Rainbow Six: Lockdown
Your enemies might hunt you now, but the prey’s not all that smart to begin with.
Published: September 15, 2005
For years, console gamers had to watch with envy as all those PC-having bastards got all their cool tactical shooters with their slower pacing and greater attention to realism. Then, Ubisoft wised up, realized there's a whole world of console gamers out there that probably wouldn't mind games like what they were sitting on, and a new tactical franchise was born.
In an effort to reach the masses, though, the gameplay was simplified a bit; there was less pre-planning and more action, but the core of the game, the same characters that screamed "badass" were still intact, and for the most part the games actually ended up better in some respects -- especially the online game, for which Ubisoft and Red Storm's Tom Clancy's brand became synonymous (to this day, they're still one of the biggest non-SOCOM online offerings the PS2 has.
As the series has progressed, however, it's continually slid away from the path from the hardcore tactical shooter that first hooked PC gamers and has become more of an arcadey, pop-in-and-play shooter tuned for the console masses instead. The latest game, Lockdown is by far the least plodding, and as a result it feels more like a generic run-and-run shooter. The faster pacing means the game’s AI just can’t keep up, and the result is a lobotomized experience for those used to the series’ PC roots.
Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy a good fast-paced shooter, but the direction the series has taken means the normal process of clearing rooms and securing a level section by section no longer has the same kind of flow to it that it once had. There’s still some core stuff here that makes it a R6 to be sure – stuff like the highest-tech military weapons and equipment and the tale of terrorists stealing a bio-weapon called Legion that can wipe out a city and burn itself out in a matter of hours never goes out of style.
But you won’t be mistaking this for a thinking man’s shooter when the first few levels put bounding boxes around enemies to call them out from a distance. The game’s context-sensitive menus mean that the X botton will do everything from direct your team (more on them in a second), to hack computers to open doors, and pausing over something you can normally interact with at a distance will give you the option to direct one of your teammates to do it instead.
The team commands are mainly applied to moving (X button after targeting an area with your crosshairs), holding or following (tapping the Triangle button), but the d-pad allows for a few branching orders when breaching and clearing/fragging a room, shotgunning the locks off the door, placing a charge or throwing a battering ram into it. The latter two options are really only good for when enemies are on the other side, as they make too much noise for a covert approach.
Noise was supposedly a design concept from the start. Enemies will regularly quip “what was that... I think I heard something” at the slightest peep, but they rarely make any advanced moves to investigate, either charging out the door or just staying put. The game offers a motion sensor that lets you see enemy movement (if there is any) before you pop a door, but most of the enemies seem to stay static most of the time, and won’t even react to one of their buddies getting dropped a few feet away.
If there is a sign of intelligence from the enemy AI, it usually feels scripted; there are times when the enemy will flank, but they seem set. Otherwise, they’ll run into open doorjambs, face walls and generally just openly become lead sponges by running into sight of your gun barrel. Your teammates aren’t excused from this either; they’ll bunch and get stuck in doorways on breaches, they regularly get in the way, and often won’t stay put when you order them to. They avoid fire for the most part, but the truly dumbass moments where they’ll absorb fire come out of nowhere.
The biggest gameplay addition was probably the inclusion of plopping you into the boots of team sniper Dieter Weber to pick off enemies from afar while the rest of the team inserts into an objective. The sequences are mostly throwaway bits, with one or two legitimately decent bits, but it never really approaches a level beyond what Konami offered with their Silent Scope arcade games.
PS2 owners also got gypped with the online experience. Sure, we got two more levels in the single-player mode, but the single-player game is sub-par to begin with. Rather than getting something akin to the Xbox version’s P.E.C. mode, which plays almost like a tactical RPG, the multiplayer options are your typical shooter fare.
It’s not a bad online mode; the fact that it’s there at all is a nice touch since the series has always been about the multiplayer as much as anything, but the two versions of the game are wildly different when it comes to offering something after the initial single-player game. If you haven’t seen or experienced P.E.C., then it probably won’t matter too much, but those who do see it will feel cheated out of an admittedly awesome experience.
Visually, the game is solid, but unimpressive. The detail on your teammates is fair, but the enemies are usually look-alike, cookie cutter ammo fodder, and at some distance or in low-light situations, your team can look a little like them too. There are some small touches, like your teammates’ shoulders flashing while in night vision mode or the goggled view that fills with static and shatters with damage, and the framerate for the most part is smooth, but the game just doesn’t offer any real “ooh and ahh” moments.
The level design more or less holds true to the same basic boxy layout that has been the series’ hallmark, and most R6 gamers will probably have come to expect this. In the most basic terms, the graphics are exactly what you’d expect.
The audio follows suit, though it’s probably less of what you’d want and more of what you’d expect; loud, cheesy guitar driven menu music, repetitive comments from your team and a general lack of variety keep the game from feeling spontaneous and fresh. What’s there – especially the pre-level briefings with their mysteriously broken-up video segments – are since and subtle. There were a few oddities, like the narrator completely misreading the name of the level, but that could have changed after they did the voiceovers.
