Customer Reviews

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Athena Sword

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Despite the rave reviews by UbiSoft employees posing as customers, Athena Sword, like Raven Shield, is substandard and buggy.

UbiSoft has a tendency to buy companies with hit titles, and then have their own development teams produce lower quality sequels, hoping to make sales on the strength of the original games' reputations. Ever since UbiSoft bought Red Storm Entertainment and started producing the Rainbow Six games themselves the gameplay has changed for the worse, the story lines have become increasingly contrived and obviously written with more concern for political correctness than realism, and the bugs have been out of control.

There have been over a dozen patches released for Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield since it's release, and Athena Sword has even more bugs. I have never owned a game which required so many patches.

The online play is nowhere near as good as Rogue Spear (although better than Counter Strike, if you prefer realistic tactical shooters to the run-and-gun arcade style games) and the single player campaigns aren't challenging enough to provide more than a few hours of entertainment.

If you've already bought Raven Shield and are considering buying Athena Sword, my suggestion would be to wait until the price drops, which is closer to it's actual worth. In the meanwhile, there are plenty of better designed user-made levels for single player and multiplayer play available for free download all over the internet if you're looking for more content for Raven Shield.

Here are a couple of the problems and bugs found so far:

While prone with the M240G Heavy Machine Gun, there is no animation of the belt being fed through the receiver

While using an Athena Sword weapon the hand and arm models in first person view have holes in the geometry

The SM4 CQB Machine Gun points around a 15º angle up

All of the Athena Sword weapons have the same firing sound with small tweeking, and not the awesome new sounds Ubi promised

The G3A3 and the G3KA4 appear to be identical to the player except for color

There are areas where textures which are supposed to be Flagged as false backdrop are not, and the skybox does not show through like it is supposed to

Back 12 patches ago I swore I wouldn't give UBI more money. Well, I lied and I purchased Athena Sword for $29.99 two days ago from EB Games. After playing for 2 days here's my 2 cents.

The new maps are poorly optimized. The strongest of computers will yield you such poor FPS in many spots you wonder why you paid $30 for the game. The new game play modes are kind of interesting, but that's it. "Kind of" interesting.

Basically, Athena Sword is a $30 map pack. You can find equal to or better maps made by the modding community and play them on Raven Shield that not only run better, but are free.

If you MUST HAVE Athena Sword wait until the price drops to $10 or $15. It won't take long for the price to drop.

Raven Shield (full version) is selling for $15 at Best Buy in the US, so I can't imagine Athena Sword lasting at $29.99 for very long.

It's just not worth $30. Hang tight until it's cheaper. Die hard Rainbow Six fans may feel driven to buy it out of loyalty to the game like me. To all you hard core Clancy fans... try to resist the urge and wait if you purchase it at all.

Some nice new features and everything. But for a Map Pack, these maps were horribly optimized. People with the best computers get 10 FPS with everything on low on alot of the maps. Good maps and nice layouts, but horrible horrible optimization.

What you get for online multiplayer with this expansion are 3 things: New weapons, new maps and new play modes. While the expansion is good, it has a 'rushed out the door' feel. For example, there is a problem in multiplayer in which both sides are wearing the same color clothing on some maps. One will be solid blue, the other will be blue camo. This should have been picked up on.

The maps are very attractive and of high quality, however there are odd spots in which you have to use ladders and open doors differently than in RS (you have to back away or aim at a specific spot on the door). Not a good thing to have when you are trying to hurry to a choke point. Hopefully these gets fixed.

The new weapons are interesting, but as mentioned before, one points at an odd angle, and many firing sounds seem to be muted.

The new game play modes are what really carry this expansion. While initially I was not interested in these at all, the capture the enemy game mode have my friends and I addicted. It was nice to get a positive surprise, especially with some of the minor let downs concerning the other areas of the game. Still, this mode is not without its problems as well. If you get handcuffed and are subsequently flashbanged, get used to the ringing sound, because it won't end until the round does.

