Customer Reviews

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've played every single kind of FPS from the heavily saturated Battlefield Series games to the overwhelmingly popular Call of Duty series. Here are the problems I've always had with those other games: they're always unrealistic no matter how hard they try. In Call of Duty: Black OPS for example, you still have to shoot someone 5-6 times with an assault rifle from two feet away just to kill them. It seems like every single modernized warfare game fails to deliver the unparalleled realism that Rainbow Six: Raven Shield has. This game was made in 2005 and it still beats all modern shooters!

Here are just a few of the features this game introduces that have yet to be matched by any other franchise:

1) Proper Weapon Dynamics- Whenever you fire a self-repeating or gas-operated firearm, recoil is incredibly dependent on several factors and not just the caliber. Just because you're firing a 9x19mm submachine gun, for example, doesn't mean it's not going to kick that severely. Barrel length, grip placement, etc. all play into the recoil of the gun. This game takes that into account on every single weapon.

2) Reloading- Every FPS has you pull out a magazine, put in a fresh one, and charge the weapon. Here's the problem with that: if you still have a round in the chamber, you don't have to charge the weapon when you slap in a new magazine. Only the Rainbow Six franchise has taken this into account. Additionally, the ammunition system is tallied by how many MAGAZINES you have on you and not how many BULLETS you have. This is also extremely realistic. You don't count bullets, you count magazines.

3) Kill Shot System- Most tangos drop dead after two or three shots from a primary weapon like they should. If you have a large caliber, unsilence weapon they drop after one shot. Realism is maintained as well if you go up against targets in a harder setting as they have body armor on.

4) Injury- If you do luck out and survive a shot to the body, you will experience both the best and worst part of this game. You proceed to limp around for the rest of the mission and it directly affects your accuracy unless you're standing/aiming perfectly still. Even if you just turn to aim somewhere else, your crosshairs bug out and shake with the pain.

5) Medical Leave- If one of your operatives gets taken down during a mission, they can be listed as DEAD on the duty roster if they are hit in a vital area. If they die, they're gone for the rest of the game. If they are listed as INCAPACITATED, they were hit in non-vital areas. This makes them available after an additional mission has been played and they've had enough time to "recover". Also, if a team member is injured during a mission, they also need an additional mission to recover.

6) Enhanced Difficulty- The harder the difficulty setting, the faster you die. The higher difficulty settings do three things to all tangos: they make them more tactically gifted, they dawn more body armor, and their weapons are significantly more upgraded. In all other FPS games the higher the difficulty just means that you have less health and they have more health.

There are way more features to this game other than these. All of them make it that much more unrealistic. After waiting and wanting an FPS that is truly realistic, I finally got it when this game was released. If you're looking for more, check out any of the other Rainbow Six games. It's the only franchise that has this level of combat simulation.

Even after the years sense its release, it is still a number one game in the rainbow six line up. From the planning of the single play missions to the online ownage ubi know what they were doing and did it right.
Tight controls, the best graphices of its day, and a nice list of real weapons from 92sf pistal to the m60e4 light machinegun make it the winner it is.

Classic rainbow Six game, my son loves it and is an avid MGS fan. This game does not work on anything higher than XP and I could not find patches for Vista.

This is a great game, even in comparison with the most modern games. It has great replay value, and for such a great price, it makes this a great value.

Best of the rainbow six games. Reminds me of the good old days playig SWAT3. Worth the money if you like tactical shooters. A little dated though, but in my opinion is the last of the good R6 games. The vegas games killed the series.

I bought it to pass my leisure time while travelling! amusing and action packed. I would recommend it if you like this type of "single" player action CD games.

Well, this version of Rainbow Six really upped the 1st person shooter experience. With better graphics, new weapons and what not, it is definitely an improved gaming experience.

But the game isn't as much fun as the original or as Rogue Spear. Once you play through the mission, few of the maps are all that interesting to play through again in any mode.

It almost seems like the developers got lazy as well as 3 or 4 of the maps are duplicated and you play through them twice in the campaign and the only difference in the map is the time of day. But the maps themselves are also kind of boring.

What made the levels in Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear so fun was that they were so different...and so big. In the original, you had massive maps of airports, haciendas, jungles, you name it. In Rogue Spear, you were storming an oil tanker one mission, recapturing a 747 in another and fighting your way through a ruined city in yet another.

In RS 3, the missions all take place in closely confined areas and the maps themselves are all pretty much the same...you're storming yet another building be it a meat-packing plant or an oil refinery or a house. Another downside is that snipers are pretty much useless in these maps. There are a few obvious perches for a sniper to take out maybe 2 terrorists but the bulk of the shooting is going to be you or your team when you come around a corner and run into a terrorist.

The upside is that RS 3 appears to the only available game playable on modern CPU's that still has the original gameplay factors such as setting up your own mission plan and allowing a full team (8) to paly as opposed to the more recent Rainbow Six modes which pretty much has the computer telling you how you will play a mission.

This review is strictly from the single player perspective.

In terms of sheer sophistication and modes of play, this game is way ahead of anything else I've played (up to now, anyway). While I'm more of a run-and-gun enthusiast, this game is impressive by any standard.

