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Reviewed by UK Guest, 21st Nov 2003. |
| Review Summary: O.K. - 3 and a half stars... |
Overall Score: 3/5
 
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Review: Being a huge fan of the first two Rainbow 6 games, especially the excellent Rogue Spear on p.c., I was really looking forward to this. Now I've played it all the way through I must say that I was left feeling a little underwhelmed. Quite a lot has been changed from the earlier versions for this x-box title, not least the considerable simplification of the mission planning (which has gone completely) and execution elements of the game. I never bothered with the option to plan your team's routes in the earlier games, preffering to let the cpu do all that boring stuff for me, and on the whole, this potentially frustratingly complex element of the game was rendered simple and satisfyingly easy to use, and added an extra element of enjoyment to the game as you gave go codes etc. and worked in tandem with the other groups in your squad. RS3 on x-box simplifies this (or dumbs it down, depending on your viewpoint) by giving you one squad of three team members, all of whom can be controlled quickly and simply through the control pad. This works well and is very easy to use from the word go, but makes this vital element of the rainbow six games feel somewhat lightweight, and the system doesn't really engage you in any cerebral or tactical way at all. You can get your team to follow you, or send them in ahead to clear rooms for you, an option that obviously means that you just sit and observe what is supposed to be the main element of the game - bustin' the terrorists! However, this lightweight and linear approach to the tactical side of the game characterises much of the games other content. The mission objectives themselves are always similar and repetitive, either securing hostages, defusing bombs or bugging phones etc., and are never sufficently different in the context of each mission to make you think anything other than that you have already seen it all. A couple of stealth missions are thrown in for good measure, but don't differentiate themselves from the standard missions or break up the action, or lack of it, enough to add some much needed variety. Graphically, the game is superb, the locations being rendered superbly with excellent graphical effects using the FPS unreal engine. The actual FPS combat itself is pretty good, though by no means action packed in the manner of, for example, half life or castle wolfenstein, and like the game overall, quickly becomes linear and repetitive. x-box live may be the game's saving grace (a market in which I suspect microsoft is pushing games like this towards) but, in single player, to summarise, the game feels lightweight, linear, and often tedious and unexciting. A few missions stand out as genuinely good fun, but on the whole RS3 does not do justice to this once stellar franchise. |
Ratings
| Value For Money: |
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3 |
| Review Score: |
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3 |
| Recommended? | |
No |
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PC & Video Games