Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown

"Great online Multiplayer makes up for a very lacking Single Player"

Game Play (Offline):
Having never played a Rainbow Six game before this, I can't compare the game play, but it feels a little lacking. A cool thing is that you can use your Xbox Live headset in the Campaign and issue commands to your computer controlled team mates. Luckily, this game has pretty good voice recognition and they understand what you say and will usually do it... Very unlike Hey you, Pikachu! *shudders at the hours spent yelling "No, God damn it, Pikachu! Turn left, left! Not right!"*

Your time spent on the single player pretty much just involves you being sort of stealthy, since you're always vastly out-numbered, but it's a good thing your enemies are pretty stupid. I must admit, though this is pretty boring. After playing it for 20 minutes you'll get bored and want to get online and play that some more.

Game Play (Online):
This is worth the $50 alone. Easily the most fun I've ever had on Xbox Live. There's P.E.C. (Persistent Elite Creation) mode where you can choose from one of 4 classes. These are; Spec-Ops, who get the Sniper and Knife. Medics, who can heal teammates, themselves, handle nerve gas, and also inject themselves and teammates with Adrenaline which gives you a health boost.

Engineers, who can close off passage way and doors (which really just inconveniences the other team), plant mines, set up gun turrets, and they start off with the shotgun right away, unlike all of the other classes who have to be a certain level to unlock it. Commando's, who get unlimited light armor and can take more damage than any of the other classes right away and can also use a ballistic shield.

Now, there's three things you can do in P.E.C. mode; (you can also turn off P.E.C. mode if you don't want to deal with ranks and stuff) There's Total Conquest which just involves you capturing all of the satellites then holding them all for a few seconds. But you don't really get a lot of experience points or money (more on that later) for Total Conquest, so I just stick with Team Sharpshooter. There's also Retrieval. Retrieval involves you just grabbing a container and bringing it back to your base. Sort of like Capture the Flag, and just like Total Conquest, you don't get a lot of money or experience for this.

And my personal favorite, Team Sharpshooter where whatever team has the most kills at the end wins. It's simple, but really fun. Especially if you're a medic because if you get bored just running around getting all the kills, you can heal your teammates. You get the most experience and money for Sharpshooter. Now, you're probably wondering what the money and points are for. You need money to buy things like, Grenades, Med packs, Gun Turrets, and Shields. There's even hat's and camo's for you to buy to totally pimp out your character.

The experience points are added towards your rank which no longer means anything on this game because of all of the glitches this game contains, There's a glitch that gives you almost unlimited money...There went the incentive for playing for money. Then there's a level glitch which will level you up to a Level 40 (which is as high as you can go) So pretty much 95% of the players online use these glitches and have just taken all of the fun out of the game for themselves. It's really cute when you're playing in a room and there's people bragging that they're level 40's when you'll go to look at their stats and see they have a grand total of 2 hours playtime.

It really doesn't matter, though that they glitch up because they're just high level players that suck. Since almost all of these high level players aren't legit, I now reset my Identity as soon as I reach high level status (I play a lot) it's funny to see people's reactions when you're against a team of 3 "level 40's" and they're beaten by a level 7... =)

Don't get me wrong, though. There are still a few legit level 40's out there who have insane amounts of play time on their stats and are scary good. As long as you don't mind cheaters, the online play is very, very, fun. I spend so many damn hours on that game a day, it's sad. Because it really is just that fun. Whew...That was a long damn rant, wasn't it? What can I say? Cheater's bother me =) Let's move on.

Graphics:
They range from pretty good to meh. A lot of the levels look pretty damn nice, but some are very plain looking. The character models on the other hand... They're really just pretty sad, it looks like something you'd see from games about 4 years ago. Not taking advantage of the Xbox's power at all.

Sound:
The little bit of voice acting I've heard (Didn't put much time into the Campaign) it ranges from average to pretty good. All depending on the person. There's also some music you hear when you wait for games to load and while you're looking for games online, but for the life of me I can't really seem to remember it. Not a good sign. The only one I remember is the little Nun nun nun nun nun nun nun nun thing in the starting menu, which is pretty catchy. I sometimes find myself humming it while I'm waiting for a game to load.

Should you buy this game?
If you're looking for a great game on Xbox Live then you should really get this. I think it's cheap now since it's not all that popular and it really isn't getting the best reviews, but again the multi-player is really, really, good. The single player gets old really quick, as I've said before.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/05/05