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Rainbow Six: Raven Shield Multiplayer Test November 25, 2002 Rory "Hubris" McGuire |
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Summary: Team RAINBOW is back in action again, the sequel to Tom Clancy's Rogue Spear, Raven Shield is shaping up to be a fun title for those who enjoy a little realism in their action shooters. Rory takes a look at the multiplayer test to see how Raven Shield is shaping up. Is it worth the 142MB download? Find out in today's article!
 Overview | Page:: ( 1 / 5 ) |
I’ll take “realistic shooters” for 400 please Alex
Before Counter-Strike, before America’s Army, before Flashpoint, Day Of Defeat, SOCOM, Splinter Cell, Urban Terror and a wide variety of realist shooters, there was Rainbow Six. At the time the shooter crowd was still into their rocket launchers and alien weaponry that spewed lightning, Rainbow Six discarded the majority of the twitch paradigm, and forged a new genre inspired by military tactics and protocol. Based on the novel of the same name by Tom Clancy, Rainbow Six came on the shooter scene bearing so many revolutionary ideas that the only game whose ingenuity it could even be compared to was Wolfenstein 3d, which started the whole show.
The single player played a bit like a strategy game crossed with a shooter, where the player’s planning of his counter-terrorist team affected how well you did on the mission, while the multiplayer brought a fanatically realistic paradigm. As you walked your crosshairs fanned out, stop walking and they slimmed back down, this single feature with a dozen other details, forced the player to think, and those very ideas have spawned many a game since R6’s first release.
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R6 X 3 = R18?
Though it was by far one of the most revolutionary titles for its time, R6’s multiplayer enjoyed at best a cult following. Though the deliberate gameplay might be cited as why, it also suffered from a number of interface problems, and an engine that was at best described as “peculiar.” However, still to this day folks can be found playing the original R6 and it’s sequel Rogue Spear.
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A title later, Red Storm is gearing up to bring us the third official installment in the Rainbow Six series. Rainbow Six: Raven Shield touts a licensed Unreal engine, and a whole slew of new features to the series. Raven Shield is slated to hit stores this February, and already Red Storm and Ubisoft have released the multiplayer test for the players to poke around in and provide feedback. The multiplayer test features two maps, including a remake of the legendary Streets, and two gametypes (deathmatch and team deathmatch essentially.) After a quick download, we took Raven Shield out for a spin.
SIDEBAR: Athlon/Pentium 600 mhz
128MB of RAM
32 Meg video card
DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
240 meg install
FS Recommends
900 mhz processor
256MB of RAM
64 meg video card
Download the R6: Raven Shield demo here.
| Graphics, sound and performance | Page:: ( 2 / 5 ) |
The Unreal Rainbow
Rainbow Six is back, and Red Storm has given up on prior engines, in favor of the more tried and true Unreal engine. The Unreal engine serves the R6 series well, none of Redstorm’s realist games have looked as good as Raven Shield is shaping up to be. Most importantly, the game just doesn’t look good, but the graphics are being used on a level that effect the gameplay heavily. Light plays a huge role in the game, light illuminates or silhouettes models perfectly, and hiding in the shadows actually obscures the player into near invisibility.
The Red Storm team has also taken the time to add a number of environmental and technical effects to the Unreal engine, the finest example is tear gas. Tear gas has been included in Raven Shield, and it’s a serious force to be reckoned with. If you’re subjected to tear gas it will force you to simply cough which can give up your position, but depending on exposure level you may have your view distorted and stretched to extremes, or occasionally shake from the uncontrollable fits of coughing and/or vomiting. The blur effects associated with tear gas are far from cheap, it doesn’t just change your field of view, the textures become blurred, you’ll see double, light trails, and all manner of other borderline hallucinogenic experiences.
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The attention to graphical representation shows in a number of gadgets and gameplay mechanisms. Get shot and you won’t need a flashing red screen to let you know you’re taking lead, your whole view will stretch and pan expressing the pain you’re in. Turn on night vision and look directly into a streetlight like a goober and be blinded. What if you’re real close to a grenade when it goes off but you’re in cover and manage to survive? Not only will your vision be mildly blurred from the concussion you’ve sustained, but you’ll also hear a perpetual ringing in your ears from your eardrums bursting.
This attention to effects detail really separates Raven Shield from the competition in going the extra stride in attempting to represent what it is a real combatant would be going through, and on top of that, a number of the effects are just downright brilliant on a graphical level.
Pop, pfft, bang?
