Fight the ‘War on Terror™’ with Australia’s premiere defender of capitalist freedom, Bennett Ring.
Being the third generation of the Rainbow Six series, Raven Shield has the benefit of years of tweaking and refinement behind it, and right from the very first time you boot the game up this is apparent. It’s not just a simple expansion of the original game -– every area has been polished to the same level of high detail present in an SAS trooper’s combat knife. For those of you who haven’t played an R6 game, here’s a brief rundown on why this isn’t just a first person shooter. Even before the shooting bits, you’ll have to plan each mission -- a process that can take longer than the action phase. After checking out the mission briefing, which usually involve taking out terrorists and rescuing hostages stupid enough to get captured by them, you’re presented with a list of operatives, each specialising in different areas such as assault, demolitions, leadership, and sniping. You can choose up to eight members, which can be split up among one to three fire teams.
Each operative has a detailed military history, and as they progress through missions you’ll find their skills increasing as they gain experience. You’ll soon become attached to certain characters, making their loss a tear-jerking affair. Ok, so you probably won’t cry, but you will definitely feel the loss.
Once you’ve selected your troops, it’s time to kit them out. With more guns than a Branch Davidian safe house, Raven Shield packs over 50 different real world weapons, all modeled gorgeously -- a first for Rainbow 6. Easily the coolest of these are the explosives -– door breach charges, tear gas grenades, concussion grenades, and Claymore mines. . . damn, they’re all good. There are also some funky gadgets, such as heartbeat sensors, sensor jammers and gas masks to help you out in those pantsy situations. Like multiplayer.
Using a 2D map of the mission area you can place waypoints and orders, to trigger teams to throw grenades, snipe, breach doors or just hang out until you give a Go code, which is very useful for synchronising room entries from multiple points. A new planning feature is the 3D camera that shows you the exact viewpoint from each fire team, making it much easier to keep track of exactly where your teams are during the planning stage. It can take up to an hour or so before you’re happy with the plan, but the immense satisfaction felt when it all comes together like a well-oiled getriebekasten can’t be beaten.
Once you’re in the mission, it’s time to jump into the first-person view and take control of the team. You can be any member at any time, with the rest following your preset plan.
Thanks to the ubiquitous Unreal Warfare engine, the visuals are nothing short of scrumptious. Level detail isn’t quite as high as that seen in UT2003, but characters are intricately modeled, right down to the types of grenades found on their belts, and it seems to run much more smoothly than any other game that currently uses the UW engine.
Raven Shield has easily the best grenade effects ever seen in a game, with the concussion and tear gas effects especially jaw-dropping. Equally impressive are the bullet effects, and the wonderful Karma physics engine makes sacking a bad guy a most satisfying affair.
Another nice touch is the ability to open doors a couple of inches, allowing you to chuck a few grenades into the room before making your entrance. This is great, until the AI notices and opens the door all the way, leaving you with a frag in your hand and no place to run. AI is for the most part brilliant and incredibly difficult, but every so often does something stupid like ignore you. The sound effects for weapons are arguably the finest we’ve heard, and the implementation of EAX is superb.
Single-player rocks our world, but the multiplayer is even better. Finally, Rainbow 6 has dedicated server support, and it appears to be stable and simple to set up. Massive thanks to Ausgamers (www.ausgamers.com) for going to the trouble of hosting a server for our test sessions. You rock Term.
The ability to crouch, go prone and lean around corners makes it very difficult to get a clean shot on a smart player. Co-operative mode for up to eight players is supported, and this is simply amazing, allowing you to play through all the campaign missions as well as terrorist hunt and hostage mode. There isn’t a more tense, realistic and exciting co-operative mode available for first person shooter fans. The use of voice comms is highly recommended, allowing you to synchronise door breaches and grenade throws with your buddies.
Adversarial mode, which supports 64 players, is where it’s going to be at. As well as your standard survival and team survival modes, there is pilot rescue mode, where one player is armed only with a pistol and must be escorted to an extraction point by his teammates, while bomb mode is basically the same as Counter-Strike’s. But don’t be fooled into thinking this is a CS clone. Think of it this way –- CS is the preschool of military shooters, while Raven Shield is the PhD. The gadgets, ‘one shot, one kill’ weapons and slower-paced gameplay make Raven Shield an infinitely more realistic game than CS.
This could well be the only fault of Raven Shield –- it won’t appeal to casual first person shooter fans. However, there are a million and one gamers who have graduated from the CS school of realistic shooters, and for them Raven Shield is the natural progression in their journey towards gaming bliss. Congratulations Ubisoft; you’ve delivered one of the finest shooters of the year.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012