I played this in the campaign mode which consists of fifteen missions tied together by a single story line. You can play each mission with a default or customized selection of AI teammates divided into 1 to 3 squads of 1 to 4 members. Team members are picked from a pool of characters, each having a predefined mix of skills that differentiate them from one another. If a team member gets killed, you can't choose him for subsequent missions. If wounded, a character can be selected for later missions, but will still be wounded (making him slower and less effective). There are enough characters so you will not run out before you complete the game, but some of them are better than others, so it's possible to use up all the most skilled team members early in the game, leaving you with a bunch of more average type operatives for the more difficult missions later in the game (which is exactly what I did).

You can also choose how each member of the squads is equipped. There are no weapons, ammo, or medkits that you can pick up during the mission. The variety of weapons is huge and includes assault weapons, pistols, several types of grenades, and heart beat sensors and jammers. Weapons can also be equipped with special sights, scopes, silencers, and high capacity magazines. You are allowed to carry a limited number of weapons, but the heavier weapons (including any attachments) will affect your ability to aim quickly and steadily. Personally, I tended to use heavier high caliber weapons.

You can easily plan out exactly how each team will advance through a mission using a planning map before you start the mission. You can have a squad proceed to a staging area and wait for a "go" signal before proceeding further. That's great for setting up a synchronized attack on the enemy from multiple directions. There are also two default plans available for each mission. The mission plan cannot be changed during the mission, but you can modify, save, and load plans each time you restart a mission.

During game play you can jump into any character in any squad and you can command the other members of that squad to hold or follow you. You can also change the rules of engagement (assault, recon, etc), although I just left it set to assault for the entire game. You cannot command individual members of a squad. If you get killed, you can switch into another character and keep going with the mission until you finish it or all the members of all the teams are dead. You can also command everyone (all members of all teams) to hold or follow.

Mission types consist of hostage rescues, preventing terrorists from setting off a bomb, or just eliminating all the terrorists. There is one recon mission where you must complete the mission without being detected.

The AI was pretty good for an older game. Admittedly, squad members will sometimes get killed for making incredibly stupid mistakes, but sometimes they will be very good at eliminating enemies (as when clearing a room). You don't have much control over where (which direction) your teammates will focus their attention, so if you place them to cover a specific area, they might be facing the wrong way to spot an enemy intruder. Enemy AI seemed fairly advanced for 2003. An enemy might attack you and then escape the area just to attack you again somewhere else. And they are exceptional at surprising you when you don't expect it.

I thought the graphics were pretty decent for a 2003 game. The game often crashed when first going into the action mode (starting an actual mission) for the first time after starting it, but worked ok after restarting the game again. No data was ever corrupted. The game has no save capability. It only remembers what missions you've finished. This can be frustrating because missions can sometimes take 15-30 minutes depending on how cautious you are. Having to restart a mission after playing for nearly half an hour is aggravating. I played the last mission almost to the end at least eight times before I succeeded.

This games gets five stars because it is exceptionally well designed, not only when it came out in 2003, but even by today's standards. It has great replay value because of the various modes of play (lone wolf, terrorist hunter, squad action, and planned mission) and because it challenges players to better their previous performance by bringing more team members through each mission alive. This game was clearly produced to compete with the all time great tactical/squad FPS titles. There is nothing average about it. On top of all that, I paid only $2.61 for which I got about 15-20 hours of play.

This game is GREAT. It is your typical 1st person shooter, but much better. You have 57 weapons to choose from and each one is accurately replicated. Pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, machine guns, sub machine guns, the whole works. If the variety of weaponry isn't enough to make you go crazy, then the variety of mission types might. The game is not a "shoot everything that moves" game in all missions. You also can have a hostage rescue mission in the campaign. If you are detected then the hostage is executed by the neo-fascists that you are fighting. As an added bonus, in the custom mission mode you can play "lone wolf" missions where you are alone to get to an extraction point.

There are, however a few things that I dislike. The graphics, however good, are not top notch because the game must be run on lower screen resolutions. Whenever you switch over to a 1280x760 or higher resolution the game lags senselessly (this is on a laptop... on gaming computers you probably won't have this). The game can also get very gory if you are playing with bodies and gore on, but these both can be turned off. On this topic, the game won't be dropping the F-bomb every few seconds like some of the newer Rainbow Six games will.

To wrap everything up, this game is amazing. It is probably my favorite game that I've ever owned. For $10 it's a steal. I'd pay $40 for this game, despite newer versions being out.

OK it's a little old with outdated graphics BUT this was my second Tom Clancy (first was Splinter Cell) and by far the best. I can't believe it still has good online support. I have 15-20 low ping servers to choose from and can play coop most anytime day or night on tons of custom maps. I like the slow pace and don't miss the run-n-gun of most FPS. I got a copy about 6 months ago and quickly got 2 more for LAN play. For those of us (50+) looking to play an online shooter where the pre teens don't dominate, careful planing helps and you don't just 'shoot everything that moves' Raven Shield will fit the bill.