Amazon.com: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield: PC: Video Games

75 Reviews

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

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4.1 out of 5 stars (75 customer reviews)

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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars R63 RAVEN SHIELD: It's every bit as good as you dared hope, March 20, 2003

By	Barry Isaacson (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is based not on the demo but on the retail version of the game, bought yesterday (the day of release, March 18th). I should also mention that I do not play MP so I cannot judge the product from that perspective.

The game is stunning. The development team has risen to the challenge of evolving a classic and the result is breathtaking. Here are the highlights:

The graphical and sound environments are superbly rendered with terrific attention to detail; the result is a truly immersive atmosphere, the indoor equivalent of GHOST RECON. The weapons sound great and real creativity has been applied to the voices and ambient sounds. Highlights visually include superb weapon effects, character models/animation, uniform details, lighting effects and level design.

All of this would be useless without great gameplay, however, and here RS3 really shines, exceeding the high standards set by the earlier versions. Hostile and friendly AI have been revolutionized; bad guys react with some initiative now, they can conduct flanking actions, and they are very responsive to sound, forcing the player to plan routes and choose weapons with care. In the past your teammates were at best spare lives for the player, at worst a liability; no longer. Friendly AI is now good enough to be relied on to enter and clear a room ahead of the player, a huge step forward, and the beautifully thought-through and executed contextual orders menu allows the player to capitalise on these enhanced team AI capabilities. The contribution this makes to gameplay is enormous, as it means you can plan missions which exploit your team's skills rather than compensate for its weaknesses. Only in SWAT 3 has there been such a high standard of user interface combined with superb friendly AI. Other innovations include the ability to open doors and windows gradually and to fine-tune coordination between teams with an on-the-fly go-code called a zulu code. The decision to allow tangoes to surrender is a brilliantly implemented SWAT-type reflex challenge to the player and contributes greatly to tension and realism.

Massively enhanced AI and playability are further refined by greater realism in weapon effects/performance and innovations like thermal sights for the sniper rifles and a very convincing heartbeat sensor. Intelligent improvements have also been made to stance and movement options, which now include a progressive lean/peek feature and the ability to go prone (if there is room).

The only reason I am not giving this 5 stars is that I have not yet played through the entire campaign. Like its predecessors and the GHOST RECON series, however, a game as accomplished as this can only be the result of real talent, commitment and inspiration on the part of the development team. We are fortunate to be able to benefit and the game is worth every penny. It's a classic.

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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Old Fomula Refined, April 27, 2003

By	L. Blasiman (Canton, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In a nutshell Raven Shield does a lot right in a pretty package but suffers from the same pitfalls of past games. The game sticks to the same winning formula of the past titles. For the most part this is a good thing.

The first thing the player sees in the game is a number of slick looking menus. These have been revised from past games to make them more player friendly. They are all well done with dramatic music and familiar voice over. R6s' famous planning phase is intact and still not as easy to use as it should be. Clicking to place waypoints for your team seems easy enough until you click on an area that you can't put a waypoint at, like overlapping another waypoint. There is no indication that you can't do this, and in game it doesn't matter one way or another, there isn't a good reason why the game won't let you. It can get picky about other things, such as putting waypoints too close to walls or doors. Assigning your team to toss a [explosive item] in to a room can be tricky. You might want them to toss it clear across the room and find out that it's out of range or there is some object blocking LOS that is not obvious on the map. So you have to keep clicking on the map until you find a spot that the game will let you assign a [explosive item] toss waypoint to. You can avoid this pain in the neck if you use a default pre-made plan. There should be nothing that makes your own planning such a hassle however.

Of course the actual meat of the game is the action. Rainbow Six really shines here for giving you a mix of stealth, suspense, loud gun battles, impressive [explosive item] effects, and team tactics. The new first person gun models look great. The vast number of [firearms] all sound distinct and are very impressive. The HUD has been cleaned up and better laid out. Another new feature is adding other equipment to your [firearms], like a scope or a silencer. Your team can now be given dynamic orders outside the plan via an easy to use pop up menu. Watching them breach, flashbang and clear a room is interesting and just plain cool. With Ghost Recon it seems that Rainbow isn't going to be outdoors much. With the Unreal powered engine one would think they could toss in a few missions hunting down [criminal] camps. So most of the time you play a high tech SWAT team rather than a real spec-op unit.

