Product Description

The Rainbow Six franchise is known for its action-packed game play and heart-stopping realism, and Rainbow Six: Raven Shield will continue the tradition. Developed by Ubi Soft's Montreal studio, in close collaboration with Red Storm Entertainment, Rainbow Six: Raven Shield features a brand new Tom Clancy storyline in which Team RAINBOW is led all over the world in a string of dramatic operations. The game will utilise graphics technology provided by the next-generation Unreal engine to power 15 new single-player missions that include the discovery of a cache of biological weapons and stopping an armed gang from terrorizing a London bank.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3098 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: UBI Soft
• Released on: 2003-11-07
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Platform: Xbox

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Tom Clancy's Raven Shield, the third game in the Rainbow Six franchise, the men and women of Rainbow return to thwart the plans of an evil madman out to recover hidden Nazi loot. This barebones plot is merely a tool to link the objective-based missions that are the meat and potatoes of the game.

A standard mission will start you off with a situational briefing and overview of your objectives. After the briefing you'll pick your team of up to eight operatives in as many as three different fire teams, and then outfit them with a wide variety of realistic weaponry. You can choose to map out a mission plan for you and your AI-driven team mates, or you can just drop into the mission and figure things out on the fly.

Raven Shield allows for cooperative and competitive online play, but unfortunately there's no mechanism that allows you to play cooperatively with friends through missions in a linear order with the storyline intact. This missing feature aside, cooperative play is still a great feature, and a refreshing break from standard death match play.

There are several significant improvements in Raven Shield, most notably the use of the Unreal graphics engine. It's vastly superior to previous games and provides crisp, clean graphics that are beautiful enough to help suspend disbelief--a feat that's typically more difficult for games with modern settings. New controls in Raven Shield such as incremental door-opening and fluid movement controls allow for much stealthier (and thus more fun) movement around the map.

Rainbow Six: Raven Shield should appeal to anyone who favours realism in games and is tired of fast-paced but mind-numbing first person shooters. --Jon Grover

Customer Reviews

Counter-Strike beater!
Wow! Definitely the most absorbing and engrosing first-person shooter I've played on the X-Box. I only got round to buying this recently at the reduced price and boy was it worth it.
This is one of the most hyper-realistic war FPS games I've ever played.
***Enemy AI is outstanding (enemies are intelligent enough to shoot their hostages if provoked, seek the nearest cover, shout for backup and run away or retreat when outnumbered). There are lots of terrorists to shoot too so rarely a dull moment to be had! And head shots are lethal, needing only one well-aimed shot. This also means the difficulty level is very high, and with only 2 save points allowed per mission (with large maps to get through), and a team of limited abilities (if you don't send them to cover when under fire they'll get wiped out very quickly), it means the going gets frustratingly tough at times, especially on the highest "Elite" setting.
***The choice of weapons and equipment is impressive, and with a few additions. There are the usual knives, pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, grenade launchers and automatics of course, but there are also new weapons like chain guns (e.g.M203), explosives (e.g.Claymores or remote charges) and several types of grenade for different uses, (including tear gas with the appropriate effects on your vision!).
***The animation is smooth and the graphics engine is excellent with some impressive light and shading effects (based on the Splinter Cell engine - you'll recognise some of the "moving curtain" effects from there).
***Sounds are of a high quality, with an atmospheric orchestral soundtrack, not to mention realistic sound effects - including human voices from your team members ("Contact! Tango rear!" for example) and crackling interference on the mic. In fact, when you use the headset, you can give voice-activated instructions to your team, which works surprisingly well. It gives you a hell of a kick to shout "Open Flash & Clear" to your team at a doorway, and watch them charge in and clear up all the terrorists! Clever stuff.
***Single player is addictive as hell - great cut-screens develop the storyline and characters nicely. It also serves as a kind of briefing before the next mission. There are various (up to 3) objectives per mission, but your route through the map does tend to be fairly linear. Still, there are lots of entry points to most rooms - give the "Zulu" code and you can command your team to enter via a different doorway to you as you move into position. Another clever touch.
***The online multiplayer game can be a bit jerky and annoying at times I found, and with varying levels of shooting accuracy. Then again, I guess it's just dependent on the weapon you use and how good/bad a player you are!
***Maps vary in size - they're demanding with several levels (accessible via stairways or slopes, like the 6-storey car park map "Parkway"), rooms and places to take cover behind (e.g. oil drums, vehicles and explodable boxes).
***The actual gameplay is fantastic, and although not as fast-moving as other games (RS3 is mainly based around stealth tactics, using cover and grenades), you will find that you meet your opponents quickly as they "spawn" nearby. This speeds things up a great deal.
***Controls are virtually identical to other FPS games and is fairly easy to just pick up and play, although Counter Strike regulars may get a bit confused with the lack of a jump button and the slow turning of the character at first. The "peek around the corner" function (D-pad left/right) will also take some getting used to.
***There's plenty of new downloadable content now available, with around 5 new maps and a new multiplayer game option.

