Rainbow Six 3

After quite some delay, Tom Clancy's anti-terrorist team has finally crossed over from Xbox to the PlayStation 2. How does this version of the tactical shooter compare to its big brother?

After quite some delay, Tom Clancy's anti-terrorist team has finally crossed over from Xbox to the PlayStation 2.

The Xbox version was not the pure tactical game that appeared on PC and was altered to make the game more action oriented and easier to use with a joypad. Gone are the multiple squads and the exhaustive pre-mission planning. However, this does not seem to detract at all from the gameplay experience – the streamlining for console users appears to make perfect sense rather than being an attempt to dumb down the title.

Further tinkering has been conducted in bringing the game to PlayStation. The actual gameplay has undergone some tweaking to raise the level of action in the game, with strategy being downplayed somewhat. The idea is to make the battles more intense and exciting, which Ubisoft believes suits the PS2 demographic better. The voice command system, where players can direct the actions of their AI team mates using a headset, remains intact for the PS2 version.

The player controls Domingo Chavez, who first appeared in Clancy's Clear and Present Danger before graduating to the hero of Rainbow Six. Ding is joined by three team mates – it's interesting to see these three are also characters from the R6 book. Missions follow the well-trodden path of sneak infiltration, bomb defusing, hostage rescuing and killing terrorists. The three squad members can be ordered around using joypad buttons, or more interestingly, via voice commands with the headset.

The most important element of the game compared to other first person shooters is the way the player works with the three AI controlled team mates. These characters are smart enough to defend themselves and bring down terrorists, but the player is the ranking officer and needs to tell them where to go and what to do. Via the headset of joypad command, complex moves such as ordering the team to breach a door with a charge then enter and clear the room, can be given. These orders can be tagged to a Zulu command, so the player can then move to a complimentary position, say at another door, before giving the Zulu command to commence the attack. Even with the PS2's more action-orientated approach, this level of tactical control is great fun.

Rainbow Six 3 is a visually arresting game thanks mainly due to the lighting system from Splinter Cell. There are proper real-time shadows that can alert terrorists to your presence. The textures are detailed but the character models are a little simplistic. However it's just one of those games that looks great due to the care and attention put into it rather than one particular "wow" factor. The sound design is fantastic – there's even the option of hearing team mates and HQ radio messages through the headset.

The best fun to be had with R6-3 is the online multiplayer component through the PlayStation 2 network adapter. There are numerous singleton and team games on offer such as the Counter Strike style Team Survivor, Sharpshooter deathmatch and even the possibility of playing single-player campaign missions with co-operative human players.

Many publishers either release all formats at the same time or launch a game with the PlayStation 2 version first and follow up with Cube and Xbox versions later. This isn't really the best for anyone as the PS2 is the weakest machine. Cube and Xbox owners often have to put up with shoddy ports of games that don't take account of these machines' increased power compared to PS2.

Yet, with original Splinter Cell Ubisoft has worked in the opposite direction. The game was developed for the most powerful console and aimed to take advantage of that extra horsepower. This was actually good for PS2 owners too, who received a version of the game later on that had a high watermark to aim for, and the team at Shanghai made a wonderful job of the conversion pushing the PS2 to the limit of its abilities.

Now with Rainbow Six Ubisoft has followed the same path. The PlayStation 2 version arrives chock full of new features that were not part of the Xbox original. The most striking thing about the game is how good it looks. The PS2 is not known for its detailed textures, but considering the limitations of the hardware, the game looks very impressive. It's by no means as good looking as the Xbox version, but it's well designed none the less.