Title: Fight Night Round 3

Date: 03.06.2006

Genre: Counter-terrorist FPS

Platform: PC

Developer: Red Storm Entertainment

Publisher: Ubi soft

“After a series of terrorist attacks, Team Rainbow uncovers a plan to unleash a lethal nanotech virus. From the streets of Paris, to the islands of the Mediterranean, to the Sahara Desert, Rainbow tracks a global terrorist network, working against the clock to rescue hostages, and defuse ticking bombs.”

After having done a few RTS reviews lately, I was really looking forward to getting back in to the FPS saddle. I was hoping Rainbow Six: Lockdown was going to help welcome me back in to the genre, but over time my hopes slowly faded in to oblivion.

Over the years I’ve played the previous Rainbow titles and have been mostly pleased. However, RSL (Rainbow Six: Lockdown) felt like it was haphazardly thrown together.

Gameplay/Controls
RSL was a fairly easy game to master. Your standard FPS keyboard layout is present in the game. The only obvious difference is the use of your space bar or ‘use key’. When wanting to interact with an object such as a door or computer, you simply aim your targeting reticule at the object and hit your space bar. Up comes a handy menu that allows you to choose different options depending on what the actual object is. For example, if you target a door from a distance, you can order your team to simply open the door or conduct more advanced tactics such as breeching and banging the door. There are a few other objects in the game that can be interacted with, such as computers, bombs, and security systems etc.

Let’s first talk about your team. They’re will always be a deployment of four with you included as the team leader. I was initially impressed with the way the team operated. However, as the game went on, some pretty glaring flaws came out. My team once given the command would stack on a door perfectly. Watching them open the door with a shotgun, breech charge or hammer was nice to look at, but that was about all it was good for. Once they had the door open, there was a noticeable delay before they either threw a flash bang or grenade or simply made entry. It almost looked like they got the door open and were doing the “no, you go first. No, you go first. NO, you go first.” It really should be ‘Breech, Bang and clear’ without any delays. Once they made it in to the room I had designated to be cleared, they did a pretty good job of moving around clearing the entire room.

There were more than a few times when I had ordered them to toss a flash bang or grenade once the door was open, and I watched them try and throw it, only to have it bounce back at them and lay by their feet. Now, any Special Forces operator, heck even my twelve year old sister would have known to get the hell away from it. Did my team? Nope. They stood there at the doorway while the flash bang went off and blinded everyone or the grenade went off killing them all.

If we managed to get past opening the door and making our way in to the room, my team was just average about taking out the enemy. It really was hit or miss on how they performed. Sometimes they would pick out an enemy running around a room and pick him off. Other times they would walk towards an enemy, turn their backs to him and get lit up like a Christmas tree. They were also notorious for walking right in front of my barrel. More so, when I was actually firing my weapon. I took out a few teammates that way.

After awhile, I felt like just going things on my own and leaving them behind. Keep in mind; I’m supposed to be the team leader. What I say goes. I order my team to ‘hold’. What does hold mean? It means stay put. Well, this team must get bored with holding and after a few minutes if you neglect to give them a new command, they’ll decide on their own to follow you, until you tell them to hold again. You also can tell your team to move to a certain location. Most of the times I did that, it was like sending sheep to the slaughter.

The enemy performed slightly better. They used quick peeking quite often, along with cover and concealment. I found myself moving around a bit in order to get to that last enemy ducking behind a stone pillar. What I didn’t like in regards to the enemy was there wasn’t really a need to be stealthy with them. Ninety percent of the time they were facing you, armed and ready to go. The other ten percent, you’d come upon one looking the other way and could take a nice headshot. Everyone in the game, including my teammates, myself and enemies died pretty realistically. Three hits and you were down for the count. As the game progressed and the enemies suited up with body armor, they became more difficult to take down.

There definitely was a nice weapon load-out from you to choose from in the beginning of missions. You had the ability to equip yourself and teammates with a wide variety of weapons from pistols, to shotguns, to submachine guns to heavy machine guns. Most weapons had the ability to add attachments such as suppressors, laser site, higher capacity magazines or a scope. The one I used mainly was the scope attachment. Each weapon will give you a readout on how accurate it is, how much damage it does, the recoil, the ammo capacity and the maneuverability of the weapon itself. About the only noticeable difference from each weapon is the cyclic rate and how accurate it is.

Graphics
Here is where RSL truly shines. If they had put a little more in to the visuals department, this would area would have almost gotten a perfect score. There was some pretty good attention to detail in certain areas of the game. Quite a few inanimate objects could be destroyed. Things like bottles lying around would take one to two rounds and on the next round, would either break or fall over and break. I was superbly impressed with how windows were broken out. The first shot would put a hole in the window.

You could fire a few more times at it and put a few more holes in it. Before long, the entire thing would come crashing down. However, with all that mentioned, why other inanimate objects could not be destroyed was beyond me. They give you night vision goggles (which look and operate perfectly) so you can see in the darkened areas. I’d walk up to a little lantern sitting on a box and try and take it out, you know the whole stealthy thing. To my amazement, it was bullet proof. That and other things like fire extinguishers that were unable to be destroyed bothered me and made me wonder why the developers didn’t make them interactive in the smallest way.

I even had ‘motion vision’. I guess this was supposed to give me the ability to see movement, which I could. Trying to fire at someone and take them out while using this mode was pointless. I used it about twice before giving up on it. I would have traded this for another magazine or even a candy bar to munch on. All of the background objects were highly detailed and refined. I was impressed by when I shot a wall, a nice chunk of the wall was removed and in the center a visible fine point where the round had entered. It looked exactly like if you’ve ever seen pictures of war torn area and a wall had been shot up. Even a little dust was expelled when rounds hit the walls.

Other detail such as raindrops on the screen or having your glasses fog up when you enter a colder climate was nice to see as well. Character models and shading were superb. Every now and then a shadow would be cast incorrectly, with the entire shadow being half way up the wall. Whoops.

Sound
About the best thing in regards to audio was the way the weapons sounded. The suppressed weapons sounded like they were actually suppressed, not completely silent like you find in some games. I would have liked to have seen making your character run for a long period of time produce more than just a couple of quick breathes. I was able to run around for a good distance and be superbly accurate.

Hearing “Tango spotted” and “Tango down” over and over and over again, got pretty damn annoying. The enemies’ audio bank was not impressive either. Your teammates will let you know when they’re taking fire, which is fine. This next part just perplexes me though. When one of your teammates goes down, your commander comes over and let’s you know via comms. Like I just didn’t hear my teammates scream? Then to tell me “leave him behind, medics are enroute”. Right. I’m sure medics will be entering this unsecured area to tend to my fallen comrade. Much more needed to be done in the audio department, but sadly wasn’t.

Overall
If you just have to have every Tom Clancy or Rainbow Six game, then by all means, go out and but this. However, if quality means something to you, then you’d better hold off.

Rainbow Six: Lockdown loses its appeal after about level four. I could only watch my team breech a door so many times before I just walked up to it and opened it myself to save time and finish the level. The game is basically room clearing after room clearing after room clearing. Yes, there were objectives like rescuing hostages and diffusing bombs. Big deal. Been there, done that.

The levels are pretty linear as well. You might occasionally get turned around, but I guarantee you, it is only occasionally and you’re able to recover quickly. Teammates that get in your way and more ineffective than not, along with enemy AI that is just average, doesn’t make for much of a challenge. It will take you some time to make your way through the 16 levels which equates to about eight hours of gameplay. Overall, a lackluster Rainbow Six title in a series of great games.

Game Score

6.2

Reviewed By: Contributed