The Video Game Revue

Rainbow Six: Lockdown - Demo

Now that the computer is freed up (Sunny's heavy WoW stint having been finished for the time being), I've been playing some Counter-Strike: Source. I also tried to purchase Day of Defeat: Source a while back, but there was some confusion over my credit card (I think I gave them the wrong expiry date or some such thing) and after a while the charges were rejected and they revoked my access to it. Now you'd think that I would have just ran the purchase through again, but there were lots of other games demanding my attention at the time, and Sunny was starting to use the computer quite heavily, so I never got around to it. At one point I'd cited the original Day of Defeat as being one of my all-time favourite FPSes, and it's likely that I'll get sucked back into DoD: Source someday, but in the meantime I've been occupied plenty with other games.

And speaking of FPSes, I took the time last night to play a bit of the recent demo for Rainbow Six: Lockdown on PC. I'm a long-standing R6 fan, but only of the PC games--not the console versions which, while respectable after their own fashion, are an entirely different type of game. The thing about the original, PC-based R6 series that has always set it apart from other FPSes is that it has an obvious strategy simulator bent to it. There's always been that optional "planning phase" portion of each level where you draw up a detailed plan of the path that your team will follow through the level, and most R6 games have even had the option for you to participate as only a planner and observer, and to not actually go into the game yourself as an operative.

Of course, it's also always been fun to load up the "terrorist hunt" mode and go through the level lone wolf style, using stealth and accuracy to clean house, but even then R6 has always retained it's unmistakably simulator-based feel. Part of that definitely has to do with the way in which movement works in R6--characters move slowly and cautiously, only running in short controlled bursts when it's really necessary. R6 is also well known for it's uncompromisingly high lethality level: it has always been extremely unforgiving with regards to the effects of being shot, and because it treats the matter so seriously, it's one of the few FPS games where I've actually felt really bad when my character or another character on my team got injured or killed. The serious atmosphere of R6 has traditionally been completely different from the likes of Quake, Unreal Tournament, Max Payne, F.E.A.R., or even Counter-Strike.

As for the console editions of Rainbow Six, while they are extremely popular, they are more of a scripted walk-through kind of FPS, not unlike Medal of Honor and the like. You don't get the same kind of open-endedness to the levels, the detailed strategic planning, or the brutal lethality levels. I don't think these changes are so much due to technical reasons as it's just the simple fact of the matter that R6 was "dumbed down" (like almost any PC FPS that makes the transition to console, such as Ghost Recon, Unreal Tournament, or Quake) for the console audience. That's not to say that the R6 console games are less fun; indeed, for many players, the console versions would be more fun. But the console versions are certainly less serious, less strategic, and less deeply engrossing experiences. In the PC version of R6, a serious player might spend a full hour on a single level, only 10 minutes of which consists of actual "in the game" action. In the console version, you're pretty much always moving and shooting--it's not really a thinking man's game.

If you read this blog at all, then you should know by now that I love console gaming more than any other variety of gaming, and I certainly don't mean this bit about PC FPSes versus console FPSes as a burn on the power of consoles. But you have to admit that FPS games on console are simply not the same breed at all as those on PC. That's not to say that console FPSes like Halo, SOCOM, Medal of Honor, and the like aren't still awesome games, but it's generally true that you cannot turn as quickly on a console with a gamepad as you can on a PC with a mouse. The concept of a "flick-rail" (reflexively turning--usually a large distance like 45 degrees or more--and marking an opponent with near-instant speed and uncanny accuracy), which has been around in the PC gaming world for years and years, is more-or-less foreign to the console FPS genre, although I don't doubt that there's a reasonable facimile of this phenominon on consoles. What I'm trying to say is simply that the reaction times of enemies is necessarily slower (typically much slower) in console FPSes because the game simply wouldn't be playable if the enemies were as quick as they often are in PC games.

