PlayStation 2

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown

It would be misleading to suggest that Rainbow Six Lockdown is in any way shape or form a bad game, and we certainly enjoyed playing through it even with a nagging sense of ‘been there, done that’ – there are only so many ways you can sneak up on terrorists and only a few of the levels feel truly original. It’s more of the same except slightly dumbed down. It’s still above average and the multiplayer modes are worth investing time in if you’ve enjoyed them before. Where the Rainbow Six series goes from here is anybody’s guess.

Lockdown feels in many ways like a top-40 pop album. All the polish and the basic elements are there to make it a great product, but it seems to lack a soul. You'll probably get some mileage out of multiplayer, which is as frenetic and enjoyable as you can expect from a game of this nature, especially co-op play. But the single-player gameplay doesn't hold up its end of the bargain quite as well. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown rides that precarious border between tactical and arcade, and while still fun on the whole, it probably doesn't address either side as adequately as it should.

In its extraordinary Tom Clancy series, Red Storm and Ubisoft have generally made moderate incremental steps to improve each title, sticking with a firm simulation- and realistic style approach. While loading up gamers with a healthy arsenal of powerful weapons and tools the team's approach to the gameplay in Rainbow Six Lockdown is a mixed effort that feels forced, awkward, and edgeless, while retaining only some of the game's best qualities.

Multiplayer is far better than single-player, but unlike the radical overhaul that the Xbox version received, both PS2 online and GameCube split-screen feel uninspired. Again, both co-op and competitive multiplayer don't suck. They just fail to rock. Hopefully Ubisoft can break Rainbow Six out of its rut in the next round of hardware, but this gen's final iteration is nothing special.

Like the previous games in the franchise, Rainbow Six: Lockdown follows the exploits of Ding Chavez and the rest of Team Rainbow, the world's premier counterterrorism unit. It seems that a megalomaniacal villain has stolen an experimental, man-made virus that could wipe out the world if released. It's up to the team to take him down and save the world. Not surprisingly, their adventures will take them all over the world, and each of the game's 16 levels takes place in a different locale.

Fans of the series and newcomers alike should avoid Rainbow Six: Lockdown and instead pick up the last two games in the series (Rainbow Six 3 and Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow, both of which can be had pretty cheaply now, and offer infinitely more enjoyable gameplay. I can only hope that the reason Lockdown is so bad is that they took the A-list developers and put them on the next-generation titles, because if Ubisoft keeps up with this franchise killing trend, we’re all going to be looking for a new company to provide us with our tactical shooting fix, and I don’t want to do that, because I really love these guys’ previous work.

Qu'est-il advenu de Rainbow Six ? Ce qu'il advient d'une formule qui veut trop séduire et qui pense pouvoir se contenter de son nom. Même si certains passages sont ardus, c'est plus en raison de la masse d'ennemis que d'une phase tactique délicate, comme dans un shooter standard en somme. Mais non content d'avoir perdu l'esprit de la série, lockdown se permet en plus d'afficher une finition vraiment discutable, à tous les points de vue.

If played as a new game, not part of the Rainbow Six series, Lockdown isn't totally awful. The campaign is lengthy and the gameplay is fairly fun and simplistic. Problems with team-mate and enemy AI, plus some surprisingly rough presentation just aren't in keeping with the series, and while online play is fun or a while, previous games in the series feel better to play and can now be bought at a budget price. Lockdown is obviously a new direction for the series, but I hope Ubisoft has a rethink before the series makes its inevitable next-gen debut.

Round about the time when Gay Pride asserted itself and Rainbow Brite horned in on the Cabbage Patch monopoly, the University of Hawaii changed its mascot to the Warriors, a far cry from its previous happy-go-lucky mascot, the Rainbows. Unwilling to accept the namby-pamby image usually associated with the colorful byproduct of a good rain, Tom Clancy’s anti-terrorist shooter, Rainbow Six, has stuck to its guns and held on to the name and franchise. If rainbows really do end at pots of gold, this one is protected by a leprechaun packing an uzi.

After spending the last three years dallying about on console systems, the Rainbow Six series has finally come home to the PC. Like the prodigal son, it wanders back onto our hard drives with nary an explanation about where it's been, what it's been doing, or why it's the way it is. Your reaction will probably include varying degrees of joy, disappointment, and maybe astonishment, because this is not any Rainbow Six you remember.