Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear

The Good
The game is a much better improved version of the original Rainbow 6. Rogue Spear brings in more and better counterterrorism aspects into the game.

The enemy AI is much better, no more will they stand on top of a grenade and look aimlessly around...nor will they stare off dreamily while their partners are getting sniped. The enemies now patrol the area, run from grenades, fire from cover, and notice when their buddies get shot...

New weapons!!! You can now use sniper rifles!!! With the inclusion of the riflemen, you can now deploy different strategies, such as having your riflement pick off guards, instead of having to storm them on foot...the riflemen are extremely obedient as well, and won't fire until you tell them to...

The level design is totally amazing...try the airplane highjacking, or the bombed out Kosovo level, and you'll see what I mean...The Kosovo level is especially fun in Multiplayer, as it offers many places to hide...

Ding Chavez is back!!!, along with some more other good people who have high levels, so that you don't have to restart everytime you lose Ding (which is what I did in the first Rainbow 6)...

Multiplayer is extremely fun...since you die from one shot, you have to expect your teammates to cover you...This adds the tremendous amounts of teamplay strategy that there is already...

No more getting stuck in doorways, as the Friendly AI will move away and let you get out the door...this was a frustrating aspect in the first game and is very well improved in the second game...

New features such as the peek-around-the-corner move, and the smoke that is left by grenades is extremely cool...

The Bad
Although the enemy AI has been darastically improved, the friendly AI hasn't. The operatives has way too long of a reaction time...Sometimes, you could be down on the groundwith a chest wound and the rest of the team would still be staring off into space while the enemy is shooting at them...

The death sequence is totally overboard. Shoot someone in the shoulder and they'll grab it, scream, turn in circles, scream some more, turn more circles, and let out a final scream before falling down to the ground...dead...This is not an exaggeration...Maybe they should just lie down and die...its really distracting when some guy you shot three seconds ago is still going through his death squence, arms flailing...

The Bottom Line
Apart from the friendly AI, which is buggy only sometimes, I can't really find anything that is really wrong...It's a really enjoyable game both single and multiplayerwise...If you want a break from all out deathmatching, then try the strategy filled Rogue Spear, and you won't be disappointed

The Good
The Rainbow team is back in this follow-up to 1998's Rainbow Six. Once again, terrorists are threatening the world's stability, taking hostages, and planting bombs and only Rainbow can stop them. Following the same setup as the prior game, each mission begins with a briefing detailing the goals of the mission (hostage rescue, kill all terrorists, etc.). Then you choose from a wide pool of international operatives, equip them for the mission, and plan the action using detailed maps of the level. In the final stage, you take command of one of the teams and play through the level, issuing orders to other teams as you go.

Rainbow Six was innovative for this planning procedure and also for its adherence to realism. All weapons are based on real-life firearms, sound effects are authentic, and unlike most first person shooters, the game is largely one-shot, one-kill.

Rainbow Six wasn't a typical first person shooter, in that you didn't grab floating rocket launchers and run from power-up to power-up. But it did lack some FPS features that players found useful. In Rogue Spear, players now have the option to look around corners- a must for the stealth-type playing the game demands. It is also now possible to run while crouched. Gamers are still unable to jump, as the designers claim a counter-terrorist group wouldn't jump around and shoot.

Rogue Spear also features a revamped terrorist AI. I'd say that this was hit and miss. Enemy AI still doesn't seem to respond to seeing dead bodies, but they do run for cover when fired on. Also, hostages tend to lose their cool during firefights and run in panic.

Finally, the revamped planning stage is better. Go-codes, or points where teams await orders, have useful settings like covering an area and sniping. I was particularly impressed when I ran into a building, used a Go-Code and watched my team open doors to check for terrorists.

The Bad
Rogue Spear plays more like a revamped Rainbow Six, than a game of its own. Although a year had passed since the original game's release, the only big changes were features that should have been incorporated in the first game.

While enemy AI is improved, team AI still seems lacking. There is less crowding in the doorways, but teams still blunder into fire zones, even after seeing the first people in the team get fired on.

Clipping is pretty bad. You can usually see the barrel of a terrorist's gun poking through a door before they open it. Watch the game play out in the replay or the Watch Mode, and you'll see characters get caught on corners, slip into walls, and more.

The storyline is less compelling in this game, probably because they aren't drawing on a Clancy novel, but the former Soviet threat seemed trite. Also missions didn't seem to flow as well as the original one's did.

Finally, operatives are largely anonymous. You'll choose them according to their statistics, not personality. Wounding and Fatigue seem deemphasized, and for the most part, I could keep reusing the same core group of operatives.

The Bottom Line
If you enjoyed the original Rainbow Six, then I think you'll enjoy this game. If you didn't, then I don't think any improvements will sway you. It remains a very good, squad-based stealth-driven shooter, even though it's less compelling than the original.

The Good
Rogue Spear featured a strategic counter-terrorist single player campaign and incredible multiplayer action! The 3D graphics were up-to-date, and the level designs were both exciting to play and attractive visually. Authentic weapons and their sound effects rounded the package out, although it would have been nice to hear bullets whizzing by in 3D.

The actual gameplay seemed realistic, giving the player more movement options than usual, but not so many that made it overwhelming. Although I wasn't interested in the single player game as much as the multiplayer side of things, it did offer additional challenges in strategy, requiring the player to control a team of operatives.

The Bad
The multiplayer had technical problems. It required that EVERYONE playing have a good connection to the server, or everyone would suffer severe skipping around, bullets firing in the wrong direction, and so on.

To make matters worse, there were no dedicated multiplayer servers. Rogue Spear required having a server operator playing to run the game at all times! This left the players to associate with groups or friends and hope they would be around to play.

To add insult, when I tried to play RS on publicly listed servers after taking over a year off, I was cursed out and kicked off of three servers in a row for unknown reasons; I had a good connection, and was polite. One server operator seemed to have a problem with the fact that I really crushed his team, which seems like a sportsmanship difficulty. On another, I may not have spoken the native language. I hope this was just bad luck and not a feature of the community, but nevertheless, I uninstalled the game because I didn't have enough people to play with.

Still, RS's multiplayer is fine on a LAN or with a group of regulars on the net.

The Bottom Line
Despite my long rant, Rogue Spear has more good things going for it than bad. It may not be entirely worth playing as a classic unless you want to try the levels, as it has been superseded by similar games from Red Storm.