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 Edinburgh, Scotland on June 27th in what appears to be a
mostly indoor mission.
The Briefing Overview panel provides the backstory for the
mission as provided by the onsite coordinator Alistair Stanley whose niece is
one of the hostages being held. The preview indicates that there is a bomb
located in the middle of a room that the team must disarm.
Given that there are hostages to be rescued I decide to
equip the team with a high accuracy A2 Para with a noise suppressor, and if
things get up close and personal a PP-2K submachine gun. All fragmentation
grenades are exchanged for flashbangs and the entry kits are a split between
the hammer and the generic breaching charge.
The Briefing Intel panel indicates that the first map load
is a moderate length open area (1) approach to a single entry choke point (2) followed
by some significant room clearing.
The second map load features a single massive area that has
two approaches on either side. The maintenance room (2) is where the bomb is
suspected to be and the parliamentary chamber (5) is where the hostages should
still be located.
Action Phase
The team deploys outside in the rain as the first objective
is added to use the surveillance system to locate the bomb. This is one of the
nice aspects of the game in that what had appeared as a long linear passage to
a front door is in actuality a multileveled approach that is peppered with
tangos just out of sight from my spot.
After clearing the approach the team is stacked on the door
and given an order to flash and clear. Although we are all assigned the default
olive drab BDU, each team member has a somewhat different tactical gear
arrangement.
With the high number of rooms to be cleared, I used the
motion sensor and fluid door movement combination to ease the door open just
enough to allow a few rounds to flyby on their way to center mass.
Eventually the team would make its way to this office which
contained a terminal we needed to operate in order to deactivate the metal
detector just outside the window (this was not covered in the mission briefing,
but we did receive a voiceover command during the actual mission).
Motion sensor for the win.
After interacting with another terminal the first objective
is cleared and the second objective to disarm the bomb is added.
The bomb is located in the maintenance room and disarmed to
complete the second objective. This was kind of a weak point in that I felt it
should have been somewhat hidden and better protected (there was no one in the
room hanging back to assault us when we entered). Completing this task adds the
next objective to rescue the hostages in the debating chamber.
The motion sensor reveals a significant amount of enemy
soldiers just on the other side of the door (there are actually several more
that are out of the devices range but have visual line of sight to the
entrance). This is another nice part of the game in that the device (although
fully a part of the Clancyverse) is effectively a cheat, yet neutered to a form
of realistic employment (that and the damn battery drains).
The stun grenades were actually quite effective in
temporarily dazing the tangos to allow for efficient room clearing.
As the team continued to advance a cut scene would trigger
revealing two hostages in the debate chamber (this was very reminiscent of a
mission from the original Rainbow Six game expansion pack Eagle Watch).
After clearing the initial wave on tangos the team is
ordered to hold off a second wave. Note the virus canister that is glowing
green: in a previous mission we were warned not to go near these things, however
in this mission there is no reference to them whatsoever (briefing or
voiceover). It is like the level designer just placed them in the chamber as
eye candy without any thought to their place in the overarching storyline.
What transpired was a very predictable whack-a-mole where a
tango or two would show up in one corner, then the opposite, rinse and repeat
until the “counter-attack” was put down.
Once that final wave was suppressed a rather peculiar thing occurred.
Instead of being told to escort the hostages to an extraction zone, a cut scene
played out performing this task and ending the mission.
After-action Report
69 terrorists killed…wow.
Post Mortem
There were three new team members assigned (McAllen, Pak, and Murad) but these are hardcoded into the game and the results from a previous mission do not matter as it is becoming painfully apparent that the AI teammates simply do not perish in the game, but are rendered incapacitated (the player however can die resulting in an immediate mission failure). I could not discern any reason as to why these new teammates were included as there is nothing to distinguish them from the crowd of other operators.
The addition of a bomb to disarm and the personal nature of the mission should have allowed for a more tense experience, however both aspects were flatly delivered during the action and added no sense of urgency. The bomb was located in the middle of a room and there was zero challenge to be had in either locating or disarming it. The niece of the onsite coordinator also was blandly implemented in that her radio chatter was neither compelling nor necessary, and actually annoying at times.
There was a missed opportunity here in that the mission could have been designed to be a failure: Rainbow could have fought just to watch the bomb explode taking out the debate chamber and the niece, and being ordered to pull back to the insertion zone while a cut scene plays out showing the carnage (predictable yes, but this entire mission is already).
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.