The sound in Raven Shield just doesn’t play as large a role on the gameplay as compared to the graphics. Footsteps aren’t loud enough, gunfire is incredibly muffled unless it is going off in your hands or your ear, the attention to detail in sound isn’t present like it is in the eye candy department. The realist shooter has long been defined by its player’s attention to sound as a tool against their enemy, and as it stands the RvS multiplayer test just lacks that feature. In Counter-Strike or any number of the flagship realist shooters a player can know where a grenade is without ever seeing it and many a player has been accused of wall hacking by simply listening to where their enemy is. Presently in the Raven Shield multiplayer test we’re given a broad thud when a frag grenade finds ground and footsteps can briefly be heard when within a stone’s throw of an enemy. We’re hoping the final version will touch sound up, as well as add some decent ambient effects, such as the bullets whizzing past your head we saw in America’s Army, but we’re still a few months off, so no worries as of yet.
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Don’t let the bed bugs bite
Yes, it’s a multiplayer test, so we don’t intend to write essays on the issue of bugs, but for a licensed engine (One of the most licensed engines in the gaming industry no less) Raven Shield has a palpable number of bugs. When panning around we have experienced a number of inexplicable FPS hits, as well as some just downright odd bugs, like a whole team losing mouse control for a round, or swapping to a grenade and being stuck weaponless. The Raven Shield hungry player base has done a good job of chronicling the bugs experienced in the multiplayer test over on the Ubi boards, so we’re hoping to see them stamped out by the time to the game ships. Regardless of what may come in February when Raven Shield is released, the bugs will definitely effect your demo experience, so you may wish to wait until the snow starts to thaw to try the game out.
SIDEBAR: Rainbow, being an international organization doesn’t have to worry about Executive Order 123333 which prohibits assassination by American forces and intelligence. Muha!
| Gameplay | Page:: ( 3 / 5 ) |
Flashbang out!
Rainbow Six brought us our first taste of deliberate realist gameplay, and Red Storm is attempting to take that gameplay to new heights with Raven Shield. Just as in the first game, moving will effect your crosshairs, and thus your weapon spread, but the crosshair movement is effected by even more details in Raven Shield. Move your point of view 90 degrees quickly and you’ll lose accuracy, go into a run, get hit, and all of these details will effect your accuracy. What if you are shot in the leg? Your movement is slowed for the remainder of the round.
New to the R6 franchise is a wide variety of details some borrowed from other realist shooters, others brand new ideas. You can now go prone instead of just crouching for example, and leaning which you were capable of in Rogue Spear, can now be done at a full run. Leaning itself is done entirely differently, in Rogue Spear it simply made your bounding box to be hit a little different and altered your view. In Raven Shield leaning effects your entire model and all the details that entails, so when trying to fit into a tight space and having issues, you can lean a bit and fit in.
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One major detail to the R6 franchise, and counter-terrorist teams in general, is how to handle opening doors, or breaching. You can shoot a handle off of a door, throw a frag to blow it to pieces, or when the shotguns are released you’ll be able to blow it clean off it’s hinges. New to Raven Shield for the more subtle player: doors can be partially opened with a mouse wheel, so you can open a door a crack, and lean in, taking a couple of pot shots before closing it. Perhaps you prefer to open the door just a hair while a teammate lobs in a flashbang, close it, then blow it off it’s hinges and charge in with your enemies blinded.
Realism, realism, realism
Rainbow Six is defined by it’s realism, but in a few of the situations in Raven Shield, it seems that Red Storm decided to forsake realism, and actually make the game slower for simple sake of the game being slower. The best example is on Streets, each of the starting bases has a ladder leading down to a lower basement level, you can either traverse the ladder to scale the 10 or so feet down spending eight or so seconds as you very slowly descend weaponless. Or you can opt to fall down, and take half your health in damage and be limping for the rest of the round. Now, never mind the fact that a crème de la crème counter-terrorist wouldn’t take eight seconds to descend 10 feet of ladder, but the falling, how is it one can fall ten feet and take more damage than an m14 shot to the leg does? We’re talking about assault rifles here!
This is present in a number of the details in R6: Raven Shield, for example you still can’t jump. Red Storm didn’t want players “bunny hopping” across levels, as real SEALs and SAS wouldn’t do that. However, in Day of Defeat (admittedly a World War II mod, but easily one of the most realistic shooters we’ve seen) the player can still jump, it’s simply his crosshairs become epileptic as a result. As a result, in DoD firing while leaping or for a good amount of time thereafter is an exercise in futility and simply a waste of ammo.
It is these arbitrary mechanisms in the foreground of Raven Shield that don’t make the game feel realistic, but forced, the game is very slow, and very thoughtful.
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Thoughts on thoughtfulness
It is this very thoughtfulness that makes the game so appealing. The skillset in Raven Shield isn’t just about how good of a shot or dancer you are, it’s also about the moments leading up to those shots and those dances. A player who knows where his opponent is, can descend on that opponent slowly with his crosshairs leveled at him, thus his shots will be crystal clear. The player caught off guard, however, will be at a significant disadvantage as he whirls to face his attacker and sends his crosshairs flying across the screen in panic.
