There are games that define a genre, and then there are those that slickly refine it, improving upon the genre without changing the basic mechanics that we know and love. Rainbow Six 3 falls into the latter of the categories for both single and online play. The story and gameplay are fairly typical for a Clancy title – you control a small group of elite soldiers who have to save the world from the sinister machinations of an unknown evil, but it works beautifully, so why fix something that isn’t broken. However, what makes Rainbow Six 3 stand out is the remarkable attention to detail, the degree of tactical gameplay involved, and the very immersive feel of the game, and it is this that will raise the bar for future first and third person console shooters.

The game is set in the near future, one that sees the world at the brink of war in 2007, as the OPEC nations are at loggerheads with the USA over oil. An unknown terrorist group is causing headaches everywhere as they try to force the Venezuelan government to stop supplying the USA with oil, and they hit targets all over the world including Switzerland, Canada, Venezuela and even the USA. Rainbow Six, a top-secret arm of the United Nations is enlisted to deal with these terrorists in a succinct and surreptitious manner. In the single player game, you are placed in the role of squad leader Ding Chavez, and must guide your team through a variety of urban locations with an assortment of objectives to achieve. These objectives are the usual tactical shooter fare: search and destroy, hostage rescue and even bomb disarmament. Some missions will require the use of stealth to survive, while others allow more opportunity to get trigger-happy.

The game is quite simple to play, but very complex in its execution. The controls are pretty standard for a shooter – move with the left joystick, turn with the right, and fire with the right trigger. This allows the player to slip easily into the game with a minimal learning curve. The other buttons are well mapped out for the game – the left trigger swaps between primary and secondary weapons, the Y and B buttons bring up night and thermal vision respectively, pressing X reloads the current weapon, while holding it brings allows selection of third and forth weapons – grenades and charges. The d-pad is used to lean left or right, peeking around corners to see and take out enemies with the protection of cover. By pushing up and down it’s also used to open and close doors smoothly, so you can peek out behind the door, and close it without alerting baddies to your presence.

The A button is a context sensitive “action” button, which is used not only by you as Ding to do ‘something’, but is also used to order the team about. For example, if Ding walks up to a closed door, pressing A will quickly open the door. However, if Ding is across the room, looking at the hostage and pressing the A button will order the squad to secure the hostage. You can also hold the A button down to bring up an action menu, which can be used to give more complex orders. Look at a door and hold A, and you will be given a choice of actions for the team from breaching the door, to opening the door and grenading the room beyond, and so forth. Furthermore, pressing the Right trigger will put you into the “Zulu” mode, where your team will wait before doing an ordered action until the Zulu code is given by pressing the white button.

Moreover, actions can be given by simply speaking if you own either an Xbox Live headset or purchase the version of the game that comes bundled with a nice Thrustmaster one. Looking at a hostage and saying “secure hostage” will see your team scramble across the room as if you pressed the A button. The game recognises up to 45 different spoken commands with all speech from your team also heard back through the headset, and it makes for an extremely immersive experience. While you can’t sit back and have a chat with your A.I team mates yet, the feeling of giving orders to them by simply speaking to them is something truly amazing the first time you experience it and doesn’t wear off anytime soon.

This context sensitive action button is superb for ordering and positioning the squad tactically. The squad AI is really quite good; if a teammate is ordered to disarm a bomb the others will take up positions and defend him. Furthermore, the team can operate pretty well on its own. See a door through a window and you can order the team to open that door, while finding an alternative route or providing cover from a height. The “Zulu” code works a treat for this kind of play too, as you can have the team stand at the entry to one door, while you find an alternative entry, and bust in to take the “Tangos” from either side. At higher levels the enemy AI is quite tough as enemies will duck behind desks and shoot over the top, or run back to other rooms to regroup when under fire. Thankfully on the ‘recruit’ level it’s a bit easier for us mere mortals with no special-ops training.

The attention to detail in this game is superb, and the game truly shines because of it. From the range of weapons and equipment, to the level design, to the lighting and sound, everything is made to feel realistic. There are over 30 weapons to choose from, and each has a different look and feel. Rainbow Six 3 also features lighting equally impressive as seen in Splinter Cell and to excellent effect. Shadows more often give away positions than not, and it’s fun seeing an enemy’s shadow and taking them out before they know what hit them. In the snow levels, steam rises from squad mates’ mouths, sheets blow in the wind on city streets, and jerk around as you shoot through them. Venetian blinds ripple along open windows, often causing a hail of gunfire to pepper an empty room. The game has rag-doll physics, so shooting people can result in humorous results, such as people falling out windows or rolling off ledges.

Speaking of windows, most can be shot out, and the muted environment sounds get louder once the window has been removed by a bullet or grenade. Grenades or breaching charges can also be used to take out doors, and the grenade effects look great – the phosphorous ones set the place on fire, and enemies run about screaming while burning. Flashbangs leave a white impression of what you were looking at superimposed over the screen, which eventually fades but is highly disorientating, and teargas is equally unsettling as it trips out your view. One of the greatest things I’ve seen is when on Live, when a player talks that players mouth moves, and while not quite lip-synced, looks close enough to cause awe when it’s first seen.

However, it’s this depth of realism that makes other parts of the game seem quite irrational. Certain glass areas can’t be shoot through, for no apparent reason. There are barrels of flammable liquid in places where realistically they probably wouldn’t be. In single player, when Ding dies, that is the end of the mission – another squad member can’t take over.

For Multplayer, there’s system link and the all-important Xbox Live functionality. On the Live Service, this game simply cannot be beaten in terms of tactical shooters. It is quite possibly the most intense game available on Live to date. The game is set up to facilitate team play – you can’t be a “Rambo” in this game and run about with guns blazing; instead you need to listen to and help your teammates if you want to win. There will be times when all that stands between winning and losing is the location of a sniper, and using teamwork to flush him out is the only way to achieve victory. Whether it is co-operative mission based matches or team survival, the game really requires you to talk with your teammates and work out strategies. Adversarial missions are equally as intense, as you move from cover to cover, trying to spot the enemy and take them out. In this game one shot to the head means death, so stealth and timing are much more important than bravado or brawn. Being complacent in your sniper spot won’t work – people can figure out where the shots are coming from, and there’s always a back way to most locations.

The multiplayer modes available include:

• Mission – Cooperative: Play the 14 missions of the single player game with up to 4 other players.
• Terrorist Hunt – Cooperative: Find and kill all the AI terrorists in a map of your choosing.
• Survival – Adversarial: Essentially a last man standing type of game
• Sharpshooter – Adversarial: The player with the most kills at the end of the round wins. This is the only type of play to have re-spawn, if you die in any of the other game modes you have to wait until the end of the game.
• Team Survival– Adversarial: Last man standing wins for his team. This mode is very good for teamwork.

All in all, Rainbow Six 3 is a fantastic tactical shooter. It’s got some great innovations for the Xbox such as voice commands, and the single player gameplay is comparable to playing on Live. The AI is pretty damn good and the difficulty of the game quite challenging but very rewarding. Rainbow Six 3 is currently the best first person shooter on the Xbox, and if you’re a fan of the genre with or without Xbox Live, is a must get title.

Pros:

+ voice commands are awesome!
+ very immersive play
+ fantastic use of graphics and sound with excellent lighting worth another mention
+ comparable single and multiplayer experience

Cons:
– some minor inconsistencies in the realism field
– unable to play co-operative via split screen

Score: 90/100