I bought this only for the online play. I have no idea what the single player campaign offers.

If the patches that have been promised fix the problems present, RS:AS is a 4 star expansion. As is, the expansion rates a 3.

A very poor effort to say the least, made even more pathetic by the fact that paid employees were obviously instructed to come here & write fake reviews over a month before it was even released... Going on the merit of that, I imagine some of the more current five star reviews are also fake.

Yes I a big fan of the Rainbow 6 series, so I waited in anticipation to play this game. Well I was able to complete it in less than one day the 8 new missions, that was to have my team wiped out once or twice and then completing the level without so much as a scratch. Graphics, Sounds were fantastic, but this add on is miles to easy. Folks save your money and forget this offering.

Since I only played this as a single player game, I will leave the multiplayer evaulation to others.

I got this because I liked Rainbow Six 3 Raven Shield. This, being an expansion, is mostly more of the same. Note, that you will need to have Raven Shield installed to install this game (I had already uninstalled it, so had to load it back up again). Unlike others, I actually thought the graphics were slightly better than Raven Shield, but I played a few other games between the two, so I my memory might be a bit confused.

When I played RS, I used the team approach and even some of the planning, but for Athena Sword, I only played it in the action mode, where there is only one team of guys. I tend to switch between the guys, placing them in different locations to cover areas where enemies could be encountered. When you switch characters, the default mode is for all the guys to form up on you, so you have to be sure and hit "HOLD" immediately in order to force them to stay where you put them.

I think Raven Shield is an impressive game for its time and Athena Sword is a nice expansion. The fact that it doesn't offer any significant new capabilities doesn't bother me. It delivered what I wanted: More Raven Shield-like action.

My only complaint is that this was amazingly short. Only eight missions. While expansion packs often tend to be shorter than the original game, I was a bit disappointed by that anyway. I liked everything else about the game, though. For the $5.50 I paid for it, I give it a thumbs up.

UBI for all the hype you spread on this expansion pack it was not worth the 30 I paid for it. The maps lag really bad. Just like the other people said before I get 30-70 FPS on maps but the maps from athena only get 10-15 max and that makes for very poor game play. About the only thing i say is nice from athena is the CTE game mode.

From a very upset loyal raven shield player my loyalty is wearing thin very thin.

This game has major problems if you're buying it for your PC. Ubi.com has many patches you can download but after 2 weeks the game still won't run on my PC which meets all the criteria it asks for. Before buying check www.ubi.com message boards to see all the problems people are having with this game. I have the other Rainbow Six games and haven't had any problem with them.

I love the Rainbow Six Series. I'm in the military, have graduated from both Anti-Terror and Team Tactics schools. The Rainbow Six Series is an excellent series. The Tactics needed to play the game are almost identical to those used in real Close Quarters Combat scenarios.
That being said. WOW IS THIS ADD ON BUGGY! I played Raven Shield with no noticable problems, but when I added the Athena Sword Patch, all hell broke loose. Suddenly my computer began locking up, The sound would crash, and overall just a host of problems with the add on. My computer is used almost exclusively for gaming, and the Athena Sword patch was the only thing that had changed from when I played Raven Shield, so that is why I hold it responsible. I think Reading the reviews here supports my theory.
The maps looked very good, especialy for Online Play, but the glitches in the game became so frustrating that I have yet to play them all. Evidently you can download fixes, but if I have to patch a game more than once, just to make it work, then I have no interest in playing it. Skip this game and wait for the next one. Hopefully they'll get it right. I'm going to give them one more chance before I give up on UBI Soft.
I also didnt' appriciate them installing thier hokey website shortcut on and software on my computer. (Yes, I realize that it's easy to remove, and if I payed closer attention I could have prevented it from being installed, but come on.)
Rainbow Six Series is a great series, but I fear that it may go the way of Mech Warrior. Skip this game.