Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Rogue Spear

As before, you get a mission briefing, select teams and equipment, plot a mission plan, and then go in and kick ass. Don't kick too much ass though. Hostages are often in the way and must be protected, and the terrorists will do more than fire back. Sometimes they will spot you and try to kill a hostage, or move to detonate a bomb or activate some other device that will make things unpleasant for the country the action is going down in.

Gameplay dynamics have been refined, but the basics still apply. Most notably, if you take fire, it's about 99.9 percent certain that you won't live through it. This is not an action shooter where you can survive being hit by a rocket and then restore yourself to full health by running over a health pack ten seconds later. Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear are probably the most unforgiving games for this. A moment of carelessness will be fatal, especially if your mistake reveals you to more than one gunner. However, you can switch to other teammates in your squad, or an entirely different squad if you like (you can do this if your character is incapacitated, or if you feel it's time in the mission to guide another team personally through a rough area).

The refinements in question include a better over-all stability as compared to the glitchy original (though it's still not perfect in that respect), and some very welcome gameplay additions. Firstly, the keyboard interface has been remapped to be a little more intuitive (and you can configure keys without quitting a game session).

There are extremely welcome additions that will make you wonder how you played the original without them. You can lean around corners, not unlike the way you can in Thief: The Dark Project (no water arrows though). Believe me, you will use this new ability, and you will love it. Because Rogue Spear is so unforgiving when it comes to taking fire, it is essential that the R6 teams have all the reasonable real-life methods of avoiding it. It makes such a difference that it seems very unlikely that any new "realism" shooter will be allowed to get away without one now.

All missions are now pre-plotted and outfitted by HQ, but you can do away with the mission plan and do one from scratch. Although the pre-made mission plans are usually decent, the thrill is coming up with your own. Still, pre-plotted missions are a good thing for people who don't want to spend any time assigning guns and just get down to the gunplay.

The original had 16 missions, this one has 18. Some of these environments are huge, and will take awhile for you to get through them. It is true that good players will probably fly through a lot of the missions, especially since some them demand a quick, high speed strike. However, once you've completed a mission, the single player mode also gives you a little extra mileage for your dollars with the ability to replay the mission in several different styles. You can go through the mission in "Lone Wolf" mode, which simply means you wander through the map trying to get from your insertion point to an extraction point, engaging or evading terrorists on the way. "Terrorist Hunt" is simply that--grease all the baddies on the level, but there are no hostages in the way to run interference. Two other options have been retained from the original too. If you do complete the mission but came back with oh, one guy remaining of the odd dozen you sent in (the Kosovo mission--twitch twitch), you can "Branch Campaign," and try to redo the mission so you can continue your campaign with the results from the "Do-over" instead. You can also select "Practise Mode," the ability to replay a mission for kicks.

The 3D environments are a definite improvement over the original's. They aren't as empty and are better detailed. Perhaps they are not as good as the top action shooters, a fact that will have some lamer in your life teasing you, but just smack him and he'll shut up. The graphics are more than adequate, and there are some great environments. I love the oil tanker of the second mission, it makes me feel like I'm playing The Usual Suspects (the climatic gunfight on the boat). I don't want to mention too many levels, as that would spoil the fun, but lets just say there's lots of variety, and you can expect to use lots of different kinds of camouflage. And I must say this for the graphics--the model movement is awesome. Your squadmates look much more like humans and not guys put together with bits of coloured paper. When you play multiplayer, get behind one of your human pals and watch them lean around a corner. Whether they're crouching or standing, it looks like real human movement.

Although the missions are new, Rogue Spear is very similar to Rainbow Six, but the overall presentation has been smoothed over and refined. It's everything Rainbow Six was, plus everything it should have been and more. Damn you get a macho rush wasting terrorists, but at the same time saving lives. I feel like a guy in a cigarette ad. Maybe it's some of the nifty new weaponry. Here in the office, Leandro likes the Barrett 82A1, a gun that was created by mixing a sniper rifle with a howitzer. I like the Steyer Aug (if it's good enough for the bad guy in Die Hard, it's good enough for me) and the SPAS-12 combat shotgun (when you absolutely positively have to kill every &(*#$er in the room, accept no substitutes).

However, I do have a few bones to pick, which I will put in the form of a wishlist for the next R6 game.

