tend to be fairly linear. Still, there are lots of entry points to most rooms - give the "Zulu" code and you can command your team to enter via a different doorway to you as you move into position. Another clever touch.
***The online multiplayer game can be a bit jerky and annoying at times I found, and with varying levels of shooting accuracy. Then again, I guess it's just dependent on the weapon you use and how good/bad a player you are!
***Maps vary in size - they're demanding with several levels (accessible via stairways or slopes, like the 6-storey car park map "Parkway"), rooms and places to take cover behind (e.g. oil drums, vehicles and explodable boxes).
***The actual gameplay is fantastic, and although not as fast-moving as other games (RS3 is mainly based around stealth tactics, using cover and grenades), you will find that you meet your opponents quickly as they "spawn" nearby. This speeds things up a great deal.
***Controls are virtually identical to other FPS games and is fairly easy to just pick up and play, although Counter Strike regulars may get a bit confused with the lack of a jump button and the slow turning of the character at first. The "peek around the corner" function (D-pad left/right) will also take some getting used to.
***There's plenty of new downloadable content now available, with around 5 new maps and a new multiplayer game option.

To sum up, this is a brilliant game with some great touches and a lot of fun to be had, but you need to have a lot of patience. Try before you buy if possible. If you want the most realistic modern war FPS on the X-Box, go for this. If you want something more arcade-style with less realism, go for Counter Strike.

Looking forward to RS3:Black Arrow now!