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What do you do when you have sold millions of copies of your novels? Well in Tom Clancy's case, he goes and opens up a game company: Red Storm Entertainment. As this generation's Ian Fleming, Clancy is a master at creating heart pounding action, intrigue, and global conspiracy theories. Rainbow 6's story reflects this mastery, but yet the question remains as to whether Rainbow 6 can stand on it's own as a game. The answer to this question is really simple, as the old cliché goes, "Close but no cigar." What would be an otherwise very well designed game was marred by horrific bugs and mis-packaging that should have never happened at all. Although I have to say that the bugs weren't fatal, just extremely annoying.

The shipping version of the game contained interface bugs, and missing software that was supposed to be part of the game. Namely, the interface does not show exactly which assault team you are currently in control of, and is missing the Voxware codecs. Now, the interface bugs are bearable, but the missing Voxware codec has caused me to waste an hour of my time trying to figure out why I couldn't speak to my friend via voice communication in a multiplayer game. The game also has a tendency to crash while switching from Briefing mode to the Mission mode. Red Storm came out with patches to fix these problems very quickly. My guess is that someone probably sent the wrong version of the game to the CD duplicators and resulted in this sort of situation (well at least I hope so, since I really want to have a good impression with anything Clancy).

Bugs and missing codecs aside, Rainbow 6 puts you in the year 1999 where governments find conducting full scale wars like Desert Storm too expensive. The battlefields of the coming century would be fought in small guerrilla type conflicts and terrorists are the real threat. Rainbow is the organization that was the result; a secret group of highly trained counter terrorist soldiers from government bureaus all over the western world. When regular government bureaus fail to do the job, Rainbow is called in to clean up the mess. Only officials in the highest levels of government know about the existence of Rainbow, thus Rainbow is under very little jurisdiction from governments around the world. Rainbow utilizes many of the equipment of the police SWAT and Navy Seals, so they will be very familiar to gamers who like this kind of stuff. From the basic MP5 semi-automatic, flashbangs and armor, to the M16 rifles, and night vision goggles, Rainbow has a nice assortment of toys in which to deal with the terrorist threat.

The game begins with a short introduction to the current state of global status, and the reasoning for a group like Rainbow. You will then be treated to a very simple menu screen where you can set up your game options, choose to play the single player campaign or the multiplayer game. I won't spend time elaborating on the multiplayer aspect here, more on that later. The single player campaign is a series of missions which will really show Clancy fans that this is really a Clancy game after all. Multi-national corporations, different terrorists groups with their own agendas, and the South American drug cartels. Without spoiling the storyline for you readers, all I will say about it is that you basically go all over Europe and America dispatching terrorists. Each mission builds upon the story of the previous mission until you handle case Armageddon after much intrigue, espionage, betrayal, and action. Some of the missions are really well designed and gives the player a sense of urgency.

There are about 20 members of the Rainbow team, each with their own background story, specialization and stats. This makes an interesting strategic twist to the game since not everyone will be able to accomplish certain tasks properly if you used the wrong person. For example, in one mission, you have to bug a phone in a certain politician's residence and using violent force is not an option. Thus if you chose a person who is low in stealth and electronics, the mission will most likely end in failure.

One last complaint before I get into the nitty gritty of Rainbow 6, the campaign game is too short. I finished it too quickly, in about 20 hours. Although this length might be the norm for many games out nowadays, I still long for the days of the 50+ hour games, and I think Rainbow 6 has enough content to be at least that long. Well at least Red Storm is already working on an expansion pack. However to Red Storm's credit, I do have to admit that this is a much better product than their previous game Politika (way better actually). This is also one of the better FPS (First Person Shooter) games available in a market where the "kill everything that moves" motto doesn't work. It is the first FPS game that actually provides tactical combat, for those of you who have been waiting for a shooter like that. To sum it all up, Rainbow 6 is a short but enjoyable game.

There are 2 stages of gameplay in Rainbow 6. The planning and action stages. In the planning stage, you get the mission briefing, background information on the threat, news briefs on past situations, squad and gear selection, and execution planning. This is what makes Rainbow 6 different from other shooters. In the squad and gear selection process, you can determine what kind of people you want on a mission. Will a demolition expert be needed or will you rather have an electronics expert with you or will you need the extra firepower and bring on all your assaulters? The gear that you give each member will also determine their chances of success. If stealth is essential, you don't want to give them guns without a silencer attached. If explosives are to be disabled, you will want to make sure your demolition expert carries a demolition kit. The heartbeat sensor (is there really such a thing?) is great for reconnaissance since it is able to detect hostile threat's location even through doors and walls.

After you are done deciding what kind of team you want out on the field and the gear they will be carrying, you will then plan their mission routes. This is very interesting as you can set waypoints for each squad. At every waypoint you set, you can determine what that squad will do, from movement type to action type and also a Go Code. Will you give them the blitz order so that they can move in fast or the stealth order so they will risk less detection? You can also make them do special actions like defuse a bomb, breach the door, flashbang a room, etc, at each waypoint if there is something like that available. One thing to remember though, if you don't put specific action into the action plan, you won't get the best guy in your team to do the particular job (more on that later). The Go Code basically makes a particular squad stay at a waypoint until they receive a Go Code before moving on to the next waypoint. This will allow you to coordinate all your squads to do certain things at certain times. For example, you have 2 squads waiting at 2 different doors that lead into the same room, you can have both squads breach the door, and secure the room from both ends at once with a Go Code. After you are done planning the waypoints, and the actions each squad will take, you are ready to get into the action stage. Final note on this is that you can have a maximum of 4 squads with a 4 person maximum in each squad. You can take a maximum of 8 people on each mission (if I remembered correctly, I'm too lazy to load up Rainbow 6 to determine it).