To sum up, this is a brilliant game with some great touches and a lot of fun to be had, but you need to have a lot of patience. Try before you buy if possible. If you want the most realistic modern war FPS on the X-Box, go for this. If you want something more arcade-style with less realism, go for Counter Strike.

Looking forward to RS3:Black Arrow now!

Best tactical shooter on xbox
How can anyone say this game is not excellent? I mean, let me just explain what i love about this game.
Offline:
First of all your enemies are never at the exact same place. Games get boring if you always know what's gonna happen. It isn't like this here. Your enemies use various weapons from grenades to sniper rifles. The graphics are excellent, but the best thing is the interaction between you and your team. Of course it's all AI, but your team really answers to what you say and when I write "say", I mean "say". You can command your team using a headset, so the whole thing gets more realist even if you feel stupid in the beginning coz you keep shouting at your tv to attack ;). But it is fun. With the Zulu command you can order your team to wait at a certain point and execute your command when you decide. Eventhough it's good I don't play offline, because you can play even better missions online.
Online:
You have various options online. There's Missions, Terrorist Hunt, Team Survival, Sharpshooter, etc. During Missions and Terrorist Hunt you play with other online gamers against Terrorist from all over the world, just like you would offline. The difference is that you can discuss your next moves with your team and learn different tactics. Also your enemies move about and you don't know if they'll be in the same room you found one hiding in the last time you played that particular map. Team Survival for example you play in a team against other players. That's what I play most, for hours on end. It just doesn't get boring, because everyone uses different tactics, weapons (there are a lot of weapons to choose from like Sniper Rifles, Automatic Machine Guns, Tear Gas, Various Grenades and more), etc which change depending on the map. Another great thing is the sound. If you listen closely you can hear your enemies footsteps, just like you would in real life. You can hear if they're reloading or changing their weapon if they're near enough as well.

Ok, for those who compare with GR or SC, well the game is totally different and I can't tell you which you'll like best. But I will go so far to say that RS is the best online shooter based on graphics, gameplay, team tactics, etc. It's a hard game coz you can't just run into the line of fire and expect not to die. You need to use your mind as well. But once you've learned some tactics you'll love finding different ways to get your opponents to walk into your net and get shot in the head.

Tactical and Stealth not Run 'n' Gun
After playing many FPS games that had a "Blow up everything in your way" gameplay it was nice to get my hands on a little more of a tactical game. Rainbow Six 3 breaks away from mindless shooting and adds alot more thought to the FPS genre.

The game puts you in control of a squad of 3 men who act as covering fire aswell as other back up and support. This adds to the games diversity and you feel a real sense of leadership as you command your troops. Also the game is alot more realistic to other FPS games, in RS3 if you take a couple bullets you die and if you happen to live you dont have any method of regaining your health as there are no health packs. This is one of the elements that makes the game so tactical, the minute you come under fire you become so cautious and become alot more aware of your surroundings looking for cover etc. The troops make you feel a sense of security to a degree but the minute you lose a man you really feel the loss and again become more and more cautious knowing your out numbered. However when you craft a tactical raid on a room full of terrorists with your team and neutralize the enemy with precision you also feel a great sense of achievement. The game has a gradual learning curve and the levels become difficult at a nice pace. A real big selling point to this game is the online capability. Playing RS3 on Xbox Live is really a totally different game compared to the regular story mode. with many modes online the best one being Team vs Team. Having a whole team of 8 men against another 8 really comes into its own, each person helping lead the team around really large multiplayer maps and helping pick off enemies hiding one by one is something that must be tried. Graphically the game is well made but nothing special. The musical score is nice too but to be fair a game like this doesnt really require much music.

Overall this is a really well made title by Ubi Soft and one that should be sitting on your Xbox library.