Quite possibly the most unbelieveable downhill turn for a franchise I've ever seen.
Ladies and gentlemen, here now is Rainbow Six: Lockdown--one of the most stunning shifts in a franchise's history, and perhaps the one that ends Rainbow's reign as the dominant tactical shooter of choice for the discerning gamer.
Let's start with the positives, because quite frankly there aren't very many of them. The graphics for this game are pretty easy on the eyes--bits of dust and material of whatever you just plugged a round into puff out and dissipate with convincing fashion, and the weapon models could almost be the stars of the game themselves. Your fellow Rainbow team members are also lovingly detailed; their equipment actually looks like their own separate models instead of appearing like texture work on a body. Each team member even sports their own tactical vest setup, just like real special forces operatives will sometimes modify their equipment according to their own personal tastes and needs. Terrorists, on the other hand, didn't seem to get the same attention, looking far more generic and rushed by comparison. Didn't I shoot this guy back in the parking garage....and the streets?
The sound fares almost as well. The weapon sounds seemed lifted straight from the previous Rainbow game, Raven Shield, which boasted some of the most realistic sound work I've ever heard in a game, and the momentary deafness incurred with the nearby detonation of an explosive demonstrated the inherent power of the weapon that just missed killing me. Radio chatter, however, is more problematic. Many a time during a mission I would lose a team member to enemy fire, only to hear a commanding officer state into my ear, "He's gone. Keep moving," as though the man's life was immaterial and not worth getting even a little worked up over. I can understand dedication to the mission at hand, but it just struck me as totally cold the way your squad members are apparently passed over when they bite that last bullet.
Long gone are those detailed pre-mission briefings so enjoyed in previous installments, and the only pre-mission planning present in-game is the selection of your weapons and equipment. That's right--the days of meticulously pouring over level maps and assigning way points and personnel to teams are over in Lockdown. You spend all of Lockdown's single-player mode as one Domingo Chavez, and your three team members are chosen for you in every mission. Your only control over your fate is in the firepower your team brings to the enemy. I sorely missed the mission pre-planning feature, as it was one of the defining aspects of Rainbow Six and where I'd spent a good amount of time in previous series.
Being a gun nut, I was naturally quite excited with the weapons put forth here. Over forty firearms are present for your use in cleansing the world of those evil terrorist scumbags, covering a good range of submachine guns, assault rifles, shotguns, a few light machine guns, and even a grenade launcher, although the sniper rifles were slashed down to just one rifle. Unfortunately, a few Rainbow mainstays were among those left out in the cold--in particular, the venerable H&K MP-5, a favorite of police SWAT units and special forces around the world, and the H&K Mk23 pistol (seemingly switched out for a custom US Marine Corps. Force Recon sidearm, the MEUSOC .45, which is really little more than a custom-built Colt .45 Government). While the Rainbow MP-10 remains, the weapon room felt a little less friendly with my old friends gone. Still, I can't blame the designers for wanting to modernize the weaponry to reflect the changes in technology in the last eight years.
I just wish they'd paid as much attention to the actual game play.
To be blunt, it sucks. To be elaborate, Lockdown doesn't possess the same level of tension of its predecessors, due largely in part to the fact that it doesn't profess to be a tactical shooter in execution. No, it plays like just another average military-themed shooter, where terrorists in each level alone can number closer to triple digits and the map designs are so linear as to literally lead you along a singular path, with no deviation allowed. Gone is the fear of being cut down by that one tango patrolling the hallway you just passed--your fear of death in this game will come largely from the sheer volume of lead being sent in your general direction. I personally killed more terrorists in the first three levels than I ever killed playing the entire campaign mode of Rogue Spear. Lockdown does not feel like a Rainbow game, but like a Serious Sam game, and it doesn't still well with me. There's little challenge in simply running through a level squeezing off short bursts at enemies that could rival the Iraq insurgency's numbers. The franchise's flirtation with the consoles has done more harm than good here.
But the real killer is the artificial intelligence--or, more specifically, the complete lack of it. Never before have I been more frustrated in dealing with my fellow operatives. Quite often, even after being told to hold their position, they took it upon themselves to question that order and told me they were coming up to me anyway. At other times they wouldn't just follow behind me--one or two would rush ahead of me, open the door up ahead, and engage terrorists all by themselves while ignoring my orders to regroup, only to be predictably cut down before I could reach them. And at yet even other times, they were seemingly blind to immediate threats within five feet of them and in plain sight, often taking half a magazine and crying out for me to give them covering fire before expiring from the mission, somehow unable--or unwilling--to just turn around and take out the offender themselves.
Even moving into other rooms seemed too difficult a task to do correctly, as they would sometimes turn around and walk the other way, BACK to where we'd entered the current room, and clear THAT room first before moving into the room I'd pointed out. Door-breaching was just as flawed, as I encountered a lot of trouble just getting the default go-code key to even work and had to map it to another key, and I wished I'd taken the hint and just left it alone. My supposedly well-trained teammates had a rather nasty habit of rolling grenades and flashbangs up to their feet, blinding or even killing themselves and saving me the trouble of putting a bullet in their heads myself for the screw-up even as the rage nearly blinded me from the re-load key. In a game that spouts teamwork and tactics, the ineptitude of my teammates compelled me to do as much of the work myself as possible just because I was the only one even capable of doing it.
And the missions themselves seemed to be a convoluted switch-around of the Xbox's campaign levels, mirroring the treatment that console versions of past Rainbow games received. The storyline itself, in the end, is no different from those of the past, and at least in this regard the PC incarnation can be seen as an improvement, chopping out most of the terrible cut scenes that the Xbox Lockdown presented as "character development". I always hope that just maybe in the next installment, the developers will simply not bother with a storyline and just give us the missions, and I am always met with disappointment at yet another tired evil mastermind doomsday plot that I've seen in twenty James Bond films. After all, SWAT 4 turned out to be an excellent game, and there was no single over-achieving arch villain tying any of the missions together. Plotlines do not necessarily mean more meaningful game play.
Multiplayer has always been a strong suit of the Rainbow franchise, and at least here some of the A.I. issues can be addressed by allowing you to play the campaign's missions with three other fellow humans and actually open up some tactical options for your team. The standard deathmatch and capture the flag modes are here for the ride as well, along with a rivalry mode which pits a team of Rainbow players against a team of mercenaries. Each side has its own set of objectives to meet and their own unique set of weapons to choose from. Unfortunately, ping times are not often optimal, rarely going lower than 200, and connecting to game sessions could be a challenge in itself if my experience is similar to those of other players, as I have been met with various connect and disconnect errors to games still in the pre-mission lobby area with open slots.
I'd hoped that Rainbow Six: Lockdown for the PC could have shaken off its console origin and returned to the more tactical game play that made the series so endearing in the first place, but its arcade flavored run-and-gun attitude is just too strong and poorly executed to ignore. I can't even imagine how the developers could destroy the series on the very platform from which it came, and if this entry is any indication of the direction the franchise is taking, this may very well be the last Rainbow game I ever play.