The Rainbow Six series basically created the realistic, tactical shooter
subgenre on its own. Hidden and intelligent enemies, one-hit kills, high-tech
weapons, and realistic plotlines combined to make players feel the tension
that comes with being a special operative on the frontlines of the war against
terrorism. The latest game in the series is Rainbow Six Lockdown, but it
strays from the path forged by its predecessors. More arcade-like and easier
to beat than prior Rainbow Six games, Lockdown also features the dumbest
enemies ever to appear in a Rainbow Six game. Fans of the series will probably
find the game to be more of a letdown than a lockdown…
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| Through the goggles of Ding you watch the team prepare to enter a room. |
Once again you play the role of Ding Chavez, leader of Team Rainbow. Team
Rainbow is an international elite counter-terrorist unit made up of the
world’s top Special Forces operatives. When terrorism rears its ugly head,
Team Rainbow is there to chop it off. This time out a nanotech-based
artificial virus has been stolen from a lab in South Africa and it has fallen
into the wrong hands. It’s up to you and your team to recover the virus and
take out the terrorists who are threatening to unleash it on the world.
Each mission begins with a detailed briefing conveying the reason for the
mission and its objectives. Cutscenes between missions also help to convey the
storyline. It’s all done quite well and provides a rich and immersive setting
for the game. Once the briefing concludes you are given the opportunity to
select the weapon loadout for each member of your team. You can also just
accept the default loadouts and go right into the mission. All of this is
standard Rainbow Six, but things begin to change for the worse once the
mission begins.
Rainbow Six games have always emphasized the importance of teamwork and
this is still the case in Lockdown. You can issue commands to your team by
placing your aiming reticule over an object or location and then pressing the
A button. If you want to issue an order different from the default,
context-sensitive order then you can hold down the A button to see a list of
additional order choices. Using the order system you can have your team breach
a door and clear the room beyond, lay down suppression fire, or scout ahead to
look for hidden enemies. The order system is easy enough to use, but things do
not always go too well because the AI for your team is lackluster, to say the
least.
Your biggest team issue in Lockdown is in keeping your team together. They
are constantly getting themselves stuck or lost and you’ll often turn around
to find that you are completely alone. I found that I had to issue move orders
at a steady frequency to ensure that my team kept up with me. The poor AI also
means that your orders are not always executed too well. I’ve seen the team
open a door before being given the go ahead to execute the order, for example.
Another problem faced by your team is their horrendous shooting skills. Often
they will enter a room and not be able to hit the enemy standing in the middle
of the room five feet in front of them. Firefights often require you to take
out every single enemy yourself or they would go on for hours without a
casualty on either side. Your team’s ineptitude with firearms really comes to
light in the end of mission statistics screen where you’ll see your teammates
score hit ratios in the 1% range. That’s one hit, not even a kill mind you,
for every 100 shots fired. And these are supposed to be elite warriors…
The AI of your team is genius-like when compared to that of the enemies
that you face. Sometimes they will stand around dumbfounded during a
firefight, continue to face in one direction as you shoot them from another,
or run out into the open to make it easier for you to kill them. In spite of
these boneheaded tactics, the terrorists actually have a surprisingly high
survival rate. This is because the game often fails to register hits. I’ve
turned the corner to find a terrorist, shot him in the head, and watched as he
pushed passed me as I tried to put enough shots into him to bring him down. It
happened more than once, and is just as weird as it is frustrating when it
happens.
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