-Lose the stealth-only missions. I don't think assault teams should be bugging telephones. Picture this: would you send a SWAT team to do a stake-out? Only if you needed them to be standing by to go in and kick ass, but you wouldn't have them sitting by window with a video camera and a notebook. What do we pay the intelligence guys for, anyway? If we must have them, give the player some more equipment that might make it easier to do the mission (such as, I dunno, a light gem and gas arrows borrowed from Thief.)

-More damage to the environments. Glass shatters, there are bullet trails (which respond differently in both sounds and graphics depending on what you're hitting), but I'd like to see something more. In particular, I'd like to see surfaces that can be punctured. Plywood will not do much to protect you from an HK UMP 45, so if you're standing behind it when one goes off, you should be in a world of pain. Real emergency response teams actually have to "check the backstop," meaning determine what's behind what they're shooting at, and whether the bullets will go through them (Sierra's SWAT 3 is promising this feature).

-The ability to lie prone, for snipers at least. And perhaps the ability to camouflage, if say, foliage is available.

-The ability to pick up items and/or transfer equipment. If someone needs a clip, they should be able to bum one off a teammate. Although it's preferable to use your own weapons which have been properly maintained, if you're out of bullets but you've got to defend yourself, and a dead terrorist's AK-47 is right there...

-Enemy AI is pretty good. They run for cover, react to noises...though we'd like to see a few more improvements. There are times when terrorists seem strangely unresponsive to their friend's deaths (and incoming fire). I don't mean to harp on the subject as I don't want Rogue Spear turned into this game, but let me mention the AI in Thief. They hear noises and can be distracted, but not always enough to set off alarms to alert everyone. They react to the discovery of bodies. How about a mission where the moment a terrorist sees a dead comrade, he responds with a dead hostage?

-Friendly AI is better too, and I found the teammates had less problems following my path. However, they need to work independently better. In one mission, I fell down into a room, severely injuring myself. My teammates happily jumped over after me, injuring themselves as well. When this happens, there should be a move to either force them to join you, tell them to stay put until you get back to them, or tell them to find another route down around to you. I'd also like to see some kind of hotkey for scattering and taking cover. If you have to retreat in a hurry because a sniper just let fly from somewhere above, you can do it, but your teammates will probably be in the way, dutifully staying put and getting hit. I'd also like to have AI teams to control during multiplayer.

-If you fail a mission by losing all your team members or by botching a mission objective, you must replay it. You know, although it's a totally different game, I really miss the dynamics of Wing Commander. All your wingmen dead? Botch five missions in a row? Too bad, but the campaign goes on, to its (very) bitter conclusion. I would have like to have seen this in Rogue Spear. Start with x amount of members, and then if you lose them, more, less experienced members are added. As the missions progress you can read media reports of R6's exploits. In your very first mission, you must storm an art gallery and rescue the French Prime Minister's daughter. What if you failed to stop a terrorist from killing her, or worse, accidentally killed her in the crossfire? Such a thing would enrage the French government, and might cause them to pull their troops out of Rainbow. The campaign continues, minus all members from France. See what I mean? The FBI was not disbanded after the Waco incident. And on the other side, if you are especially efficient during missions, perhaps more nations and more personnel join Rainbow.

-A "tutorial" is provided, but that's a bit of a misnomer. Although it goes over many aspects of the game, there's no narration to explain to you what to do and why. Anyone who's played Rainbow Six won't need a tutorial, but newbies will. Input from real anti-terrorist squadmembers might have been interesting, such as explaining techniques for clearing a room, what to look out for, etc. Interactively telling you how to command other squads (coordinating them is essential) would have done wonders for taking a notch off the learning curve.

-Finally, still a few glitches to clean up. I've managed to peak through a wall or two, and sometimes a 3D object will poke through another, or get caught on another. We're also a little suspicious about some of the shots we've taken. We're pretty confident we've hit people, but a bullet will occasionally pass through someone without harming them. Still, I have no encountered any glitches as bad as the original (Once in Rainbow Six, I fell through a flight of stairs.)

Okay, enough bitching and let's get back to the good stuff. Let's talk multiplayer, and as before, that is a real gas. I think optimal play is on LAN if you're fortunate enough to have friends who are into LAN parties. This way, you have instantaneous voice communication, because voice communication without any gadgets or typing is a definite advantage here.