If you're a hardcore console gamer who disagrees that PC FPS games have faster enemies because the UI is superior enough to allow them, I will simply say this: find somebody who plays Counter-Strike on PC and is a reasonably competitive opponent, and find a way to hook it up so that you can play Quake, Unreal Tournament, Ghost Recon, or some such FPS on PC with an XBox 360 controller but your opponent can use a mouse and keyboard. See if you can beat the Counter-Strike guy when using a gamepad yourself while he is allowed the mouse/keyboard interface. I tell you, in any fair match-up, it is impossible, because while the gamepad player's rate of turn is strongly limited by the maximum pitch-rate allowed by the gamepad/joystick interface, a sensitive mouse only needs to budge an inch or less to execute a 180 degree turn. I know that that isn't solid proof of my argument--these are all just "facts" that I'm pulling out of my ass here, but it's all based on years of experience with these kinds of games. You don't have to take my word for it if you don't want to; I'm just trying to explain my position here so the next part of my rant about R6 makes some sense.

The point of all this rambling is simply that R6: Lockdown is the first Rainbow Six game ever that was a console game first and then a PC game, which naturally had me worried about where the series is headed. The console version of Rainbow Six: Raven Shield came out months after the PC version, and it was a very different game--one that was highly tuned to be a console experience first rather than a retro-fitted PC game experience, and that was a big part of its success story. I haven't played R6: Lockdown for console, so I can't comment on how different the PC version is, but I definitely felt the influence of the console roots of R6: Lockdown in a big way, and to be conscious of the fact that I'm playing a console game that was ported to PC was exactly what I didn't want to have happen.

For starters, the planning phase is entirely gone in R6: Lockdown. The single player demo level is also not open-ended at all--it is entirely linear, although it is quite large in scope; it struck me as being more on the scope of a typical Ghost Recon level than a standard Rainbow Six level, but with only one path forward. Of course, there have to be non-linear levels included, such as the multiplayer maps, but the single player level did have a highly scripted "point A to point B" feel to it, which reminded me of games like Medal of Honor or even Full Spectrum Warrior for some reason. The enemies were sluggish (slow to react, terrible aim), the lethality rate of the game was much lower than I expected (you need to be shot four or five times to die), and the entire production had a much more "bang-bang" action-movie shoot-em-up feel to it than any other Rainbow Six PC game that I've ever played. This is certainly not a traditional Rainbow Six game, and I'm very disappointed to see that.

The graphics are good, the controls seemed fine (they take a bit of getting used to after playing Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament 2004 regularly and not having played R6: Raven Shield in a long while, but that's not the fault of R6), and if I can cite any beef with the overall look and feel of the game at all, it's only perhaps that it has a bit of that "adrenaline jock" feel to it rather than the classic Tom Clancy look and feel of earlier R6 games. At many points it was obvious to me that the single player level had been designed to stage epic firefights in a certain area, not unlike how Half-Life, Max Payne, and F.E.A.R. all pulled the same stunt. Overall, as a production, R6: Lockdown looks solid to me. But that's not what I'm concerned about here.

There is a theme that keeps repeating over and over wherever I look at what's being done differently with R6 this time around: before it was primarily a simulator for strategy nuts and Tom Clancy geeks, and now the game has gone mainstream as a sort of generic S.W.A.T./Army Hollywood shoot-em-up experience. When R6 made the leap from the PC world to the console world, it reinvented itself for a wider audience. Now it seems that the original flavour of R6, which was last represented nearly three years ago now with the release of R6: Raven Shield for PC (there was also the Athena Sword expansion pack a while later), has been largely--if not entirely--abandoned. I would have preferred to see the PC version of R6 and the console version continue down two separate streams, rather than for the console version to become the PC version. As a hardcore Rainbow Six fan who was playing it back in the days of Rogue Spear, I've been completely left out in the cold with this latest iteration of a once beloved FPS series. Fortunately, I have many other games to fill the gap left by R6's demise.

In other news, I nearly scored 7 million in Metroid Pinball--my score was just over the 6.8 million mark. I also reached the Artifact Temple level, and although I failed to beat it, at least it is unlocked so I can practice it. There seems to be quite a lot left to Metroid Pinball that I have yet to see. I'm also getting close to the end with Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, and Electroplankton continues to be an amusing diversion when I don't actually have enough energy left to play a "real" game.

posted by Parappa @ 9:15 AM