Once you get into the action stage is when you will start to realize that Rainbow 6 could do with a better interface. First of all, even though you may have a full squad (4 people), you can only control the squad leader. Thus, as I mentioned earlier, if you didn't set a particular waypoint to do a particular action, you won't get the best person for the job (that was my playing experience, so please correct me if I'm wrong). For example, if you set a disarm bomb action at the location of a bomb, once you get to the waypoint where the bomb is, and if you set the action to disarm bomb, the demolition expert (let's say he's squad member #3) will give the signal to "move over" and proceed to disarm the bomb. If you didn't do that, and you are in control of that squad at that time, when you try to disarm the bomb, it will be the squad leader who does that. If you are not in control of that squad at that time, they will do nothing at all at that waypoint. Other than this, and some interface problems which patch 1.02a fixed, the rest of the gameplay experience is great.

You have the ability to snipe, go into nightvision (which I have never found a need to use), shoot and manipulate the environment when there is something to manipulate. Also with the right gear, manipulating the environment would be much faster than without. For example, a lockpick kit speeds up the time it takes to pick a door by a huge margin. In my experience, the right guns and gear can mean a world of difference between making a mission hard or easy. In Rainbow 6, 1 good hit will kill you just like in the real world, so don't think you can go in like a Doom marine and take a lot of hits. Everything else is pretty much like any other FPS game. Just remember these 4 words and you will do fine, "Always Watch Your Back."

In the multiplayer game, you will be able to play all the training missions and the campaign missions. However you will skip the planning stage, it will be up to you and your friends to decide how best to communicate. This is especially important if you want a successful mission. Voice communication would be great, but I couldn't get Voxware to work at all so I can't comment about it. The multiplayer aspects contain many different types of gameplay, which really boils down to variations of the deathmatch and cooperative play. Read the next section for more on the multiplayer aspect.

The short single player campaign won't make this game last too long for most gamers, and due to the very nature of Rainbow 6, I don't think the multiplayer aspect will be popular as well. I guess this is a double-edged sword, what makes Rainbow 6 so good is also what kills it in multiplayer. The FPS multiplayer term "Camping" takes on a new meaning here. Since 1 hit usually kills you, many people just resorted to camping to win. They will pick a strategic spot, hide there and then snipe you. Some may say that this is exactly what Rainbow 6 is about, killing by stealth, however can you imagine what would happen in a multiplayer game when everyone is camping? NOTHING AT ALL. In my opinion, the planned expansion pack would keep gamer's interest in Rainbow 6 longer than the multiplayer game.

While I found the default control settings to be hard to use, you can custom build every possible control to anything you want. I don't see how much more I can elaborate on this since you can basically do anything you want to customize the controls.

Red Storm opted to make their own engine for this game. The result is something that works, but won't "wow" you compared to UnReal or Quake 2. There are some graphical glitches like snow effects on the walls in certain places, but other than that, everything seems fine to me. The textures are quite detailed and there was a mission inside an amusement park that I thought was very impressive. There is also a 3rd person viewing mode a la Tomb Raider which I thought was a nice gimmick, but otherwise useless when it comes to gameplay. There is attention to little details that adds a nice touch to the gaming experience, like breakable windows, and bullet holes on the walls.

For those of you without a good 3D accelerator card, Rainbow 6 could be quite a painful experience. I tried running it in software mode and got maybe like 5 frames/sec on a Pentium2 400mhz system. It is just plain unplayable in software mode.

There isn't much FMV in this game and the quality is really bad. It is like trying to watch the broadcast channels on TV with an antenna during an electrical storm. The snowing effects were blatantly obvious.

I didn't care too much for the music in Rainbow 6, but the sound effects were very well done. From the Go Codes, to the sound of bullets ricocheting were all in my opinion quite realistic. One thing about the sound though, it sometimes tended to slow down the game. In one mission where I had a huge door opening, the game slowed down considerably in terms of framerate. I attribute this to the sound since I ran this game on a system with the Obsidian2 X-24 card and even UnReal couldn't bring this card to it's knees at 1024x768. There was also some scratching in the sound on a certain mission which I can reproduce everytime. I guess Red Storm needs to do some more work on solving this issue.

Installation went off without a glitch, and the game loaded up fine. Patching the game to version 1.02a was also a relatively painless process-- if you can get into their FTP server and download the patch. Their server obiwan.redstorm.com was down for the entire weekend when I first got the game. However once I got it, it fixed most of the problems I encountered with the game.

The second effort by Red Storm is a vast improvement over their first. Rainbow 6 will give you a good gaming experience for a short period of time. Despite its little problems, Rainbow 6 is still overall one of the better efforts in the world of FPS games and for those bored with mindless killing, Rainbow 6 has exactly what you are looking for. The storyline is also very interesting as well, no doubt due to Clancy's writing.