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Raven Shield Review April 28, 2003 Jakub Wojnarowicz |
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Summary: Tango down! That's music to Jakub's ears... or more like winning the lottery. Poor guy, he could just never quite squeeze that mouse button fast enough for a nice, clean burst of 5.56mm lead. And what better game to do it in than the hot, sexy, Unreal-engine powered Raven Shield? Throw those spicy graphics into the tried-and-true Rainbow Six recipe and you've got a sure winner right? Maybe. The formula is starting to taste a little stale.
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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.
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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.
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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.
SIDEBAR: Can you imagine how horrible life would be if we did live in a world as terrifying as Tom Clancy’s? Where accidental or deliberate disaster was averted on a daily basis by an elite team of special operatives who, despite all their heroic deeds, got paid less than the bastards who sunk Enron?
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Tango is a dance!
The standard assortment of missions – save the hostages, defuse the bomb, plant the bug without being seen – are back. Now that wouldn’t be all that exciting if we didn’t get to visit exotic locals like the Cayman Islands, Switzerland and a grotesque oil refinery in Venezuela. The number of missions may be few but at least there is a good variety of choices on the menu. The maps are large, detailed and laid out in vicious Rainbow Six fashion. Terrorists will greet your team with sniper fire from windows, a withering hail of bullets from high vantage points and deadly barrages fired at anyone caught in the open – if you let them.
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Properly played, Rainbow Six is a game that will reward stealth, speed, coordination and a quick trigger finger. There’s a tangible thrill when rushing through a map the first time, scanning for movement, getting in position, assaulting a room and waiting for the next go-code. A certain amount of randomness in enemy positions makes each run through a map different than the one before, and though after a few tries you learn the positions, you can also learn to anticipate dangerous situations without having been there before.
To help the team succeed is an assortment of the finest combat gear the world has to offer. From ghetto weapons like Mac 11s and Micro Uzis, through terrorist gear like AK-47s to the most modern assault rifles like Steyr AUGs, it’s all there. Rainbow Six favorites like heartbeat sensors, flashbangs and the assortment of light, medium and heavy armors. Too bad none of it matters.
Alpha, man down!
As far as Raven Shield is concerned, it’s almost like any assault rifle is good enough. Any submachine gun will do the job. The various ratings, like damage, range and so on – don’t seem to have much of an effect. For all intents and purposes, the kill power of a weak gun like the MP5-SD is the same as the Barrett .50cal sniper rifle. That’s not to say I wouldn’t prefer an M16 over an Uzi, but the differences between M16s, M4s, AUGs and AK-47s are really minimal.
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The same problem applies to the armor. When every enemy seems to take a bead on your head, the amount of body armor you’re wearing is meaningless. Since most hits end up as deaths, a few as incapacitated (dead for all intents and purposes) and even fewer as wounds (they’ll recover after a mission), you might as well always be in light armor for the extra stealth and speed.
As always, the assault class is the one which gets the real workout. Occasions for the use of snipers, demolitions experts and recon experts are limited. In fact, the only use of recons we found was in the forced-stealth missions.
SIDEBAR: Raven Shield hates my monitors for some reason. One blew up while playing it, and the other’s vertical/horizontal size and shape settings reset every once in a while. Why?
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Tango, go yawn
Despite the varied locations, all the missions in Raven Shield start to feel the same after a while. You enter a heavily guarded facility from the outside, picking off whatever evolutionary rejects drew the short straws to stand guard. After that, it’s an end run through the go codes, clearing rooms and claustrophobic hallways while watching the status of other teams to make sure that at least one of them is alive to make sure all the codes are cleared. If an entire team is wiped out, it becomes a chore to find their route and run through it to clear the map, so it’s best to reload and try again in that case.
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There’s really no sense in planning your own routes through the map either. Just load up the standard choice, and keep trying until you succeed. Planning routes personally increases the odds of making a mistake and leaving a terrorist or two unaccounted for. Since the terrorists all lie along the stock routes, the only point in creating your own is for personal satisfaction.
What really confounds us is why the missions in Raven Shield end up being so much more generic than the rather imaginative bunch in Rogue Spear. Differences between missions are negligible. I remember the locations they occurred in more due to the briefings than any memorable level design.
This is Bravo, incoming enemies!
The AI, as with any other AI that tries to emulate human behavior, alternately dazzles and falls flat on its face. Observing a door being breached or hostages being led by AI teammates is as impressive as seeing entire teams being wiped out without reacting is disappointing.
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There are fewer problems with the opponents. They’re far less likely to not notice the player – only once did a terrorist freeze without shooting, so we’re willing to chalk it up to yellow-bellied cowardice in the vein of Oppum from Saving Private Ryan. On the other hand, they’re damn good shots. One would think that they’re not really human, judging how they rarely miss and always go straight for the head *cough*.
To even the playing field with the lasersniperbots, the player too has access to auto-aim. Different settings change the radius of engagement, and if set to maximum one can practically never move his mouse in combat and get headshots galore. Hardly realistic. Yes, real combat is a lot faster and more lethal than in the movies. No, we seriously doubt that terrorists and counter-terrorists are able to open a door and go 6 for 6 headshots. It’s also worth noting that the player never manages to be pinned down, even by a sniper facing his direction. The AI reaction time is always miraculously slow enough to sneak in a shot.
Tango with partners
Fortunately the majority of these problems disappear in multiplayer. The AI and aim are no longer factors, the level designs are much more suited to search-and-destroy tactics and the variety of weapons and equipment have meaning when auto-aim can’t be turned on and body parts other than the head are hit.
SIDEBAR: Tom Chick uses this movie quote constantly with me - Forget it, Jake. This is Chinatown.
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Pros
Graphics
Not the best use of the Unreal 2 engine; the art is too sterile, but some decent ragdoll physics, good lighting and modeling bring the game up to speed.
Sound
Maybe the flashbangs and grenades aren’t realistically loud, but my ears are grateful for that. Windows and doors that block sound and good use of music are more noteworthy than the combat effects, for once.
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Gameplay
The levels and aim AI might not be so great, but it’s hard to deny that Raven Shield offers a solid Rainbow Six experience. The AI is improved marginally, now obeying orders to move, stay put, open a door or climb a ladder with unerring precision.
Multiplayer
We’ve heard of some CD key validation issues and experienced some odd bugs getting the list of servers, but if you actually connect to a game, it can be quite fun in co-operative or adversarial modes.
Game modes
Lone Wolf, Terrorist Hunt and Hostage Rescue modes add some replayability and value.
Cons
Multiplayer bugs
We experienced repeated bugs when trying to download a list of servers; closing background programs helped a bit but this remains a problem.
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Aim AI
Headshot. Headshot. Headshot. Headshot. As good as some real world marksmen get, they can’t be this good. If they are, then it’s the duty of the game to tone it down so there’s at least a point in using different weapons and armor.
Maps
The maps are more generic and repetitive than past titles. This isn’t helped by a predictable list of mission objectives.
Short game
If one eliminates the numerous repeated missions, there isn’t much to Raven Shield. Heck, the last three maps are recycled from earlier in the game. Not exactly stellar stuff.
SIDEBAR: It was Orthodox Easter this weekend.
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