No doubt about it, the Tom Clancy name is unquestionably and perfectly synonymous with tactical combat in the gaming industry. Ever since the conception of the original Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six for the PC, the Rainbow Six series is the one that paved the way for the modern brain-oriented shooters we see today. Sadly however, "today" is a much different beast, as modern iterations of the Rainbow Six series have, much like many other franchises, been affected by the spur of console gaming – and not in a good way either. Releases such as the Splinter Cell series were unquestionably fantastic, but from what I’ve heard, some of the more modern iterations Tom Clancy’s first person lineup (particularly the Ghost Recon line) have seen some of the dreaded "dumbing down" effects we all fear. Note that this is hear-say however, as I have not personally had a lick at the latest Tom Clancy titles (Splinter Cell aside) since Ghost Recon came out first on PC many years ago. As such, I decided to grab a copy of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Lockdown to see how this popular franchise had advanced over the years.

Each game of course needs a premise, or some kind of excuse for the player to exist in a capacity that lets him run around cutting down terrorists en-masse. In the case of Lockdown, terrorists have stolen a biological weapon by the name of "Legion", which "strikes quickly and leaves no survivors". Players assume the rule of Domingo "Ding" Chavez (a name any Rainbow Six fan will quickly recognize) to go in and save the day, along with his team of three other squad members, who are pre-chosen at the start of each mission. This actually ties into a certain measure of disappointment that I felt right off the bat, as my experience with other games such as Splinter Cell led me to expect a more complex and interesting kind of storyline. As it stands, Lockdown seems to focus instead on a more simplistic level of gameplay, and this is reflected not only through the story, but also due to the pre-scripted team mate assignments.

But let’s look at the physical gameplay. Following a lengthy installation process involving the usage of about four discs (I really need to start putting more effort into a hunt for DVD versions of games) and the clumsy loading of Starforce, as well as the entry of two separate CD keys – one for Starforce verification, and one for accessing Ubi.com’s multiplayer services, I was finally granted clearance to enjoy the game’s full facilities. Can you tell I’m getting more than a little sick of over-the-top copy protection? With that said however, let’s take a look at the singleplayer campaign.

The campaign mode offers players a surprisingly wide number of venues for playing through each level. For starters, a so called "training mission" is set aside to help players get started with the game, though it turns out that this level only provides a sandbox for using the different weapons, and the full-fledged tutorials of old are actually no longer provided. Instead, the game effectively fires you right into the main campaign with a bare-bones FMV-rendered briefing and an "Intel Report" showing you all of the key points on the map. Of course, given how one will quickly notice that all of the maps are effectively linear, this information turns out to be redundant. In any case, following the briefing, players can then go in and choose what weapons each specific member of their team will be using, along with statistics and background information provided for each. All of the common favorites such as the FN-P90 or M249 SAW (well, my common favorites at least) are in, along with a huge number of other weapons. From a gameplay standpoint, players of course will probably have the same measure of success using a bare-bones MP5 with a scope as they will with a fancy assault weapon, but the vast number of weapons (combined with the first-person weapon models, the lack of which was a common complaint of mine for early iterations of the Rainbow Six series) adds quite a level of novelty. Grenade launchers and shotguns are also available for players who are picky for those sort of things – though I can’t recommend giving a grenade launcher to your AI team mates.

Speaking of AI, which is something that can play a critical role in a tactics-oriented game such as this (where one can die in only a few hits), I have to admit that the implementation of intellect for my fellow squad mates seemed quite impressive at first. By default, the AI team members will follow your moves, crouching as needed, ducking behind cover, and checking around corners before rushing into a room. Of course, all of this was observed only within the first five minutes of gameplay, after which I began to notice the usual quirks and flaws inherent in many games incorporating AI team mates. Perhaps my opinion is offset by the excellence inspired by my recent playthroughs of Half-Life 2 and Full Spectrum Warrior (the latter which has a particularly strong focus on realistic military movements and tactics), but after watching my team utterly botch a "Breach / Frag / Clear" job through simple lack of observation for their surroundings, I was less than impressed. Picture if you will a situation where I ordered my team to breach a two-door room. My team successfully breaches the first room and cuts down the terrorists inside, but the point man then decides to run over to the second door and stand with his back facing towards it. Shockingly, he then did absolutely nothing as another terrorist burst in through this door and began shooting him in the back, forcing me to intervene. The AI’s overall reaction levels and pathfinding are ultimately questionable at best, and I eventually just resorted to leaving them behind unless I needed some auxiliary cover fire.

