Graphics, sound and performance

The Unreal Rainbow

Rainbow Six is back, and Red Storm has given up on prior engines, in favor of the more tried and true Unreal engine. The Unreal engine serves the R6 series well, none of Redstorm’s realist games have looked as good as Raven Shield is shaping up to be. Most importantly, the game just doesn’t look good, but the graphics are being used on a level that effect the gameplay heavily. Light plays a huge role in the game, light illuminates or silhouettes models perfectly, and hiding in the shadows actually obscures the player into near invisibility.

The Red Storm team has also taken the time to add a number of environmental and technical effects to the Unreal engine, the finest example is tear gas. Tear gas has been included in Raven Shield, and it’s a serious force to be reckoned with. If you’re subjected to tear gas it will force you to simply cough which can give up your position, but depending on exposure level you may have your view distorted and stretched to extremes, or occasionally shake from the uncontrollable fits of coughing and/or vomiting. The blur effects associated with tear gas are far from cheap, it doesn’t just change your field of view, the textures become blurred, you’ll see double, light trails, and all manner of other borderline hallucinogenic experiences.

Looking for a bad guy

And it's right in front of him and he doesn't see it!

Go, go, go!

The attention to graphical representation shows in a number of gadgets and gameplay mechanisms. Get shot and you won’t need a flashing red screen to let you know you’re taking lead, your whole view will stretch and pan expressing the pain you’re in. Turn on night vision and look directly into a streetlight like a goober and be blinded. What if you’re real close to a grenade when it goes off but you’re in cover and manage to survive? Not only will your vision be mildly blurred from the concussion you’ve sustained, but you’ll also hear a perpetual ringing in your ears from your eardrums bursting.


This attention to effects detail really separates Raven Shield from the competition in going the extra stride in attempting to represent what it is a real combatant would be going through, and on top of that, a number of the effects are just downright brilliant on a graphical level.

Pop, pfft, bang?

The sound in Raven Shield just doesn’t play as large a role on the gameplay as compared to the graphics. Footsteps aren’t loud enough, gunfire is incredibly muffled unless it is going off in your hands or your ear, the attention to detail in sound isn’t present like it is in the eye candy department. The realist shooter has long been defined by its player’s attention to sound as a tool against their enemy, and as it stands the RvS multiplayer test just lacks that feature. In Counter-Strike or any number of the flagship realist shooters a player can know where a grenade is without ever seeing it and many a player has been accused of wall hacking by simply listening to where their enemy is. Presently in the Raven Shield multiplayer test we’re given a broad thud when a frag grenade finds ground and footsteps can briefly be heard when within a stone’s throw of an enemy. We’re hoping the final version will touch sound up, as well as add some decent ambient effects, such as the bullets whizzing past your head we saw in America’s Army, but we’re still a few months off, so no worries as of yet.

Sit down

Fire in the hole

Firefight

Don’t let the bed bugs bite

Yes, it’s a multiplayer test, so we don’t intend to write essays on the issue of bugs, but for a licensed engine (One of the most licensed engines in the gaming industry no less) Raven Shield has a palpable number of bugs. When panning around we have experienced a number of inexplicable FPS hits, as well as some just downright odd bugs, like a whole team losing mouse control for a round, or swapping to a grenade and being stuck weaponless. The Raven Shield hungry player base has done a good job of chronicling the bugs experienced in the multiplayer test over on the Ubi boards, so we’re hoping to see them stamped out by the time to the game ships. Regardless of what may come in February when Raven Shield is released, the bugs will definitely effect your demo experience, so you may wish to wait until the snow starts to thaw to try the game out.