The elite multinational counter-terrorism unit codenamed Rainbow Six is called into service against a worldwide terrorist threat from an organization known as the Global Liberation Front, a group that is comprised of various leftist, anarchists, and third-world organizations opposed to western civilization. Rainbow Six is tasked with tracking down GLF cells in various countries and either capturing or killing that cells leader.
Rainbow Six Lockdown is the fourth game in the Rainbow Six series and was released in February 2006 for Windows having been developed by Red Storm Entertainment. It is the first game in the series to feature advanced graphics effects and physics objects, and is the first game in the series where the planning phase was removed from the pre-mission setup.
This series of after-action reports is intended to be a higher level summary of the flow of each mission with some commentary offered under most of the screen shots provided. The game is presently available on Steam for $9.99.
Setup Phase
The Mission Setup panel indicates that the action is to take
place in Algeria on May 12th in daylight conditions.
The Briefing Overview panel indicates that intelligence is
investigating the theft of an illegally developed virus named Legion from a
company called LNR Anderson. The kidnapping of the South African President in
the first mission was a ruse to distract authorities and allow the theft to
occur. Team Rainbow is ordered to Malzir, Algeria to raid the apartment of
major weapons smuggler named Faisal Amidan and secure his client list from a
laptop.
The Briefing Intel panel indicates that the first map load
is broken up into two major sections with five key locations.
The second map load is a more liner path though winding
corridors and also has five key locations.
The Team Outfitting panel indicates that I will be taking
Chavez, Loiselle, Price, and Raymond along on this mission. These are hard
coded selections made in the campaign design and I do not have the ability to
alter my team members, but can adjust their equipped kits. I issue Red Dot
scopes for the primary weapon and high capacity magazines for the secondary weapons.
There is some choice available for the battle dress uniform; however I am going
with the suggested desert scheme.
Action Phase
The team is inserted into the battle space just outside a doorway leading into a labyrinth of hallways. It also looks like Picasa Web Albums is washing out my uploads again.
This is what the same image looks like on another service
(maybe it is just me, but I can tell the difference).
At the first door I order the team to stack up and break it
down with the hammer, followed by a flash grenade.
After clearing a couple of tangos we head down the stairs
into a sitting room area at the end of a long hallway.
The team advances down the hallway and rounds a corner to
find an open door to which we immediately make entry.
After clearing one tango in a corner, I order the team to
stack up on a shut door and use the hammer followed by a flash bang grenade.
This brought us to a laptop which we used an action to
download the client list. It seemed odd to me that the primary objective of the
mission occurs so early in the combat.
We setup on the door exiting the room as the middle operator
is about to strike it with sledge hammer.
This leads to a rather intense fire fight sequence on a
multilevel courtyard area (which features a nice display of the upgraded
graphics capabilities compared to earlier iterations of the franchise).
We make our way through the courtyard and down a couple of
levels through some stairwells clearing out threats along the way. This brings
us back outside into an alley which we navigate to an open air market place
around the corner ahead.
This area had several civilians milling about and as we
enter a tango comes from the other end of the market that we immediately put
down. Any civilians killed would cause the mission to instantly fail.
I move the team forward through an exit into another market
area which has several tangos but no civilians at this point.
Taking down another door with the hammer and flash bang
routine (I should have used the motion sensor first to save time as the room
was empty).
After a couple of more doors with no tangos behind them we
come upon a final market area which contained some enemies that the team
immediately put down. This triggered the completion of the extraction point
objective and a strange sequence in which a van was destroyed by an explosion
causing us to be issued a new objective to move the secondary extraction point
(the whole thing just felt badly orchestrated in the mission: had we been
moving down a long alley to see a van at the other end destroyed by an RPG or
something that would have been better).
Exiting the market area into another alley we see the van
that exploded and have to engage several tangos converging on the area as the
tempo is significantly picking up now.
After clearing out the area next to the destroyed van we
reach a door which ends the level and loads the final map sequence, triggering a
cut scene showing masked terrorists and a container that is apparently the
virus. Inexplicably we are instructed to avoid the virus containers at all cost
and to proceed to the new extraction point.
There are tangos everywhere and while trying to get out of
the kill box we were spawned into on the map load, Loiselle takes a brutal shot
to the gut and is incapacitated.
Well don’t look at me that way Renee; I don’t know what you
want me to do about it. Yep, that is a Ghost Recon poster smacked right there
on the side of the bus. The one game that I want to play but can’t is mocking
me.
While moving through another series of rooms, Renee Raymond
takes a gut shot while attempting a tactical entry through a door. It is now
just me an Eddie Price heading to the extraction point as we are ordered to leave
our incapacitated teammates behind.
That is until I order Eddie forward. Bye Eddie.
While desperately trying to make it to the extraction point
and end this mission (at such a high cost of wounded operators left behind and
huge canisters of a biohazard simply ignored) I take time to appreciate some of
the finer things in the game: elevated marksmen positions and DirecTV.
I finally make it to the secondary extraction point and
there is nothing there waiting for me. What the hell...
I look up to see a Blackhawk with mini-guns blazing away as a new objective appears: escape the city.
What the hell Becky…
This was a major reality check as I was basically
running wild through the streets at this point. How I got my shot off first to
clear this tango is beyond me.
I began to empty full clips into people just to make sure.
Reaching this door ended the mission. The final few twists
and turns had a tango here and there, but by this point the scenario seemed a
bit too long and the ending just a mess.
After-action Report
The odd thing here is that the statistics do not indicate the condition of the other three operators that were incapacitated during the mission. In previous instances of the franchise you could tell whether the operator was dead, injured or active.
77 tangos: utterly ridiculous.
Post Mortem
I liked this mission at first. The graphics were pretty good looking in some of the outdoor areas with sunlight, and the flow seemed logical and actually believable. However when it got to the point of leaving downed operators behind (something I do not believe the franchise has effectively addressed yet, I may be wrong) I started to cringe.
Then being told to simply ignore the virus canisters was a bit too much to swallow. Instead of having a constant firefight to a secondary objective because the first one was compromised, there was an opportunity here to hold the square where the virus was at and secure the area while waiting for a helicopter to come in and take it onboard.
I mean seriously here, if some third world tangos can safely transport this stuff, why couldn’t Team Rainbow?
Not just you. The "other" service seems to provide the better picture
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