Sadly however, the lackluster AI isn’t where the disappointments end. The overall scripting of each mission seems to have taken a severe downturn from that of previous games in the series, and this is reflected not only in the linear map design I mentioned earlier, but also thanks to the fact that the planning aspect is now completely gone. All you can do now is just choose your team mate’s weapons and jump into the field – any degree of customization to the mission profile isn’t really permitted, making this feel like more of a generic terrorist-hunt than an actual game of tactics. Sure, if I’m playing Serious Sam, then I don’t mind the concept of bursting into rooms to cut enemies down en-masse single-handedly – but then that’s why I’m playing Serious Sam. Perhaps I’m mistaken in this, but Rainbow Six is a brand name I associate with tactics and strategy, and thus I tend to expect this level of gameplay when I load the game up, but Lockdown has definitely angled towards a much more simplistic orientation – even the commands available to issue to the player’s squad are sadly limited and lack a good deal of flexibility.

On the bright side, multiplayer is at least something of a more interesting experience. While the standard co-operative modes are available (something I’ll always give bonus points for), the game also features some neat competitive elements as well. There’s "Retrieval", which is a spin-off of a kind of Capture the Flag effectively, "Rivalry", involving the completion of specific objectives on a map, and of course "Team Adversarial", along with a standard Free for All mode. These gameplay options are made a bit more interesting by the class-based loadouts and team-specific devices – for example, while Rainbow players have access to a motion tracking tool, the Mercenaries get to use a nifty camera connected to a nearby toxin canister in view, and Merc players can hit a button to release the gas to ambush passing enemies. This does make the multiplayer gameplay quite a novelty for a bit, though sadly the lack of a strong active playerbase means that the novelty of this wears off in short order.

Meanwhile, graphics are something hit or miss with Lockdown. They’re "hit" in that the first person weapon models look quite appealing, along with the character models and environments – never a bad thing. The framerates stayed solid (though I would expect this on my freshly-renovated AMD 3700+ / Radeon X1800XL configuration), and the textures and overall art directly seem quite solid – a reliable constant flr all games in the series thus far. Unfortunately, while the game holds it’s own graphically, it doesn’t too much else, which is a little disappointing given the rapid push games are being given into the next generation of rendering. This just makes the little nuances like the choppy / awkward ragdoll physics, rapid corpse decay (I’m talking about bodies vanishing right in front of my face following a pitched battle), and shadows from enemy player models sticking right through solid objects and world geometry, making it almost even easier to zero in on enemy positions than it is using the "motion tracking" tool. These little imperfections are sadly all the more noticeable and unforgivable given the direction today’s gaming is taken, and as such I can’t entirely feel comfortable with praising Lockdown in terms of its overall performance.

Much like many other average titles, I really did try to enjoy Rainbow Six: Lockdown, even for its problems. It does present a good, fun, rowdy terrorist hunt that offers access to detailed weapons you probably won’t find in other games, co-op support, and some interesting multiplayer action, but it’s obvious that they really didn’t bother trying much with the storyline (or just weren’t allocated enough time to put any real detail into it), and the aging graphical tech is really becoming obvious. The die-hard Rainbow Six crowd is about the only group I could comfortably recommend this game to, but at this rate you may as well be better off waiting to see how Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter turns out. In the end Lockdown gets a "C+" for its efforts on the PC..