Rainbow Six Lockdown University

Intelligence has discovered that the terrorists that attacked the parliament building in Edinburgh Scotland are a part of the Revolutionary Brotherhood. Before Team Rainbow arrived on site some of the terrorists attempted to escape and took two hostages with them before the building could be secured. Local authorities have cornered the terrorists across town at Scotland University. The team orders are to locate the remaining hostages and escort them to safety.

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 27^th in what appears to be a mostly indoor mission. This mission is occurring later in the same day as the previous mission M05: Parliament.

The Briefing Overview panel provides the backstory for the mission as provided by the onsite coordinator Alistair Stanley (who still hasn’t thanked us yet for rescuing his niece earlier in the day).

The Briefing Intel panel indicates that the first map load is a sequence of two general areas on separate levels. The long area leading from the insertion zone (1) to the museum entrance (2) will prove to be one of the more tactically challenging areas to navigate in the game so far.

The second map load is a single generalized area that is broken up into different rooms linked by wide sweeping hallways. The hostage location (actually 3) is a poorly lit area that is another tactical nightmare.

One may think that given the nature of the mission (straight up hostage rescue) that suppressors would be a natural choice, however I have come to the conclusion that they have no discernable effect on the game play and it doesn’t matter if you starting dropping bodies with a loud bang. Each operator is equipped with an M36C with a Red Dot scope, an M9 with a high capacity magazine and flash bang grenades.

The team is inserted into a dimly lit entrance that leads to a library/archive room.

Given the wonky nature of the friendly AI (who like to charge forward then stand still getting shot at), I order them off to the side as I use a fluid motion to ease the door open to allow me to pick off any targets of opportunity (and there are plenty of them).

After clearing several tangos, I order the team forward into the room as I move along the edge of the bookshelves to take out some of the elevated marksmen positions.

Once those are cleared the team is moved further in and we begin to sweep all of the side rooms and balcony areas.

Once we clear the library we make our way through to the museum entrance.

This approach is a basic L-shaped hallway however it does feature some nice soft lighting effects.

As with the previous area (the library), in this location there are a number of false doors that give the appearance of a much larger structure.

Tom Clancy for the win: the Motion Sensor in the game is pivotal for successful room clearing.

Doors are also very useful for shielding an entry as sometimes the tangos will not shoot at a moving door, which allows a better positioning for a peak shot from a crouched position.

Wasted space: there were huge rooms and large hallways that were simply devoid of life.

Every now and then we would have to deal with a door that has been fused shut. This delays the assault somewhat but without having any time repercussions so far in the campaign, it seems to be mostly a nuisance.

The descent into the basement area was surprisingly uneventful (I would have expected a terrorist to be waiting down in this stairwell).

In the novel Rainbow Six, towards the end the team utilizes a device to track down terrorists in the rain forest. One operator laments that it doesn’t seem fair, which the titular character John Clark dismisses are tough shit. This device would later become the Heartbeat Sensor of the early video games, and evolve into the Motion Sensor in Lockdown.

One thing that the Rainbow games never seem to have an issue with is modeling a pistol (here with a high capacity magazine) holstered to the static mesh. ArmA on the other hand cannot seem to resolve this issue after 15 years of game design.

Suckers…

This area is very reminiscent of the Oil Refinery map in Raven Shield.

The implementation of fluid door movement followed by a few rounds downrange is absolutely lethal.

We make it to a control room to hack a console which shuts off the power and completes the first objective.

The next objective is added which is to search the west wing for the hostages.

This entrance was somewhat difficult as there were tangos on either side of the single doorway.

This eventually leads to an auditorium where there are several terrorists moving about the seating area that need to be eliminated so we can safely advance to the classroom. How this area has power when electricity was cut earlier is questionable.

More false walls make progress a bit slower as they have to be checked to determine if they are valid areas that need to be cleared.

This area (which resembles a library to me but is labeled as a classroom on the briefing map) is where the hostages are located (on a balcony) and is poorly lit making the hard tactical corners quite problematic. I would hold the AI back here and advance through the room myself to clear the tangos before bringing the others forward.

This lunchroom was quite massive and although there were a few terrorists here and there that needed to be eliminated, it was largely wasted space.

After clearing all of the rooms behind the classroom, the team circles back to pick up the hostages.

There are no spawning tangos (at least from what I can tell) so we make it to the extraction area without further issue.

After-action Report

Rainbow Duck Hunt.

Post Mortem

The screen shots should look better now as I learned how to disable the Picasa Web Album auto-optimization that has been plaguing me for some time. Although it does make some pictures look better, I prefer having it set to off as the default setting.