lockdown

Rainbow Six 4: Lockdown. This time, it's personal.

Or so the trailer would have you believe. I really have a hard time accepting this latest attempt by UbiSoft to make their critically acclaimed series more accessible. Maybe it's the lack of helmets, and the soldiers sporting non-standard haircuts and different uniforms. Or perhaps it's the selection of America's latest hot-bed of activity, the Middle East, as the setting for the game.

The screens released a couple of months ago showing off the game's new "goggle interface" that "fully immerse[s] you in the game experience" almost had me in conniptions. Fans had a hard enough time with Raven Shield, which for the first time in the series' history actually made the weapon viewable in first-person mode. It was removable in the options, of course, but the reaction is what's important. The graphics are less than inspiring as well, obviously a result of Lockdown being a multi-platform release. And everything about the gameplay preview points to this being a standard first person shooter, removing everything that made its predecessors unique or interesting to play.

I also love how the game features list rag doll physics as if it means something. Ever since Unreal Tournament 2003 started using havok (and in case UbiSoft's PR department has forgotten already, Raven Shield used the new Unreal/havok engines as well) it's been pretty much standard in every FPS on the PC. Then again, this title clearly isn't aimed at fans of the original - it's aimed at gamers who want to kill terrorists and wouldn't know a squad tactical shooter if it kicked them in the balls. This would also explain Lockdown's "unprecedented multiplayer". What, like totally different than the multiplayer that was available from Rainbow Six in 1998?

What seems to be the spiritual successor to Rainbow Six is Close Combat: First to Fight, a training simulator developed by the U.S. Marine Corps. I saw some of the gameplay demos a few weeks ago, and I am absolutely impressed. Following in the footsteps of Full Spectrum Warrior, the tactics of fire and suppress are used again, but with an entirely new approach to interacting with the environment. Vehicles can be used, and you can actually go inside buildings, where room takedowns are similar to those in Rainbow Six. Morale is apparently used as well, making poor or just plain bad orders have an effect on your squad; though this also applies to an overwhelmed enemy that may just retreat after seeing their comrades cut down around them. I'm a little uneasy about the setting, and the graphics aren't exactly top-notch either, which surprises me considering the game is only being developed for the XBox and PC. Military shooters such as these are becoming a double-edged sword. If you want realism, you have to swallow the propaganda; otherwise you succumb to the curse of accessibility, making the game more of an arcade shooter than something actually worth playing.

bottle up and explode