Lockdown’s biggest problem is that it apparently wants to be something that the other generic shooters already are -- too quick, too dumb and too mediocre online. I want to say this again: this isn’t a bad first-person shooter, but it is a bad Rainbow Six game, and fans that still pine for a slower, more realistic shooter deserve better.
In an effort to reach the masses, though, the gameplay was simplified a bit; there was less pre-planning and more action, but the core of the game, the same characters that screamed "badass" were still intact, and for the most part the games actually ended up better in some respects -- especially the online game, for which Ubisoft and Red Storm's Tom Clancy's brand became synonymous (to this day, they're still one of the biggest non-SOCOM online offerings the PS2 has.
As the series has progressed, however, it's continually slid away from the path from the hardcore tactical shooter that first hooked PC gamers and has become more of an arcadey, pop-in-and-play shooter tuned for the console masses instead. The latest game, Lockdown is by far the least plodding, and as a result it feels more like a generic run-and-run shooter. The faster pacing means the game’s AI just can’t keep up, and the result is a lobotomized experience for those used to the series’ PC roots.
Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy a good fast-paced shooter, but the direction the series has taken means the normal process of clearing rooms and securing a level section by section no longer has the same kind of flow to it that it once had. There’s still some core stuff here that makes it a R6 to be sure – stuff like the highest-tech military weapons and equipment and the tale of terrorists stealing a bio-weapon called Legion that can wipe out a city and burn itself out in a matter of hours never goes out of style.
But you won’t be mistaking this for a thinking man’s shooter when the first few levels put bounding boxes around enemies to call them out from a distance. The game’s context-sensitive menus mean that the X botton will do everything from direct your team (more on them in a second), to hack computers to open doors, and pausing over something you can normally interact with at a distance will give you the option to direct one of your teammates to do it instead.
The team commands are mainly applied to moving (X button after targeting an area with your crosshairs), holding or following (tapping the Triangle button), but the d-pad allows for a few branching orders when breaching and clearing/fragging a room, shotgunning the locks off the door, placing a charge or throwing a battering ram into it. The latter two options are really only good for when enemies are on the other side, as they make too much noise for a covert approach.
Noise was supposedly a design concept from the start. Enemies will regularly quip “what was that... I think I heard something” at the slightest peep, but they rarely make any advanced moves to investigate, either charging out the door or just staying put. The game offers a motion sensor that lets you see enemy movement (if there is any) before you pop a door, but most of the enemies seem to stay static most of the time, and won’t even react to one of their buddies getting dropped a few feet away.
If there is a sign of intelligence from the enemy AI, it usually feels scripted; there are times when the enemy will flank, but they seem set. Otherwise, they’ll run into open doorjambs, face walls and generally just openly become lead sponges by running into sight of your gun barrel. Your teammates aren’t excused from this either; they’ll bunch and get stuck in doorways on breaches, they regularly get in the way, and often won’t stay put when you order them to. They avoid fire for the most part, but the truly dumbass moments where they’ll absorb fire come out of nowhere.
The biggest gameplay addition was probably the inclusion of plopping you into the boots of team sniper Dieter Weber to pick off enemies from afar while the rest of the team inserts into an objective. The sequences are mostly throwaway bits, with one or two legitimately decent bits, but it never really approaches a level beyond what Konami offered with their Silent Scope arcade games.
PS2 owners also got gypped with the online experience. Sure, we got two more levels in the single-player mode, but the single-player game is sub-par to begin with. Rather than getting something akin to the Xbox version’s P.E.C. mode, which plays almost like a tactical RPG, the multiplayer options are your typical shooter fare.
It’s not a bad online mode; the fact that it’s there at all is a nice touch since the series has always been about the multiplayer as much as anything, but the two versions of the game are wildly different when it comes to offering something after the initial single-player game. If you haven’t seen or experienced P.E.C., then it probably won’t matter too much, but those who do see it will feel cheated out of an admittedly awesome experience.
Visually, the game is solid, but unimpressive. The detail on your teammates is fair, but the enemies are usually look-alike, cookie cutter ammo fodder, and at some distance or in low-light situations, your team can look a little like them too. There are some small touches, like your teammates’ shoulders flashing while in night vision mode or the goggled view that fills with static and shatters with damage, and the framerate for the most part is smooth, but the game just doesn’t offer any real “ooh and ahh” moments.
The level design more or less holds true to the same basic boxy layout that has been the series’ hallmark, and most R6 gamers will probably have come to expect this. In the most basic terms, the graphics are exactly what you’d expect.
The audio follows suit, though it’s probably less of what you’d want and more of what you’d expect; loud, cheesy guitar driven menu music, repetitive comments from your team and a general lack of variety keep the game from feeling spontaneous and fresh. What’s there – especially the pre-level briefings with their mysteriously broken-up video segments – are since and subtle. There were a few oddities, like the narrator completely misreading the name of the level, but that could have changed after they did the voiceovers.
Lockdown’s biggest problem is that it apparently wants to be something that the other generic shooters already are -- too quick, too dumb and too mediocre online. I want to say this again: this isn’t a bad first-person shooter, but it is a bad Rainbow Six game, and fans that still pine for a slower, more realistic shooter deserve better.