Eight people clad in the best urban combat military gear carrying silenced sub machines guns quietly and slowly approach in formation. Splinting into two teams they both taking varying positions around the exterior of the house. Quietly the enter. Gun fire is methodically and often quietly exchanged as they check corners clearing the house one by one. A flash bang is thrown in the room blinding the enemies and hostages alike. The enemies are dropped. The hostages are escorted out and the first mission is over. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six exist in contrast to it's FPS counter parts. The loud, brazen and invincible characters set in unbelievable fantasy world's we often see are contrasted with a chillingly real world game.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six is a game that heavily takes from the sim genre extremely popular on PC and incorporates them into an FPS. Tom Clancy's intentions come through in Red Storm's grounded and hyper real presentation through the use of modern* real time polygon driven 3D graphics. The controversy today* about video game violence intersecting with reality does creep into my mind as I play. Rainbow Six is the first FPS game I've played where I feel like its incredibly realistic, deviants might have trouble not taking it too seriously.
The graphics are a notch below Quake II, let alone Unreal but it still looks fantastic and better than most. But it's Red Storm's attention to detail in both presentation and through a plethora of complex game mechanics that makes Rainbow Six brilliant. High value spec ops missions across the globe including a terrorist filled play house make for memorable moments. Red Storm was founded in part by Tom Clancy himself who is also launching a book by the same name as the game this year*. I've seen other non gaming franchises enter the FPS genre like Golden Eye and the Dark forces games, however those games tended to adopt already existing FPS mechanics into them. Golden Eye adopted a lot of arcade light gun style elements into it's FPS approach while Dark Forces took after the standard bearing id model. Rainbow Six however completely rewrites the approach to the FPS genre based around it's non gaming franchise roots.
I was shocked how much they did new and unique for the game. A primary weapon and side arm like real life are the only guns you can go into a mission with. This is the first game I have played for this blog where I had to reload my gun or hold down a button to run faster which is very, very slow. All non player characters and the player die in a few hits. When playing DOOM II and describing Quake I mention how FPS games make you feel like your controlling some kind of vehicle in 3D."You feel like some UFO fighter jet constantly, thrusting and lurching in and out. Its fast. Real fast."this is thrown out the window with the game Red Storm designed. It is like your controlling a person. A slow, weighted, limited and easy to die human. Its a whole new pace and intensity to the game. I found it really enjoyable given the setting and military themes. Learning the level and enemy placement are often heavily beneficial however the planning phase offers a ton of insight into these things.
The heavy sim like qualities of the game from pre mission planning, load outs and AI behavior are impressive but I found them tedious and overwhelming. I "get" the appeal of these sim systems but its just not for me. The preloaded plans often fail and I found myself loosing interest in Rainbow Six extremely quickly as a result of all this. The game takes a lot of time and I find that interesting and beneficial to it's cause but I'd rather get my time sunk in with Unreal or Quake. Tom Clancy's Red Storm game studio has done a remarkable job though at reinventing the wheel and I find that highly impressive despite my more personal taste driven reservations.
It is shocking how real games are getting and the visuals produced. While it's not totally my cup of tea Rainbow Six is an extremely impressive game yet again forging another completely new sub genre into the FPS genre. The variety of experiences you can get in 3D FPS games now * is hard to believe after playing the games for this blog up until now. The entire fundamentals of the genre can be rewritten and the Rainbow Six still be familiar and fun to experienced FPS players albeit feeling extremely different. While design had been rather rapidly expanding last year *97, the rise of these new*98 powerful real time graphics engines are changing whats possible with not just games but the genres video games have created. Games like Rainbow Six are exciting and wildly innovative. Seeing games like this validates this blog in a big way.
