Rainbow Six 3
Score: 70% ESRB: Mature Publisher: Ubisoft Entertainment Developer: Red Storm Entertainment Media: CD/1 Players: 1 - 16 Genre: First Person Shooter
Graphics & Sound: Rainbow Six 3's graphics hark back to other Clancy titles on the Xbox like Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon. They are quite smooth and not far off from its computer counterpart. Muzzle flash and explosions from grenades, especially incendiary grenades, look very good. It only gets better when a terrorist catches on fire and runs around flailing his arms about until he drops dead. The only bad part to the graphics are the cut scenes, where bad acting and bad looks have been merged into one. The CG isn't anywhere near the quality that can be seen on the computer version of the game. The sound effects are as solid as the visual ones, and do well to accompany them. Each gun you can choose from has its own unique sound, which is delivered with a powerful punch every time you squeeze the trigger. The music is also what you would expect from a game of this caliber, meaning it is timed well and fits the scene, but you won't be hearing much of it during gameplay.
Gameplay: The Rainbow Six games have always been about squad based combat, and focused more on slow movement and planned stealth tactics more than action. Rainbow Six 3 is no different. However, it has been slightly scaled down from the computer version. You play the part of Ding Chavez, one of the more elite members of the very elite squad called Rainbow Six. Instead of outfitting your team and planning the tactics before hand, you instead outfit yourself and lead a team of 3 other soldiers into action and play things by ear. This makes for a little more chaos than you'll find in the computer version. Most of the guns from the computer version have made it into this game, and most of the maps as well. A lot of the levels you'll see will be modified versions of the computer game's maps, but some new ones have been thrown in there as well. They are slightly smaller, but still big compared to most other games of this nature on a console. Apart from the Single-player Campaign mode, your choices get kind of thin. There are some Custom missions, where you simply go hunting for terrorists on any of the single player maps you have defeated. You can also link a few Xboxes together and have at it with a few different game types, including team Deathmatch and cooperative missions. Xbox Live is also supported, and allows for more customization when you get online than just linking your Xbox does.
Difficulty: Newcomers to this series of games may be turned off by how difficult it is at first. While the enemy AI can seem downright retarded at times, it can also be sharp as a knife at others. You will more than once run blindly and helplessly into an enemy ambush, and you may even run into the same ambush multiple times before you are able to figure out a way to get past it. The enemy is also a lot better aim than you are, so unless you can sneak up on them or get them cornered, you're going to have a tough time playing this game.
Game Mechanics: Since you have a controller and not an entire keyboard full of buttons at your disposal, some sacrifices had to be made to the interface. You can only control one character, and you only have one team to order around. If you die, it's game over. You still have almost full control over this team, but being able to split them up or even take control of one of your team members would have been helpful. On the upside, your team seems smarter than it has been in earlier titles of this series. When you tell them to clear a room, they do it and then take up some seriously intelligent defensive positions. Unfortunately, they still suffer from walking into a deathtrap, so for every time they impress you, they will also remind you that they are still mindless automatons. Though there's really not much replay value to the game, and not much extra cool stuff, fans of the series will at least have something to do if they own an Xbox. However, Rainbow Six 3 isn't quite the shining example of the quality that these games have shown in the past. It doesn't fix the howling problems of the previous games and also takes away the squad based tactics that made the others so great. If you're really a fan, check it out. Otherwise, approach with caution.
-Snow Chainz, GameVortex Communications AKA Andrew Horwitz
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