Rainbow Six Raven Shield Review

Rainbow Six: Raven Shield is the third version of the award winning Rainbow Six series. We at GF reviewed the two earlier instalments in our previous issues. For those of you who haven’t read these reviews and want to, mail me and I’ll send you a copy. For those of you familiar with Team Rainbow, lets move on. This is a tactical shooter, which means the game-play is ultra realistic. No in-game saves. Also, a shot to the head WILL kill you and you won’t survive more than two or three shots to your body. If that. As always, you command Team Rainbow, a multinational team of the world’s best counter-terrorists. Your missions invariable deal with flushing out terrorists, disarming bombs or rescuing hostages. You are the worlds best. Now it’s time to prove it.

R6: Raven Shield is set in the year 2005. The game has six multiplayer maps and fifteen single-player missions set in locations around the world, from London to the Caribbean to Rio de Janeiro. In one mission you may be in a snow covered mountain village and in the next a South American town. Major problems with earlier version of the Rainbow Six franchise were the dated graphics, the weak Team A.I and the excessive amount of planning involved. Since this version is based on the advanced Unreal® technology engine, the graphics are more than taken care of. The game looks stunning; everything from the environments, buildings, to the character models is outstanding. The detail on each character has to be seen to be believed, with their weapons, Kevlar suits and facial details as life-like as is currently possible. The developers have improved your team’s A.I. which ensures that they back you up and listen to YOUR orders rather than charging in like mindless idiots. The planning stage has also been made more user friendly without losing any of the pin-point control the earlier version gave you. Though you can decide all of your squad’s actions during the planning stage, a new orders system gives you full control over your team. Just like SWAT 3, pointing at a door and holding the spacebar pops up a menu that can tell your team to clear the room, throw a grenade in and then clear, or to just open the door. However the best addition has got to be the fluid posture control. If you hold down the Control key, you can control the movement of the character’s upper body with your mouse. Which means you can walk up to a corner, and slowly peek around it for enemies. Very Cool! This also works while opening doors. You can gradually open the doors so as to not alarm any enemies inside. And in a move R6 gamers have wanted for months…you can now finally lie flat. I approve.

Since you are the best of the best and all, your gadgets have to be pretty advanced too. You have items such as the heartbeat sensor, which is a pair of goggles that represents people’s heartbeats as a circle. If you have them on you should be able to see the locations of other people, friend or foe. You now have tear gas grenades to stun terrorists along with the old favourite, flash-bangs. Moreover, you have access to fifty-seven, yes FIFTY-SEVEN weapons with a choice of accessories, such as an extra long ammo clip, silencer, or even a thermal scope that shows you heat images of enemies behind walls. The game was made with the help of Mike Grasso, Senior Instructor for LAPD SWAT and LAPD Medal of Valour winner, to ensure authenticity. And it shows!

Rainbow Six’s multiplayer aspect has always been solid with fast paced gaming and good network code. Raven shield continues this tradition of excellence with several new game modes including Survival (Deathmatch), Team Survival, Bomb (One team tries to prevent the other from detonating bombs), Hostage (One team tries to rescue hostages, the other opposes), and Pilot in which one player is a pilot armed only with a handgun. His team-mates must get him to the extraction point before the other team kills him. It’s not all head-to-head, as you can also play any of the single player missions together, Terrorist Hunt where you take on the AI (Artificial Intelligence) enemy and Hostage Rescue where hostages need to be escorted safely. You can play Raven Shield on a LAN or through Ubi.com which is similar to Novaworld. The single player aspect of Raven Shield is a bit slower because you’re essentially playing with an AI team that can only follow basic orders. The multiplayer aspect is swift and exciting because human team-mates can and do follow complex orders. Me, I spend most of my time playing this game online.

The graphics and sound of Rainbow Six Raven Shield game are top-notch, with levels that have been well designed keeping the game-play elements in mind. Overall this is the best R6 game yet; however it does have a few flaws. System requirements are on the high side, and the game-play is slightly difficult for the average gamer. Other than that, this is a great title to own.

HIGHS: Great Multiplayer, Grand Game-play, Distinctive Sound.
LOWS: High System Requirements,
NUTSHELL: Best Tactical Shooter Yet!
Rating: 90