| TOM CLANCY'S RAINBOW SIX by ... Maurice Fitzgerald | ||||
| Intelligent AI
There are other signs of greatness in the AI. If you are entering a room where a couple of tangos are holding a hostage at bay, one will shoot at you while the other may turn and shoot the hostage in the head! Now that’s great realism, and it causes you as the commander to think these consequences through as you plan out your mission. Your teams show intelligence as they can pick locks, open doors, climb and spot and engage targets on their own to great effectiveness based on the characters strengths and weaknesses in his or her stats.
The reaction of the tangos, on the other hand, is more of a mixed bag. When you fire at them or become engaged in a room close to them, there are a variety of different reactions, so I cannot say the AI is flawed as much as it just needs a bit more tweaking. I’ve engaged targets in one room and moved down the hall only to confront a terrorist running right for me having heard the engagement and moving to investigate and assist his buddy. Nice touch! Then I’ve had situations where I’ve shot a terrorist once with a pistol and he just kinda bends over for a second and then resumes walking as if it was just a mosquito bite and not a bullet he took. He doesn’t even always turn to investigate or call out an alarm. This could use some work. Other times I’ve fired on tangos with an unsuppressed weapon and missed him but he keeps walking on by without missing a beat. If you’ve ever heard the sound of ripping burlap as a round whizzes past you you’ll investigate, after hitting the deck of course! While sniping at sentries I’ve noticed another weird anamoly. You can have a couple of sentries right next to one another and they show no reaction when you drop one of their buddies. Sometimes I’ve seen a sentry stop what he’s doing and stare in your direction as if trying to pick you out, but there should be some alarm sounded or a more aggressive defensive posture taken. Other times I've taken out one sentry and the other sentry next to him fires on me. The issue may be less weak AI than complex AI, sometimes almost to a fault! It might seem that I’m being very nitpicky with the AI. I think the problem lies in the fact that Redstorm has tried to model so many AI functions that weirdness can result. Possibly my ideas would just make matters worse! In some games the AI is judged as either good or bad based on several variables the AI processes. In R6 the AI routines seem to be a lot more intricate, as morale and belief factor a great deal into how the enemy may react. When it comes to the hostages the AI is on target, with some nice touches. When you enter a room with a hostage and engage a terrorist the hostage will noticeably flinch at the gunshots. Sometimes the hostage may panic and run away from you, which can be dangerous if there’s bad guys around the corner. All in all the AI is very strong in this game, but there are a few little things that need to be looked at. Some Of The Best AI Today
Awesome Looks Department
Even breathing is modeled, so you see a characters chest expand and contract with each breath. (When this stops there could be a problem!) Other little details, like hand signals used when you call a halt for one of your teams, are an atmospheric touch. From the graphics and effects you definitely get the “you are there” feeling. Death animations and blood spray are nicely modeled and realistic. Nothing better than seeing a bad guy take a double tap to the head and drop like a rock. Run up to him and you'll see a nice neat pool of blood spread out from his wound as seconds pass. (Blood can be turned off in options if you are averse to this kind of thing) When you fire your weapons you see a nice patch of bullet holes in the walls, and they stay there throughout the mission. But there is no damage modeling to the objects other than that. I would have liked to have seen the ability to interact with the environment a bit more, allowing say lights to get blown out when you pop a grenade in a room. This could give you an advantage by switching to night vision and having a better sight picture than your enemy. |
 You can, however, blow out windows and they can actually work against you as your first burst at a terrorist behind a window will most likely be deflected by the glass forcing you to take another shot. Again, this is a realistically modeled sim based on true ballistics and it’s done well and accurately.
Going back to the game controls, control is done through a combination of keyboard and mouse input. You move using your arrow keys with mouse, look capability and targeting done also with the mouse. Your targeting reticule is a simple reticule with a twist, it changes size based on your ability to hit while moving or standing still. If you are running, for example, the reticule crosshairs will be further apart then if you are standing still. In this way you know if you have a stable firing platform, a very nice implementation of this realistic feature. Immersion Factor 100% You can also manipulate objects using the keyboard and accomplish things like picking locks, opening doors and using ladders. Picking locks is something you can do either freehand or with a lockpick kit and the time it takes depends on your characters stats. Add to all of this excellent weapons sounds and constant radio chatter from your team members as they call out "contact, tango down", "in position", (to signal they are set and awaiting a Go Code from you) "escorting precious cargo" and sitreps like that. All these factors make for complete immersion and will have you sitting at your keyboard with hands sweating, heart pounding and brain constantly going through the same mental checklist a commander in the field would have. The missions themselves are a greatly varied assortment of scenarios that will have you operating everywhere from an embassy in London to the jungles of the Congo to the Outback of Australia, even an oil tanker takedown! The missions have great variety, giving you a breath of fresh air and a new tactical challenge each time. There are even a couple of missions where you send in one Rainbow soldier and the objective is to not kill anyone but gather intel. For example, one mission tasks you to enter a residence of a high ranking official (I won’t tell you and ruin the storyline) by getting past roving patrols, defeat an alarm system and then get past roving patrols inside the house to set a bug on the phone. You must do this and get out and to the extraction point without firing a shot or being detected. I don’t know which missions were worse, being under fire or just trying to sneak past the guards and get to the objective. I guess it would be the sneak and peek missions because my hands tended to be a bit more sweaty during those ones. A great balance of brains and brawn this game has! With this game Redstorm has placed themselves squarely and firmly on the map as a player, and no one who wants a realistic first person shooter should go without this sim! This should also serve as a wake up call to other developers that not everyone wants a Quake clone for a first person shooter... gamers want realism. Give us realism and the opportunity to use our brains to plan things out as well as the brawn to pull it off. Redstorm took on a big task with this game and has done a truly outstanding job, this is not only an instant classic but one that will be a benchmark for future efforts. This is the easiest Top Pick award ever! Get It! Put together the typically classic plotline from Tom Clancy and the hyper-realistic depth of gameplay and some of the best AI today, and you have an instant winner. Redstorm, hats off to you! There are also full multiplayer options that allow play on Mplayer (which supports multicasting, which will help with the in-game voice chat feature). I've yet to test out the multiplayer so I cannot report on that at the moment, but I hope to do so in a follow on early next week. It's about time a "ground pounder" game got the same attention to detail previously seen only in flight sims. Redstorm has done us a great service by leading the way with Rainbow Six! The game is set to hit store shelves on August 27th, so make sure you're there when the stores open to grab this one. (Ed. Download the patch now...)
Core Rating : 100
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