Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six
Platform: PC
Developer: Red Storm Entertainment
Release: 1998
Before Rainbow Six, almost every first-person shooter on the market looked and played like Quake. Id Software's seminal action game established the formula for every game to follow with over-the-top weapons, lightning-fast gameplay, and nightmare-inducing monsters. And though the Quake formula was undeniably exciting, there was something decidedly absent in the game: realism. In fact, realism was something that was missing from the genre altogether.
Enter author Tom Clancy, a man who had made himself one of the wealthiest entertainers in America with his riveting techno-thriller novels. In the mid-'90s, Clancy jumped into the PC gaming realm with a new company, Red Storm Entertainment. The idea was to exploit the synergy between different mediums by developing games based on Clancy's books. The crown jewel of this effort was Rainbow Six, a realistic, military-themed first-person shooter that rewarded solid tactics rather than twitchy reflexes. The idea was revolutionary and yet so obvious that it's a wonder no one else thought of it before.
Rainbow Six was a breath of fresh air in the genre, and gamers tired of Quake's "gibs" (the term used to describe an exploding body) embraced Clancy's idea of realistic gameplay. Everything, from the weapons and body armor to the equipment, was drawn from the real world (save, of course, for the controversial heartbeat sensor). Clancy used his formidable clout with the military so his development team could consult with elite counterterrorist operatives to get the lowdown on how to take down tangos (the game's term for terrorist). Rainbow Six was so realistic that it introduced the concept of one shot, one kill; there were no health packs or second chances. This forced you to slow down and think; no longer could you just run straight into a room and absorb bullet after bullet and shrug it off with a health pack. Now you had to sidle up to the door, throw in a flashbang grenade, and storm the room, ready to shoot any hostiles inside.
All this made Rainbow Six a huge hit with the multiplayer community. Kids who grew up playing soldiers in their backyard could now play as commandos online, and there was no more controversy about who killed whom first. It was so successful and popular that it established the realistic first-person shooter as a staple of the genre. Rainbow Six spawned a host of expansion packs and sequels, as well as a flood of clones and imitations, including Sierra's SWAT 3.
Clancy himself did a lot to make sure that Rainbow Six would be a blockbuster hit by writing the New York Times number one bestselling novel Rainbow Six, which fleshed out the plot of the game, though the ecoterrorist theme probably didn't make him any friends at the Sierra Club. And while Clancy sold his stake in Red Storm to Ubisoft in 2000, he maintains a long-term licensing deal that allows Ubisoft to develop more Tom Clancy-branded titles, including the Splinter Cell games and, of course, Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. The newest chapter of the Rainbow Six saga, the Raven Shield expansion Athena Sword, shipped this month, proving that the franchise shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
More Features
Games you may like…
-
Quake II
(PC) -
Doom
(PC) -
Quake 4
(PC) -
Duke Nukem 3D
(PC) -
Quake III Arena
(PC)
Users who looked at content for this game also looked at these games.
See More Similar Games