Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Gold

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six is a classic Clancy-style story where you lead an elite multinational task force battling international terrorism in highly realistic settings. Game play is organized around a series of missions in which you must plan and execute precise assaults on terrorist installations. As your mission advances, you will uncover a larger and more sinister conspiracy, where the fate of the world hangs in the balance. And unlike other games, if you make a mistake, you're gone--because in the real world, one shot counts.

One thing I've always heard about Tom Clancy games from players is "they are so realistic". The realism is Rainbow Six is partly what drags the game down. Everything is caught up in trying to be as real as possible that for me at least, it sucked the fun right out of the game. The premise of the game is that you are leading an anti-terrorist group called "Rainbow" made up of the top special forces operatives in the world. But from the outset the game is bogged down in tedious details. Mission planning is unncessarily over complicated. I spent maybe an hour planning a mission that my team was wiped on in under 3 minutes. It seems that three quarters of the game is spent in the planning stage. Selecting team members, equipment, weapons, mapping a mission plan all seem more important that actually performing the mission. This led me to bouts of "Oh come on!! I just want to play the game!!!". The online play doesn't fair much better either I'm sorry to say. The average online game is about 30 seconds in length and I was frequently shot in the back after the first 5 seconds. After which I was relegated to watching the other online players. Also the problem of veteran players racking up stats for some game "leagues" by preying on lesser skilled players is rampant. Unfortunatley there's not much that can be done about that.

The controls fair no better. The control scheme is complex to the point of frustration. Other teams just stand there waiting for you to give them "GO Codes". But they are more like ducks in a shooting gallery. Being picked off one by one till you are the only player left. There is an option to remap the keyboard controls but that unfortunatly doesn't make things any easier.

The graphics look a bit dated but the game ran very smoothley on my computer.

Rainbow Six is a game that has a really good idea but falls horribley short in its execution. It's needlessly complex and overly tedious. If you are a Playstation 2 owner I'd recomend SOCOM: US Navy Seals over Rainbow Six. For PC I would recomend Operation Flashpoint. Both are alot more playable and more enjoyable.


Lock up, Load up and kick some @ss   September 22, 2000
 0 out of 15 found this review helpful

Now,now. I've been reviewing and testing games for a long time since I was 8. Rainbow Six is action and a little bit on the difficult side. I highly reccomend this game and others. Now look I may be just a kid, but I'm smart if you have any questions about a video game or if you parent's out there wan't to know about a good videogame to give to your kids ask me all you have to do is ask the pro's at toys r us.com becareful though because you're limited to one questiong


impressive, but something missing   July 10, 2000
 1 out of 5 found this review helpful

I got the game a short while ago. Based on my first impressions it appears to be interesting. Graphics are sharp and detailed. What it clearly lacks is the 3D realism offered in quakeII It appears too 2-dimensional eg: when turning around the corners of buildings there is a distortion in the angle between the front and adjacent walls. Graphics are other wise good, the clouds floating across the skies look real. But on the whole it definitely looks like a 2D game to me. I have an nVidia GeForce2 GTS based card and the graphics in quakeII simply rock!


Wobbly   July 7, 2000
 3 out of 4 found this review helpful

'Rainbow Six' is oddly unbalanced, though fascinating. A realistic simulation of small-scale anti-terrorist tactics, it's excellent in theory if often bizarre in execution. For a start, you don't just dive into a mission and fight, you have to plan it first. This is the first problem - without knowing how the environment will be, it's very hard to work out an effective plan. Although the map you use to plot the path of your team can be toggled into a semi-3D view, it's slow and cumbersome, and working out which lines are walls, which are fatal glass windows, and which areas are overlooked by balconies, is impossible. Therefore, you have to treat the first couple of attempts on a mission as if they are a practice run. Worst of all is the fact that, once you have set the plan, it's set in stone - apart from a generic 'halt' command, you have no way of altering it whilst in the action phase. Therefore, you play the mission until you complete it, and then go back and work out the most effective plan. The fundamental flaw, though, is that you can create the perfect plan, and still lose to random chance and / or AI stupidity. The action phase is fascinating. Unlike 'Quake' and its ilk, bullets here are immediately lethal. The bad guys tend to be extremely, infeasibly accurate, even when firing on full auto, so the game is enormously tense, as you peek around corners trying to spot a villain lurking in the shadows. The visuals are stark and angular, but seem to fit the precise, analytical mood of the game quite well, and the sounds are fab. On the other hand, it's extremely hard, often unfairly. Neither your soldiers or the enemy appear to be particularly smart. Order your men to use grenades, for example, and they will inevitably blow themselves up, after which the enemy will mill around for a while before getting bored and standing still, as if random grenade explosions were just one of those things. It's best to be the 'point man' and use your associates to cover you than to send them against the enemy. The wide choice of weaponry boils down to a single silenced machine-gun and a portable radar device, and once you have played the missions once, you'll probably want to do them solo the next time. The emphasis on hostage rescue is often frustrating, too - after playing the mission, a single slip-up at the end results in the hostages being shot, and you have to do it all over again.

The game works best during the excellent 'stealth' missions, in which, 'Mission Impossible'-style, you have to infiltrate an enemy stronghold without being seen. It becomes a completely different game, in fact - a bit like 'Thief', but with technology.

It's interesting to compare it with the two other high-profile 'soldier sims', 'Delta Force' and 'Hidden and Dangerous', too - the former is more cartoony, with most missions being solo sniper-fests, whilst the latter gets the planning right, whilst being full of bugs.


#1 Game for Shooters   July 3, 2000
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

A wonderfully exciting game on the tail of a equally exciting book.

I promise that Rainbow Six is the most realistic shooter game you will have ever played. (It parallels the book.) When preparing for a mission, you can put as much or as little effort into the battle plan as you want. You can spend an hour pondering blueprints and tactics, or you can just pick out your weapons and storm the terrorist site. Enemy soldiers react with reasonable AI, if they see you they WILL try and kill you. And sometimes the bad guys can be just as sneaky as you. And be careful about getting hit. If you take a shot in the arm, you'll live, but you have a heck of a time shooting. But one sniper shot to the head, and you are out of the game... for good. There are so many chaotic variables that can modify a characters performance: fatigue, wounds, heavy armor, bad shot, bad luck. It is not a game you can play through blindly. Not only do you need to be up to the challenge, you need to be fast, smart, and sometimes patient.

I must also suggest purchasing the Gold, since it comes with the Eagle Watch pack. This contains new characters from the book, new weapons, and five real world locations.