Half of the skill of playing Raven Shield lies in the intelligence you play it with, when clearing a room, doing it slowly insures a level shot. An economy of motion, checking the corners before panning across the rest of the room, will insure a player has an ever minimized crosshair when he does find an opponent. In many ways Raven Shield relies on the player’s intelligence in how he plays the field as much as it relies on his skill with a weapon.
SIDEBAR: Technically, MarineDoom may have been the first “realist shooter” but we need more than a few new textures to qualify, apologies to the Corps.
| Weaponry and Conclusion | Page:: ( 4 / 5 ) |
Lock and load
After our Hitman 2 review, we were sincerely lamenting a lack of “stuff.” That lamentation has been silenced by the cornucopia of random gadgetry that the Raven Shield multiplayer test has offered us. Players are given your typical run of counter-terrorist weaponry, several SMGs and assault rifles, including two MP5 models and an M14, two sniper rifles, a wide variety of pistols including the USP and desert eagle: your standard issue terrorist killing fare. Players in Raven Shield are also given two “kit” slots however. These kit slots can be spent on a wide variety of different options, you can pick up one of six grenades, flashbang, smoke, teargas and frag, as well as a remote charge and claymore mine. You can also pick up additional primary and secondary magazines. Where things get interesting is you can also decide to run with a heartbeat sensor, which at limited range (50 feet or so) acts as a wall hack of sorts, giving a pulse through walls. You can also pick up anti heartbeat gadgetry in the heartbeat puck, which gives off a false heartbeat at a location where you drop it, or a heartbeat sensor jammer, which cloaks your heartbeat entirely. Players are also given other gadgets, such as the gas mask, to run through smoke gas without coughing, or tear gas without getting vomit all over themselves.
The player isn’t limited to just these either, each of the weapons can also be modified, which includes your ammunition and ammunition casing, as well as a secondary option on your rifle or pistol which includes a silencer or mini scope. With all these details in mind, almost every player on the field is outfitted entirely differently, campers may prefer to run with a smoke grenade and a heartbeat puck to outwit enemies into charging the wrong side of a room they are set up in. Those going through close quarters routes may make ample use of teargas and gasmasks to get an upper hand on any opponents, but they may be countered by those who use a heartbeat sensor and frag grenades to bounce grenades at them before they even breach a door.
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Some of the weaponry needs a bit of tweaking, frag grenades and claymores for example have a very minimal detonation radius. Some of the rifles in Raven Shield also need a bit of touch up, but even without these tweaks which will inevitably be balanced up in the final version, the weaponry in Rainbow Six is incredible, and every player can choose his outfit to his needs and the level he’s fighting on. Moreover almost all of the gadgetry seems to actually be useful, which is something very rare in shooters that every detail offered is viable.
Another nice detail with all this random gadgetry is a graphical representation of almost all of it. If you carry two grenades, you have two grenades hanging from your belt. If you have a gas mask, you’re running around with a gas mask on. Shoulder your assault rifle and not only does it hang on your back, but when you reach down for the pistol in your holster it is the actual pistol model the character is using. This not only separates the characters on a team on a graphical level, but also at a glance you can tell what an opponent is carrying, and whether your tear gas will effect him, or if he’s carrying a fistful of grenades he’s gonna lob at you.
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Should I or shouldn’t I?
Raven Shield is a heavy weight standing in at a hefty 142 megs, with a 240 meg install, but if you’re on broadband there’s no excuse to not download this multiplayer test. Dial up players may wish to wait until a retail version, as the number of bugs they encounter might leave a bad taste in their mouth. Raven Shield is offering us an updated perspective on the franchise that started one of the largest sub genres in gaming, and they’re doing a very fine job of it. With two maps and a wide variety of gadgets to play with, it’ll be quite awhile before you set the Raven shield test down if you’re a fan of the realist shooter.
Those who aren’t a fan of the realist shooters however, may wish to pass on the Raven Shield multiplayer test. The gameplay is quite slow, arbitrarily so at some points, and those who demand action in copious amounts may simply become frustrated with waiting three minutes to watch their model die in random poses. If you aren’t looking to think while you play, don’t bother, as Raven Shield requires the player to always be problem solving.
With February just around the corner, we’re eagerly awaiting Raven Shield, and hoping the bugs and some of the more arbitrary gameplay mechanisms are stamped out, or at best marginalized.
SIDEBAR: Were we shooting on point or is Rory sniffing the tear gas? Let us know what you think of the Rainbow Six: Raven Shield Multiplayer test. Sound Off!
| Gallery | Page:: ( 5 / 5 ) |