Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series started off as a strategic command type game where you planned your mission, then executed GO codes to your teams and watched them do their thing. As the series evolved, it became a first person shooter to suit action orientated console gamers. Initially this move was met with some scepticism, but after the first Rainbow Six game (XBW: 94) hit the Xbox, we knew Ubisoft was onto a winner. It was action packed, but still tactical, strategic and well paced, and had awesome online modes that captured the single player intensity but pitted you against other humans.

The single player contains the usual story of evil, radical organisation taking action against various governments around the world, and also has a few little twists to try and engage you more fully. I’m not going to spoil it, but if you’ve read the book then the game’s story treads some familiar territory, although this time more close to home. For some reason though, the story isn’t as engaging as in the previous games. Part of this is the voice acting, but most of it is the overall feel of the game. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something that isn’t cohesive about the whole experience.

Gameplay wise, the feel is similar to the previous Rainbow Six’s, but a little more action based. You can pretty much run and gun through the levels and survive with your entire squad intact. There’s not so much of the careful manuvering and planning, and much more shooting. Part of this is due to the new heart detection device that shows you the heartbeat of enemies through walls. When you know there is a bunch of baddies in the next room, you know to flashbang or grenade almost every time.

There is a nice addition to the gameplay where you take the role of the sniper, and it’s like a shooting gallery. It’s quite a lot of fun, and your skill does reflect on the difficulty of the on coming mission – if you’re too slow in eliminating the enemy, and your team gets walloped, you’ll have an injured team to play the rest of the mission with, which can make it a lot more difficult. However, there is a problem with this mode, in that you’re informed of more enemies arriving, but it’s rather imprecise. For example, you’re told in one level that there are snipers on the balconies, but there are four balconies – if a special ops team was that inaccurate in real life, I would be very concerned about their training.

Another problem arises with the team and enemy AI. Sometimes it’s good, and others you’re left wondering what the hell has gone wrong. In one instance, one of my team just simply refused to climb the ladder. This meant for the rest of the mission I couldn’t actually order my team to do anything. Another time, pressing the A button to order the team to open a door meant they would prepare, but the “go code”, accessed by the black button, never appeared. Often they would clear out the immediate area, and then give the all clear, and you would walk into sniper fire. With enemy AI, you can pick off bad guys in a room without others in the room noticing. They will patrol, but don’t wander too far out of their zones, and will do really odd things like throw grenades when their teammates are in the way.

Moving onto the online modes, I was hesitant about the Persistent Elite Creation (PEC) mode. Luckily, you can choose to ignore this, and get right into the thick of the game. There’s the usual Team Survival, the elimination deathmatch; Team Sharpshooter which is deathmatch with a time limit; Total conquest, where you have to hold locations for a given time limit, and Retrieval, which is essentially capture the flag. Plus, you can join with up to four friends and work through the missions or play terrorist hunt.

The PEC mode is a new addition to multiplayer, allowing you to choose a class and upgrade your equipment. There are four classes – Commando, Engineer, Special Ops and Medic. These are pretty standard roles in shooters, and there’s nothing really outstanding in Lockdown to differentiate these roles to any other game. For example, the Commando can develop skills that allow him to dish out more damage, take more damage, and set up ballistic shields to protect his allies. The medic can heal either on the run, or set up mobile field restoration points, and the special op can sneak and use sniper rifles. The Engineer can lay mines and set up machine gun turrets, and open or lock passages and routes through the maps.

At first, I though I would be at a disadvantage, because I was a low level character and was up against level 40 players. However, after a few games, as you find your feet, and start to get a feel for your role, you do start to advance quicker. And, as you kill more opponents of higher ranking, you also advance further, so it does enforce more of a run and gun mentality. In addition, people don’t seem to utilise their extra functions properly. I never saw a ballistics shield or a weapons emplacement, although engineers did appear to block off routes, and medics did heal me on the odd occasion, but these abilities were not as utilised nearly as much as in other combat games that have ‘roles’.

The multiplayer maps are very well designed, but I found that a lot of them seemed more to facilitate spawn-rushing more so than other games. Even though they had intricate back routes into enemy bases, simply rushing to the enemy spawns seemed to be the most logical way to fight. Admittedly the tactics changed with the people you played with, but there never seemed to be the same levels of communication I experienced playing Rainbow Six 3 or other online game like Halo 2 or even Return to Castle Wolfenstien.

Rainbow Six has always looked good, but unfortunately Lockdown seems to have dragged the chain here as well. The new visor effect is cool, especially how it fogs up if you go into a cold storage room, and how the more beat up you are, the harder it becomes to see as it gets cracks, holes and grime on it. The environments all look nice, but they don’t have the impact and the wow factor of the previous games. And, perhaps more disappointingly, the explosions look quite average. The rolling fire effect doesn’t look good at all – throw a grenade and you expect something bigger and better. The different vision modes you can employ don’t have the same impact either, with both thermal vision and low light seeming to be washed out, making it harder to determine objects and enemies when looking in these modes. There was also so unexpected slowdown in framerate in single player, something I’ve not noticed in the series before.

The sound is also simply OK. The characters seem to lack the individuality the previous Rainbow Six games infused into them. There is a certain level of distance and detachment that wasn’t present in the previous games. Before you actually cared is Louise got taken down, now it’s more of a case of inconvenience. The bullet and explosions all sound good, and the score is a little more upbeat and rocking, but I did notice a few odd glitches in multiplayer where the gun firing only had the tail end of the sound on more than a couple of occasions.

Conclusion:
Lockdown is a competent shooter, which is disappointing because the previous Rainbow Six’s were fantastic shooters. Slipping further into the realm of action forsaking its origins, the single player suffers from inconsistent AI of both teammates and enemies, and even though the environments are a little more interactive, they seem to lack the realism that was the hook of the first game. The PEC multiplayer mode does add a new dimension to the usual online way of playing, and does hook you at first, but the online matches do seem to degenerate into spawn rushes and feel more like a simple run and gun battles common to all shooters than the tactical and epic battles that so absorbed players of the previous games.

Pros:
PEC Mode is a great addition to online play.
Environments more interactive than previous Rainbow Six games
New sniper action at start of round is lots of fun
Visor effects and decals are cool, even if they do obscure the action.

Cons:
Inconsistent AI for both AI and teammates
Online matches all too frequently devolve into spawn rushing
PEC Abilities seldom used
Doesn’t look as good as previous versions of the game.
Unexpected choppiness and slowdown in framerate

81/100