Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six

"Good effort but the Playstation is a Playstation.."

Introduction
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six is an excellent novel, and the PC incarnation adaption of this novel into a Realtime-Strategy/FirstPerson-Shooter was excellent. However, the Playstation is not exactly capable or, its just not any good at having First Person Shooters. Whilst this was a carefully thought-out game, due to hardware restrictions, the game seems ''bare'' when facing enemies.

Anyway, the story goes (as seen in the introduction video) that there are too many terrorist attacks going on everywhere. Many of the countries are losing valuable assets because of these terrorist attacks. The leaders and the highest military officers of some countries have combined and formed a group to destroy these terrorists before they attack. To destroy the leaders before they even plan the attack. Only the highest of people know that this operation even exists. The operation, is Rainbow, ''Rainbow Six''.

Gameplay
Due to the Playstation's limited power and ability to create enemies in First Person Shooters, hopefully the player will realize this.

From the beginning, when you first start, you have to set up your team. To set up your team, you choose the people who will be with you when you go to save the person you are saving/people you are saving. Then, the locations of how they plan on entering and where they will go is upto you. The menus are pretty tricky to navigate at times so it requires patience. After choosing their locations, weaponary comes into play. Choose the main/primary weapons of each character, as well as their secondary weapon. The weapons are quite well designed and they have quite a bit of thought put into their designs and names. The next selection is what else they should carry, such as grenades, flash packs, lock picks.. anything.. They all have night vision already so there is no need for anything like that. You can then choose what they will wear (heavy armour, light armour and so on), and you can read mission briefings as well as check up on your team. There are a few other options but nothing worth detailing.

Once the game has started, and this will take a bit of menu navigating to find, you'll quickly realise that the controls are a tange on the ''weird'' side. Using a control design similar to those of Timesplitters (on the PS2), the left analogue stick controls movement forward and backwards, and also strafes left and right, with the right analogue stick controlling turning left and right, and up and down (the aiming stick I'll call it). The rest of the buttons are layed out kind of weirdly but the programmers were smart enough to use combination buttons to get a much better sense of control over the game without resorting to menus. The map on the select button is very effective too.

When you try to move around on the first level, you may feel rather ''bored'' as there are not many enemies, and the game moves rather slowly and inconsistently (similar to the framerate in Rare's BANJO-TOOIE on the Nintendo64). The level designs are rather inadequate and it took me a while to figure out exactly what you had to do (this will get your patience rumbling)...

After all the configuring of your team, you really would expect this to be an extremely deep game, which it is definately not. Whilst I'm sure the game is really full of programming tricks and all, nothing really comes into action and this kind of bores the player. This game was definately more suited for the Playstation2's processing power and graphics abilities. There are several other good Playstation 2 games coming out which have similar concepts to this game (Plan an attack, and then watch it unfold).

But before any more criticizing of the game continues, I might add that the game developers and programmers were extremely game to try to port this title on the Playstation and they have done an excellent job but the Playstation just is NOT suited for this kind of game. The Playstation's abilities are outstripped so easily when a First Person Shooter but anyway, Good Effort to the developers.

Graphics
Due to processing power on the Playstation, this is nothing like Goldeneye's fluid movement and the speed of the game is generally slow. The polygons are dimmed, unrounded, jaggish, and generally plain ugly. There are not many objects around the missions and the game seems to ''drag on'' for long periods of time.

But as a review of the game and not anything else, imagine Time Crisis, make the graphics a bit more ''together'' so they are not so blockish, make the screen really dark so that it is near impossible to notice any graphic distortions, and then only put a couple of objects in each room such as a lonely chair and a guard who just sits there in that chair, and you've got yourself the ''Rainbow Six''.

There can only be a set number of enemies on the screen at one time but even then, you can still get shot from other directions and since it takes so long to turn around (it becomes a chore).

Sound/Music

I heard the rounds of my bullets but nothing spectacular hit me. The sounds were nothing special as my sound system (Dolby Digital 5:1) did not sound as good as many other games have. The shooting of the silenced pistols however sounded nice and sharp. The sounds are unfortunately not as good quality as the ones heard in Goldeneye. But for the Playstation, and for a game like this where the developers and programmers put so much effort into, it does a good job at showing off.

Music? What music? The noises that go on are usually city sounds (such as helicopters and engines) as well as footsteps (yours of course!).

Other/Overall Presentation
The menus can be tricky to navigate at times but the game's got the best concept and a seriously ''deep'' pre-mission setup but once in the game, you will quickly realise that what you did to your team before the game in the team set-up was really a waste of time and you have just wasted $70 on a perfectly (insert swear word) game.

The game's introduction video should also be credited. Nicely rendered and the story is totally ''kick-ass'' but nevertheless, it does not make up for the fact this is a poor title not at the programming team's fault but whoever decided that this should be a Playstation One game and not a Playstation2 title.

Replayability
On a scale of one to ten, this is a zero point five.

Rent / Buy
Neither unless you MUST HAVE IT (in which case, Rent it). Get the PC version instead or wait some next generation titles for the Playstation2 (such as MGS2).

Scores

+ Great Strategy Game
+ First Person shooter
+ Deep and Intriguing Story
+ Great pre-mission set-up details
- Poor graphics because of Playstation's abilities
- Poor sound effects and music
- Weird and ''awkward'' controls are annoying
- Lack of interest whilst playing is the result of a poor title.

Gameplay : 5
Seriously lacking due to few enemies. The strategy element bumps the score up.
Graphics : 6
Bare and basic.. Playstation can't handle it.
Sound/Music : 5
Good enough but there could be so much more.
Other/Overall Presentation : 10
The introduction video is great!
Replayability : 0
As a note, even if you see this game pirated for $2, do not waste your $2. Get a bottle of Coca-Cola. It's much more satisfying.

Overall (not an average) : 6

Author's Comment
This game is great on paper and originally had a great design kicking for it but the Playstation just cannot handle things like this and it really should be a Playstation2 title. It would also most likely sell a lot better too. There is no fault in the programmers/developers but I do NOT recommend this title. Instead, like I said before, get a Playstation2 and await some of the next-generation shooters and strategies coming out soon.

As for fun-factor, this game does not have any.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/16/01, Updated 06/16/01