What happened with the Rainbow Six franchise?

[JRL5]

This is going to be something of a rant. Now when I got the warning out of the way, then please - read ahead.

Okey. Let me get this story from the beginning. Im Twenty years old and was sixteen when I first read the Rainbow Six Novel. Having played both the first game, Rogue Spear and all their expansions at the time, the ending of the novel was abit spoiled, but I still liked it.

What I liked even more was that the first Rainbow Six games was basicly the same deal as the novel. You equip, you plan, you fight. Depending on planning you would take different routes, sometimes only to avoid casulties of your most experienced team members. And you would never go anywhere without a silenced weapon - often leaving you with the MP5 SD

Then came Raven Shield.

It was all we hoped for. Improved AI, Improved Graphics, the "End of the World Plot (What buggery else) was a bit cheesy, but it still worked. It was fun, Bill Browns music rocked, and you still never went anywhere without a silencer exept some missions. It was pure fun, and I still have it on my harddrive when I want to play a Tactical First Person shooter.

Then came Lockdown.

The first thing was that you could no longer plan your entry and tactics, but it was still abit fun. It was still "Breach, Bang and Clear", it was still having move quiet or stirr the hornets nest (even tought you actually did never have to always have silencers on your weapon). It also added more characters from the novel, so while it was not _great_, it was mot very good, but not bad either. I suspect you get the point by now.

Enter the Mockery called Rainbow Six Vegas. A concept that actually from the very beginning breaks the concept of what Rainbow Six actually is.

I installed it, not knowing what to expect really. So I am dropped into something that is Vegas. I stand alone against horde of Enemies with a Mp-5/10.

What the hell went wrong? In most of the previous games, I would have been dead almost at once - and I probably would be in real life too!

I played half the game, and it was all the same. It was a shooter, not a tactical one, but a simple shooter - and not much else.

What went wrong? Why could they just not stick with the concept that actually worked?

 

[The Wooster]

This is going to be something of a rant. Now when I got the warning out of the way, then please - read ahead.

Okey. Let me get this story from the beginning. Im Twenty years old and was sixteen when I first read the Rainbow Six Novel. Having played both the first game, Rogue Spear and all their expansions at the time, the ending of the novel was abit spoiled, but I still liked it.

What I liked even more was that the first Rainbow Six games was basicly the same deal as the novel. You equip, you plan, you fight. Depending on planning you would take different routes, sometimes only to avoid casulties of your most experienced team members. And you would never go anywhere without a silenced weapon - often leaving you with the MP5 SD

Then came Raven Shield.

It was all we hoped for. Improved AI, Improved Graphics, the "End of the World Plot (What buggery else) was a bit cheesy, but it still worked. It was fun, Bill Browns music rocked, and you still never went anywhere without a silencer exept some missions. It was pure fun, and I still have it on my harddrive when I want to play a Tactical First Person shooter.

Then came Lockdown.

The first thing was that you could no longer plan your entry and tactics, but it was still abit fun. It was still "Breach, Bang and Clear", it was still having move quiet or stirr the hornets nest (even tought you actually did never have to always have silencers on your weapon). It also added more characters from the novel, so while it was not _great_, it was mot very good, but not bad either. I suspect you get the point by now.

Enter the Mockery called Rainbow Six Vegas. A concept that actually from the very beginning breaks the concept of what Rainbow Six actually is.

I installed it, not knowing what to expect really. So I am dropped into something that is Vegas. I stand alone against horde of Enemies with a Mp-5/10.

What the hell went wrong? In most of the previous games, I would have been dead almost at once - and I probably would be in real life too!

I played half the game, and it was all the same. It was a shooter, not a tactical one, but a simple shooter - and not much else.

What went wrong? Why could they just not stick with the concept that actually worked?

Quick question. Did you play the game in medium or hard difficulty?

 

[shatnershaman]

There is a normal and realistic difficulty settings in Rainbow Six Vegas.

 

[The Wooster]

There is a normal and realistic difficulty settings in Rainbow Six Vegas.

Yes. But some of us still value the English language. Calling a difficulty mode in which your body expels bullets and heals itself in five seconds 'realistic' makes me want to swallow my own fist.

 

[shatnershaman]

There is a normal and realistic difficulty settings in Rainbow Six Vegas.

Yes. But some of us still value the English language. Calling a difficulty mode in which your body expels bullets and heals itself in five seconds 'realistic' makes me want to swallow my own fist.

Its what it says in the game get the PC version and mod if you don't like it.

 

[DeadlyFred]

I thought Vegas was the best yet. Granted its a far departure but to be quite honest, I'd much rather be able to plan entries on the fly and not keel over dead every time a bullet comes within three feet of me. I like realism but I also like games because games are fun. If I wanted to just get shot and die repeatedly I could swap bodies with Bill Murray and go join the army.

I mean lets be entirely honest, alot of the older Clancy games came down to nothing more than alot of trial and error (aka dying unexpectedly and quickloading). The addition of threshold health may be "unrealistic" but its fluid, and you can still most certainly die if you do something plainly stupid. To wit, taking an abrupt pot shot in the head from a guy with an RPK (yanno, the light machine gun?) from about 50 yards away in low light conditions is NOT realistic, in the least. <-- true R6:3 experience -- Real-life terrorists do not come equipped with aimbots.

 

[diabloclock]

There is a normal and realistic difficulty settings in Rainbow Six Vegas.

Yes. But some of us still value the English language. Calling a difficulty mode in which your body expels bullets and heals itself in five seconds 'realistic' makes me want to swallow my own fist.

