Charlie in position!
I downloaded Raven Shield last night, the 3rd in the series of Tom Clancy Rainbow Six games by Ubi Soft. They’ve replaced their graphics engine with the Unreal Engine, and so far I must say it’s looking pretty good.
The demo only supports survival modes (player against player) with no missions, so I only was able to run around shooting walls, doors and barrels since I didn’t have access to anyone else to join in. But the effects are pretty amazing. Get caught in the vicinity of a flash bang grenade and you’ll have the ghost sight (near blindness) and loud ringing (careful how high you turn those speakers up!), the blurred visuals while under the effects of tear gas are pretty effective, and hang onto that mouse when using the heavy weaponry… some of those rifles have quite a kick! There was more than a few times I found myself shooting at the ceiling while getting used to keeping them steady.
I look forward to giving it a run with some buddies, but I think the real test will be after release when they finally incorporate the missions which I much prefer over the survival mode, and I get a chance to try out the planning and team interfaces. We’ll have to see if this edition of Rainbow Six can replace Ghost Recon as one of my favorite military strategic action games.
The multiplayer demo looks good, but I agree that free-for-all survival isn’t very interesting. Why go to the bother of making/playing a “realistic” tactical shooter only to place yourself in a decidedly unrealistic scenario (i.e. dozens of highly trained operatives all trying to eliminate each other)?
Team survival is much better, although not many servers were running it in mid-November when I tried it out. Cooperative missions, like Ghost Recon, will probably be this game’s sweet spot - and I am definitely looking forward to the retail version for that.
Dan said this on December 2nd, 2002 at 12:59 pm