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Tango Alpha Bravo Niner Roger Charliehorse

Playing Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield makes me wonder if I didn’t appreciate Ghost Recon enough. The expansive levels of Ghost Recon, the real military objectives and fresh plot were perhaps graces I didn’t pay enough attention to. Beaten down as it was by performance problems and arbitrary movement restrictions (‘no, sorry, you can’t climb this gentle slope because we say so’), perhaps it simply felt more oppressive at the time.

Gimme a ding-ding-ding!

Just lean around corners

He be dead

Raven Shield returns the franchise to its roots – counter-terrorist operations. The plot is interwoven more with the game now, connecting various apparently random terrorist acts with a National Socialism resurrection movement. As far as Rainbow Six games go, Raven Shield is quite heavy on the plot and better for it, so there is now added incentive to play through the whole game. Keep in mind that this is ‘as far as Rainbow Six games go’; raving about Raven Shield’s plot is like praising Tribes 2 for its singleplayer game.

Alpha, go go go Alpha go baby yeah

Raven Shield makes use of the new Unreal engine which may have caused some needless worry among R6 fans. The conversion from arcade to stealth action is flawless. If we didn’t know better, we’d call it a graphics upgrade to the core Rainbow engine.

So open and exposed

Footiestepthings

Thwack

Of course, with the added splendor of Unreal technology comes a performance drop. Raven Shield has a few unexplainable stutters and choppy moments as if the game was loading from the hard drive, but we noticed no such activity. It’s quite a step up from Rogue Spear in performance demands, but hasn’t raised the bar all that significantly over Ghost Recon.

To be perfectly honest, given the impressive effects of the Unreal-powered Splinter Cell, we’re surprised Ubi couldn’t pull off the same with Raven Shield. Splinter Cell could more than hold its own in terms of performance, and in fact is better looking in this reviewer’s opinion.

We were also quite disappointed to note that the Unreal engine’s outdoor terrain capability was hardly even put to the test with Raven Shield. There are only a few levels with any kind of natural landscapes, which is a pity since they worked so well for Ghost Recon.