Rainbow Six Lockdown Algeria

Malzir, Algeria May 12th: Terrorists have stolen a lethal virus with a 100% mortality rate that is for sale to the highest bidder. Team Rainbow must raid the apartment of an international weapons smuggler and download sensitive information from his laptop.

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?

1 comment:

  1. Not just you. The "other" service seems to provide the better picture

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.