by Igor - June 19, 2003

Come Raven Shield, the 2nd sequel to the ever-popular Rainbow Six. The concept of Counter-Terrorism is back. With all new missions and a plethora of features, Ubi Soft sets out to dominate the tactical shooter market. How will it succeed? Why, by using the infamous Unreal Tournament 2003 engine! All that remains is to neutralize the terrorists which may stand in the way.

Gameplay

As usual, the tactical shooter theme is all about counter-terrorism, and that is exactly what you get to do.

The story begins with the end of World War II, Nazis stashing their documents and making a run for their lives. Half a century later, a Neo-Nazi terrorist group comes back to the bank to burn the documents � only to be encounter Team Rainbow, the highly elite counter-terrorist world-wide organization.

The first mission starts out with your run-of-the-mill kill-the-evil-terrorists situation. They are threatening to blow up an Oil Refinery in Venezuela (the same mission as in the single player demo), and will use their crude grenades to so unless stopped. Team Rainbow comes to the rescue, and neutralizes all the terrorists.

When you finish a mission, you can see a newscast about the previous mission. So you kill all the terrorists, and do you even get an acknowledgement? No, it usually goes to the local police or the local special forces (i.e. London police, or SAS). Afterwards, you are given several briefings by a psychologist, strategist, and the mission CO.

Before actually starting a mission, there are several screens you must go through. One of them is the �Team Selection and Equipment� screen. You pick your team, to a maximum of 8 members, out of several classes, such as the Assault, Electronics, Demolitions, Recon, etc. The team members themselves hail from many different countries, and I was quite sad to see all but one of my Russian comrades die in the first few missions (when I didn�t know just what I was doing).

The variety of equipment is substantial; you can pick almost any popular weapon you can think of � even the �terrorist� AK-47! Also, you can install silencers, extra ammo, or scopes on any of your weapons. Truly wonderful. The true choice lies in the miscellaneous equipment, however; buy a flashbang or a frag grenade? A smoke grenade or a heartbeat sensor? Each mission lets you utilize different equipment; you shouldn�t have the same loadout more then once!

Passing the briefing and the equipment screen, you are greeted with the most strategic part of the game � the mission plan. As in previous Rainbow 6 games, you can make your own plan, or use one of the default ones (but where�s the fun in that?) � and if you feel very confident, you can sit back at your chair, observe the plan, watch the mission unfold before your eyes without touching the keyboard more than a few times. Thanks to the beauty of �Go-Codes,� you can coordinate your team movement such that you infiltrate a room at the same time with two teams or more. Or throw in a flashbang before you enter the room. The mission plan lets you do all that, and more.

Speaking of the mission plan, you don�t have to observe the game once you finish the plan � you can hop into the battle (albeit it�s either observing or participating) and command your squad. They will follow whichever person you are controlling. You can either follow the waypoints from the mission plan, or go off and do your own thing. One bad thing I found, however, was that it was not always beneficial to me to be the leader. Giving orders is just fine, but trying to give an order to clear a room after it has been flashbanged is something else.

As for the orders, you can tell your teammates to do almost anything you can tell them to do on the mission plan. Select a door, and you instantly are presented with several options, such as �Grenade the room, Clear the Room, Grenade & Clear the Room.� You can also tell your squad members to move somewhere on the level by pointing there and using the radio, or just order them to go to an object and perform an action upon it. My only pet peeve here was that the AI would open the door completely before throwing a grenade inside, instead of opening it just a little bit, just enough for a grenade to fall through. Nor would they close the door after throwing a flashbang in.

The AI itself wasn�t too bad, I thought it very good compared to many games of today. Your squad mates don�t follow the waypoints � they follow you, and then and there I noticed that they never got stuck! What do you know -- it is possible to make bots, which will not get stuck when trying to traverse a level. The same can�t be said for the enemy AI, most of the time they just sit there and wait for you to come get them. Whatever happened to patrolling the map?

The Unreal engine and the pretty colors

Raven Shield is one of the few recent games that utilizes the Unreal Tournament 2003 engine. The result? Purely spectacular graphics. For a well playing game like Raven Shield, all that one would be missing would be the graphics. Fortunately, it does its job even there. High detailed enemies, high detailed friendlies, high detailed levels; one need only look at the screenshots to appreciate its beauty.

Sound can be used to your advantage

Raven Shield has support for EAX2, and that means that anyone with a 4.1+ surround system may enjoy gaming to the max. Should your skills encompass great hearing, you will be able to tell where the enemies are simply by listening to their footsteps. Those without a surround system, do not fret! You can still get aesthetically pleasing sound out of your speakers. The music too, it really makes you feel the game � as any other game, it smoothly translates from action and soothing depending on what is going on with you in the game.

Teammates scream �Murphy, Murphy� as you shoot them by accident, or �Man down� when a terrorist gets a lucky kill. Be careful not to rouse the terrorists either, should they make much of a noise and you will have all their friends upon you, ready to avenge their comrade�s death.

Multiplayer

There are two main modes of multiplayer in Raven Shield � adversarial and cooperative. Cooperative is self-explanatory and features the same modes as in single player, whilst adversarial features multiplayer-exclusive modes such as survival, a free for all; team survival, a team vs team battle; bomb (one team prevent a bomb from exploding, while the other team must make sure the bomb explodes); hostage (with one team trying to rescue the hostages, the other prevent the rescue), and pilot (ala Counter-Strike�s VIP mode where one team must escort the downed pilot out, the other prevent the rescue).

.. but why do the missions seem the same?

The more you play, the more you realize how similar the missions are. It�s always the same thing � save the hostages, defuse the bomb, plant a bug without being seen � where is the variety we�ve all been waiting for? Granted, the Rainbow Six books are just about that � hostage rescue and terrorist situations, but after all these years, you�d think Red Storm Entertainment would add some fresh features to the series. Makes me miss Ghost Recon, and it�s campaign � it really made you feel like part of the story, whereas Raven Shield seems more of a cluster of missions.

In a nutshell

Those playing the Rainbow Six series from the start should not hesitate; go out and buy this game now.. but then again you probably already did. Those looking for a realistic game, this is definitely your best bet, and the multiplayer alone is worth the money you pay for this game. If you are still not sure, you should try one of the demos � but I hope you don�t get turned off it if turns out a bit complex for you. So what are you waiting for? Try this game today!