Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown

"Rainbow Six: Lockdown beats its predecessor in every way, but it is still lacking."

Last summer Gamecube owners were treated to Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3, a realistic squad based shooter. With few tactical shooters on the system, this game was a nice change. While it was a decent game, it had a few problems that brought it down. Now we have Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown. At first I expected this to be Rainbow Six 3 all over again, but I was wrong. Lockdown beats the original in every way, but despite this, it is still somewhat of a disappointment for a number of reasons.

Anyone who has picked up a Clancy novel knows that his books feature some brilliant and intense plots. Sadly, these usually don't make their way into the games. Lockdown is no exception as the story seen here is hard to follow. The campaign opens up with a terrorist breaking into a lab in South Africa. He steals a virus that appears to kill people in a matter of seconds. From here you come in but your goal at this point is not known. As you play, you will find out that the GLF (the enemies of the game) is planning a devastating attack in Europe, and now it is your job to stop it. I guess if I had to pinpoint the worst part of the story, it is the way it is presented. You are rarely given detail as to what is going on, and this makes the story that much harder to enjoy.

The story isn't what makes a game, however. Gamplay makes a game. As with any Clancy game, this game focuses heavily on tactics and planning. If you come to a room, you can't just run in, or else you will find yourself redoing the mission. So, do you open it, toss in a flash grenade, and then clear it? Or do you throw a frag grenade into the room and send in your team? These kinds of decisions will decide whether or not you live or die.

Speaking of team, the team mechanics work far better than the original game. You now have a large number of tasks that you can choose from. When you tell your team to open a door, they can either open it, hammer it open, or shotgun it open. They can also toss in grenades and clear the room, or they can even just stand there after they open it. You can give them orders to go to just about any area, and they will take cover once there. While your team is usually pretty good about taking care of themselves, there are times when they will act incredibly stupid, and then they will often times die as a result. These instances are rare, though, so they don't really take away from the game.

Enemy A.I. also presents a challenge. In the first game, they would usually wait a few seconds before shooting at you. In Lockdown, they start shooting right away. This time around enemies also have better aim, so you can't simply stand in the open and take them out, or you will die. Cover is you best friend against these foes, especially when you are facing ten enemies in a large courtyard. Like your team, you enemies also show great displays of stupidity, but these too are far and in between.

Lockdown brings a new type of gameplay to the series. At the start of several missions, you will play as Dieter Weber, and you will snipe to cover Team Rainbow as they storm a building. Once they reach the building, you will take over as Chavez and play the mission as normal. While these sequences are nothing major, they do help to keep the game feeling varied. And on the positive side, each of the sniping sections brings you a new type of challenge that you will need to adapt to.

One of the things that people are bound to complain about is the smaller weapon and gear list. Lockdown has noticeably fewer weapons and gear to choose from, but in my opinion, the ones here are better anyway. You have your standard rifles, shotguns, sub-machine guns, light machine guns, and pistols. The standard grenades are here as well. The only new and cool items are the motion sensor, which allows you to detect enemies through walls, and then there is the hammer, which allows you to forcefully open a door with a hammer. The smaller amount of weapons really doesn't make the game any less enjoyable. Most gamers will find one gun that they like anyway, and they will likely only play with that gun, so it doesn't matter.

Instead of having a larger selection of weapons, there are now more Rainbow members. In the first game, there were four. Now there are seven or eight. Better yet, you can choose their gear. This is good because you can have two infantrymen with assault rifles, a sniper with a scoped weapon, and a close quarters fighter with a shotgun. This gives the game much more variety.

Graphically, this games looks better than the original, but there are still better looking games out there. Character models are probably the worst feature in this game because they have stiff animation. They are detailed, and they look good, but they just animate poorly. All of the guns sport some amazing detail, and the missions themselves look pretty good. To help, the lighting in this game is greatly improved. Texturing is good, although it could have been better. The levels also have some nice detail. In a mission located on a cruise ship, you will find that it is nicely furnished, and some of the rooms have an elegant look to them. In a mission set in a terrorist camp, you will find crates of weapons just lying out in the open. These little touches help add to the experience as it makes the game much more believable. On of the best touches is the effect on the screen involving goggles. While playing, you will see the outline of goggles as you would in real life. You can choose to take this off the screen, but it is one of the cooler touches.

Audio is perhaps one of the most disappointing aspects of the game. And the problem lies in the music. In the first game, the music was military themed, much like the game itself. This time around, the music is hard rock and maybe even a little bit of metal. This to me seriously hurts the game. This is my only complaint with the audio. Everything else is top notch. All of the guns and there individual sounds sound great as do the explosions. Character voices are pretty good, but they do sound a bit forced. Overall, if it weren't for the stupid music, the audio would have been perfect.

Like the previous game, Lockdown features co-op. This is a pretty good feature if you want to play the main campaign with a friend. I myself have only tried the first two missions on co-op, but things ran smoothly and it was fun planning out room clearings with a friend. Each of the two people get to choose there pieces of gear before the missions, and to top things off, there are different co-op modes. You can choose to do a mission, or a simple terrorist hunt. The choice is yours. Now if only there was a deathmatch mode...

Overall Rainbow Six: Lockdown is a great tactical shooter, and given the Gamecube's selection involving these types of games, it stands above the rest. It looks and plays great, and it features a few extra things that spice up the Rainbow Six formula a bit. If you are looking for a lengthy and challenging tactical shooter, your search ends here as Lockdown is as close to perfection as you will find on the Gamecube.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/10/05