Its what it says in the game get the PC version and mod if you don't like it.

I think you failed to understand the point.

As for the question. It's on life support.

 

[GloatingSwine]

What went wrong? Why could they just not stick with the concept that actually worked?

The only bit that anyone cared about from the previous Rainbow Six games was the multiplayer. The singleplayer was a nice idea that never came off well because your squadmate AI was a pack of spectacular retards who could be foiled by, for example, a door that opened the wrong way.

Unsurprisingly, for Vegas, they focused on a good multiplayer experience first, and made the singleplayer accessable and less frustratingly crippled by fuckwit AI.

 

[TerribleTerryTate]

I've played all of these games too. Gotta say RS:LV is by far the better game. Although the original games were fun in their own way - there's nothing fun about starting a mission again for the 50th time because of some fucktard shooting you from 100 meters with a pistol in the skull.

The original games were so realistic, they became unrealistic if that makes sense. However, that was part of the fun; it was challenging. RS:LV for me, is a much more enjoyable game as putting it on the harder setting is a challenge, but yet still incredibly good fun.

 

[Brett Alex]

What went wrong? Why could they just not stick with the concept that actually worked?

The only bit that anyone cared about from the previous Rainbow Six games was the multiplayer. The singleplayer was a nice idea that never came off well because your squadmate AI was a pack of spectacular retards who could be foiled by, for example, a door that opened the wrong way.

Unsurprisingly, for Vegas, they focused on a good multiplayer experience first, and made the singleplayer accessable and less frustratingly crippled by fuckwit AI.

I'd agree with that. In the early Rainbow Six's your squad mates could be quite annoying, especially in the way you needed to mollycoddle them. I haven't played Rainbow Six Vegas on single player, but I did play split screen co-op with a mate. Over a weekend in the school holidays we finished the campaign and played a few T-Hunts. I found the whole thing awesome. Admittedly this might have been largely because of the whole co-op aspect. It was so cool to scout under a door with the snake cam while my mate rappelled down to a window, then I'd flash the room (if hostages, if not incendiary cause I'm evil) while he breached and began dealing merry hell with that rapid fire shotgun (the XML6? or something?) and I'd follow up with precise Desert Eagle shots on anyone threatening hostages.

Now my opinion may be biased because I only did co-op, but maybe thats just a better way to play it. Talking tactics and co-ordinating weapons customization (I'd take a massive bolt actions with 6x, 12x scopes and a P90, he'd take a shotgun and an MP5 for example) was really good fun. The main mark down I can think of is the extended pre-mission helicopter drop offs, apparently in single player its fine because their basically cutscenes, but in co-op there was no dialogue in these flights and it meant you could be flying for about 2-3 minutes with NOTHING happening, and none of the missions felt connected. Of course this was more of a story fault and not a gameplay fault.

 

[shrew armies]

now i have not played RS:LV or the sequel but i have played all the others and i do believe that the whole planning the missions bit was fantastic, even if it did become a bit tedious playing the same mission over and over again it did have one thing that only comes from drawn out games. SATISFACTION. the overwhelming feeling of relief. that you had done something spectacular.

lockdown was a fall for me personally. yes the AI, the graphics, everything was better. but you didnt get that feeling of wondering if what you planned was good enough. there was no longer any tension based on your decisions. it you could win with whatever weapons you chose.

but IMO gaming has evolved from the simple shooter into two seperate styles of FPS, games like brothers in arms/ rainbow 6. more squad, teamwork based games and HALO, RS:LV shooter based games

 

[Gapperjack]

Removing the planning stage of the Rainbow Six games was pretty much criminal, but Vegas did compensate with a lot of nice stuff - not least the ability to designate targets using the snake-cam, and use cover. Just a real shame they had to take out all the planning aspects of the game as well as give us these neat new features.

Ideally, though I doubt it'll ever happen, I'd like to see the next Rainbow Six game give the option to skip the planning stage and play it like Vegas, but have the planning stage there in its entirety for those of us who want that. Also, I want that option on both console and PC versions. Buying Rainbow Six 3 for X-Box only to find they'd taken out all the planning was annoying, but when my mate bought it for PC and I saw the planning was there, that was a real kick in the teeth. Do they really think console gamers can't be bothered to do the planning because we don't have a mouse?

I'd also like to see them bring back multiple squads. Modern consoles can handle AI better than ever before, and yet they seem to be reducing AI controlled squads - why? For me, the ridiculously small team on Vegas is the biggest realism killer - three people taking on what amounts to an army of terrorists... er, yeah, right.

If you look at what IMHO is one of the most perfect anti-terrorist missions that is publicly known about - the SAS assault to end the the 1980 Iranian Embassy Siege. In that more than 30 troops were used. I'm not asking for those sorts of numbers, but the original games, where you could have three teams on the same mission with four men in each, 12 men total, was closer to the mark. 3 people working alone is just plain ridiculous.

I'd also like to see a return to harder enemies, but less of them. The numbers involved in R6:Vegas were again pushing the ridiculous. I remember at one point there were around 50 people in a small area of one building!

I really hope they strike a compromise between the casual gaming of Vegas and the more in-depth realistic style of previous Rainbow Six incarnations, but to be honest, I'm not hopeful. Not that I didn't like Vegas, on the contrary, I thought it was a great little game, it just wasn't Rainbow Six.

Oh, and finally, I don't want to be forced to play Ding ever again. This whole idea of having a 'main character' for Rainbow Six is just daft. Let me assemble my team, and switch between team-members like before. If one goes down, I can still play as one of the remaining members.