"Tango's in sight..." (Rainbow Six - Rogue Spear (PC))

Member Name: chembleton

Product:	Rainbow Six - Rogue Spear (PC)
Date:	02/07/02 (88 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Absorbing, Exciting, Longevity

Disadvantages: AI sometimes a let down, Quite a lot of keys to define

I first bought my pc two years ago and had never really played any first person shooters before.

*[For anyone who doesn't know, a 1st person shooter is basically a game where you see the action through the eyes of the character.]

My pc isn't the fastest on earth 500Mhz AMD K6-2 Cpu, 128Mb RAm & 32mb gfx card. This games runs great on my pc.

I had seen briefly Rainbow Six at a friends and it looked fun. You control a team of elite soldiers, a bit like the SAS, and plan and execute missions to eliminate terrorists, often saving hostages in the process.

There are lots of games in the Rainbow Six series, but the best of them being Rogue Spear. The graphics are pretty good even by modern standards, and as far as I'm concerned the gameplay is on a par with any other first person shoot em up.

The game has a continual story running through it and each mission deals with the unfolding plot until the finale.

After the briefing section where you are informed as to your mission and rules of engagement, you are taken to the planning section. Here, you can set each of 8 team members into seperate teams of two teams of four or up to four teams of two members. You set their weapons and point of entry into mission and their directions through each room eliminating tango's (terrorists) in order to achieve the mission objective. You can be the lead in any of the teams and you must perform your objectives too. In effect having 8 team members, it gives you 8 lives, as if one gets shot you can switch to another. You give out 'go-codes' to tell other teams when to proceed to each waypoint.
There are many weapons to choose from. Machine guns, pistols, sniper rifles, grenades, everything you need to kick butt.

The artificial intelligence of both friendlies and terrorists is usually good. I have to say sometimes terrorists stand still and wait to be shot, others work together to ambush you and are q
uick to block your escape. Mostly though the AI is good. The AI is often better when playing on the more difficult levels.

The game is very absorbing and atmospheric. The chilling silences before hectic gunfire, and the great graphics make for a hugely enjoyable game. There are lots of different environments from jungles to desert, urban and snow settings.

The best part about this game though once you've mastered the single player mode, is going online and playing real live opponents.

I use gamespy.com and their gamespy arcade server to join and host games. It's fanstastic fun to play real people. Games are easy to host or join and Rogue Spear is still a hugely popular game and you can always find people to play with. Playing online with a modem can sometimes lead to 'lag' which results in you getting shot often before you even realise the danger. Broadband connections are much more fun.

I love the fact you can edit and send messages to your team. You can edit and save up to ten messages to use during a mission. This comes in handy when calling for back up or assistance. The message is spoken by the character and displayed in the corner of the screen. It all helps to add to the realism.

There are some real good and smart players out there on the internet and you have to be quick if you want to stay alive. You can instead of playing what's called 'adverserial' games, play 'co-operation' games where instead of shooting each other you work together to hunt out the computer generated terrorists.
You can buy this game for about £10 now, or even cheaper if you search auction sites for it.

I still regularly play this game online and enjoy every minute of it!

If you like this type of game and don't own this one, give it a try. Yes it's a bit outdated now but it's still great.

Top fun.

Summary: