Overview

I’ll take “realistic shooters” for 400 please Alex

Before Counter-Strike, before America’s Army, before Flashpoint, Day Of Defeat, SOCOM, Splinter Cell, Urban Terror and a wide variety of realist shooters, there was Rainbow Six. At the time the shooter crowd was still into their rocket launchers and alien weaponry that spewed lightning, Rainbow Six discarded the majority of the twitch paradigm, and forged a new genre inspired by military tactics and protocol. Based on the novel of the same name by Tom Clancy, Rainbow Six came on the shooter scene bearing so many revolutionary ideas that the only game whose ingenuity it could even be compared to was Wolfenstein 3d, which started the whole show.

The single player played a bit like a strategy game crossed with a shooter, where the player’s planning of his counter-terrorist team affected how well you did on the mission, while the multiplayer brought a fanatically realistic paradigm. As you walked your crosshairs fanned out, stop walking and they slimmed back down, this single feature with a dozen other details, forced the player to think, and those very ideas have spawned many a game since R6’s first release.

Boom baby, boom!

Sneaking in on the kill

Peeking around

R6 X 3 = R18?

Though it was by far one of the most revolutionary titles for its time, R6’s multiplayer enjoyed at best a cult following. Though the deliberate gameplay might be cited as why, it also suffered from a number of interface problems, and an engine that was at best described as “peculiar.” However, still to this day folks can be found playing the original R6 and it’s sequel Rogue Spear.

Crotch shot

Decisions, decisions

Peek that head out

A title later, Red Storm is gearing up to bring us the third official installment in the Rainbow Six series. Rainbow Six: Raven Shield touts a licensed Unreal engine, and a whole slew of new features to the series. Raven Shield is slated to hit stores this February, and already Red Storm and Ubisoft have released the multiplayer test for the players to poke around in and provide feedback. The multiplayer test features two maps, including a remake of the legendary Streets, and two gametypes (deathmatch and team deathmatch essentially.) After a quick download, we took Raven Shield out for a spin.