You can go through all the single-player missions cooperatively, and how you want to structure things is up to you. You can assign AI players to accompany your players, which is not a bad idea. Not only will they watch your back, but you will also jump into one of their bodies if you get killed. This kind of play does wonders for actually feeling like you're a member of a real anti-terrorist squad on a mission. You'll work out your own moves, and your own methods. We were kicking ass having one of us crouch in front of the door and throwing it open, while another guy with a heavy weapon stood behind him.

"Ready?"
"Yeah."
"Opening..."
RATATATATATAT
"Clear."
"Lemme reload before we do the next one..."

Rogue Spear has all kinds of multiplayer options too. In fact, it's probably one of the best multiplayer packages we've seen this year, if not THE best. There are plenty of different modes for co-op and adversarial play. All of the multiplayer modes from both Rainbow Six and the Eagle Watch expansion have been included. Number one, you can do straight up deathmatch, called "Survival." The same rules apply as during a single-player game: you won't be getting hit more than twice. This does mean the some games go by rather fast, but you'd be surprised how long they can last if the last two players left standing are playing cautiously. You can also play Team Survival, where your team is victorious if at least one of its members is the last one(s) standing.

We really like Stronghold, in which you try to defend your area from invaders. If one of them eliminates your team, or stands in your fortress for three seconds, they win. You can also play "Double Stronghold" where both teams have an area to defend. There's also "Double-bluff," where there are hostages that must be escorted home (kill a hostage, game over). "Save the Base" has two competitive teams away from their bases, and a timer is ticking down to the moment when a bomb detonates. Try to get home and stop it from happening. Finally, there's "Assassination" where you each have a general. The objective: assassinate each other's general.

And that's just competitive play. There are also variations on the co-op modes too. You can try to accomplish the mission objective co-op, or do a simple Terrorist Hunt, which takes on a whole new dimension if you choose to start the level scattered. From the sheer number of multiplayer options and maps, it is obvious that Red Storm put a lot of effort and imagination into the multiplayer campaign. There are no shortage of server options too. You can force certain graphic options, restrict players from having certain kinds of equipment, boot players from the server (if you're the host, obviously), lock the server, password protect the server, even name the server you're running from if you like. Hell, when configuring your character you can change arm patches if you like.

Rogue Spear is scary, and multiplayer is about sharing (or spreading) the terror. Few things are scarier than hearing gunfire from your teammate, not knowing what's going on, and then learning that your teammate has just scrubbed somebody you didn't even see, but was about to shoot at you. Or watching your teammates turn around a corner and getting cut down by a sniper. Meanwhile, you have no idea where the shot came from. Few things are more satisfying than drawing a bead on a human opponent who is covering a door they're sure you're coming through, but meanwhile you're standing behind him. Well, it's satisfying if you're the one pulling the trigger, and not the guy who will soon have to change his shorts.

When a session is complete, if you've been playing co-op, a perfect mission gives you a real feeling of satisfaction. That one lost teammate will eat away at you and make you play the mission again. This game is full of "moments," the kind you babble about to each other after you've played. You'll be telling someone that you were trying desperately to get around them so you could get a clean shot before Mr. Badguy cleared the corner and opened fire on the party.

It's obvious now that multiplayer is a major driving force behind successful games. Where would Starcraft be without its multiplayer? Most companies have caught on to this fact but are still just throwing together a few deathmatch levels. Only a few are actually trying to put together a package with the usual features and some creativity.

Rogue Spear is one such package. But for those of you who don't want to share it with anyone, there's a very strong single player campaign to wade through. While not radically different from the original game and still in need a few things, Rogue Spear does offer some very welcome improvements and new features that make the sequel a great game, as opposed to merely good.

System Requirements:

Pentium 233 Mhz with 3D Hardware acceleration OR Pentium 266 Mhz with MMX (software rendering)
32 MB RAM Required (64 MB RAM Recommended)
Windows 95 or Windows 98
Software Rendering only: 2D 16-Bit SVGA 4MB Video Card 3D hardware Support: Direct 3D compatible video card required. Supported chipsets include 3Dfx Voodoo, Nvidia Riva, Matrox G200, for a full list of supported cards visit www.redstorm.com
4x or Better DirectX compatible sound card required
200 MB uncompressed space
DirectX 6 (included on CD) must be installed
Internet/Network Play: Properly Configured TCP/IP connection at 28.8 Kbps or faster

Pros

Cons

Bottom Line