Not all is well. The AI is a hit or a miss, and this is usually a weak point for Red Storm. The enemy AI is very good. It will try to flank you, flush you out with [explosive item], and go for reinforcement or when they know they are out gunned they will surrender. Yet it doesn't do this in any clever manner. A [criminal] might run from a frag [explosive item], and run in to your team and get chopped down. Often they will [destroy] them selves with their own [explosive item]. Other things about how the AI reacts are erratic and break the illusion of competent enemies.
However inconsistent the enemy AI is, your team's AI is worse. A lot worse. From getting stuck on doorways, grenading them selves, getting in your way, to just plain not paying attention and getting killed by a trigger happy bad guy. For some reason they all use full automatic with whatever gun you assign them. It's terrible to see your team fire off rounds and simply not hit anything. Nor can they slowly open doors. They just fling them wide open for all the tangos to see and fill with lead. Much of the game I had to plan my assault based on what my team couldn't do very well rather than what they could. Since they [end life] so easy, and you can't replace them, you might have to reload a dozen times before you get it right.

Still this is done with some good graphics. Character models are made with lots of polygons and great textures. Some of the faces look photo realistic. The environments are richly detailed, even if you are indoor most of the game. Little things like footprints, steam from pipes (or bullet holes in pipes), detailed shadows, reflections in car windows, animated tree limbs and seeing the breath of your teammates on winter maps all paint a realistic feeling world. Oddly it seems that with the newest 3D engine they could have pushed it further. 3rd person [firearms] could use some more polygons, the sky is a simple skybox, nor are shadows as good as in Splinter Cell.

One area that has really been improved is multiplayer. No longer are you bothered to log in to MSN to play. The game comes with an in-game search and browse screen. Setting up filters makes it easy to find the kind of game you want. Of course if MP isn't your bag, there is a nice single player custom mission option too.

Overall this is solid game that features a range of features and great action worth checking out for weeks.

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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars not as good as Rogue Spear/GR, March 28, 2003

By A Customer

Ok, I've been a VERY addicted player of all the RS games + Ghost Recon. These are almost the only games I have played for years, and I have played them constantly. Since this is the sequel to Rogue Spear, here's a quick comparison. They basically rewrote everything, and left out features that were in Rogue Spear. The result is better graphics, but more of an arcade-style action game. Using strategy (creating plans) is not useful, because even on the easiest level your computer-controlled teammates...get shot constantly. They sometimes turn and stare at a wall or cleared area instead of where the threat is. After playing the first several maps, I've noticed a boring consistency-there are no interesting scripted actions carried out by enemies. Their AI stinks (although they will 'nade you pretty effectively). I'm still amazed that they'll run out bravely into the line of fire, walking over a huge pile of corpses only to join the pile shortly. The AI stinks equally for both "good guys" & "bad guys." I've read that some of the maps are used for more than one mission...You still can't really customize your weapons. You can only use one weapon accessory, as opposed to the REAL SOPMOD M4 which Spec Ops can configure however they wish. Ie. You can't put both a scope and C-MAG on an M4. No flashlights either. No option to use Aimpoints, Reflex scopes, or ACOG 4x scopes. You can't use both high-cap mags and a silencer on pistols (or rifles for that matter). There is still MUCH lacking in the way of realism.. IMHO its gotten worse since Rogue Spear. You can't shoot through chairs and other paper-thin objects. ALL doors make noise when you open them (easily heard by nearby people). Shooting a person in the foot 2 or 3 times will kill them. Computer-controlled snipers (teammates)-evidently don't believe in the "one shot one kill" creed. Characters can run around for hours with a machine gun held at ready position without ever getting tired. In summary, the game seems more geared towards arcade-style "spray and pray" gameplay and MP games (because the AI doesn't matter when all the players are human). It really annoys me that the game industry does this...they always dive for the better graphics/animation and rewrite stuff instead of IMPROVING existing code. There are very very few new features in RS3 that I've noticed, and I'm disappointed. I would have been much happier if they had reused the pre-gameplay (briefing, planning, etc) stuff from Rogue Spear, and ONLY focused on adding new features and improving gameplay. I should not have paid...for this. There are plenty of bugs. I would wait for a patch or two to come out, then pay less for the game. Or just play the MP demo, since the game...in SP mode anyway. All that said, the graphics/animation are pretty nice...