Fun with Rainbow Six 3 on the Xbox

Journal blazin's Journal: Fun with Rainbow Six 3 on the Xbox 2

Journal by blazin on Monday August 16, 2004 @05:06PM

So I picked up Rainbow Six 3 the other day for Xbox. All the Tom Clancy branded games have been getting great reviews and I love Splinter Cell 1 & 2 and Ghost Recon so it seemed logical. After this I still need to get Ghost Recon: Island Thunder and Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow, but I'll wait on those until they're cheaper. That's the main reason I got RB63 the other day... On sale for $20.

Another reason I got it was a new gameplay feature they are offering. Voice support. Other than RB63 and Manhunt (to some extent), I'm not aware of other games that have voice support built into the single player portion of the game. (Again, xbox only, I am aware of and have Seaman for Dreamcast).

The basic idea of RB63 is that you're the leader of a four-man elite anti-terrorist squad. Beyond that it's your basic strategic first-person shooter relying much more on strategy and planning and coordination than say Quake 3 or Doom. Running and gunning in RB63 will get you and your team killed.

That being said the voice support is really good. I can point my reticule at a doorway and say "Open, flash and clear" and my team will respond with "Roger. Open, flash and clear." Then they'll line up on the sides of the door, one of them will give a signal, the door gets open, a flash-bang is tossed inside, the team covers their eyes, flash-bang goes off, my team rushes inside and shoots the crap out of all the now disoriented bad guys and leaves the hostages or surrendered terrorist relatively hole-free. I can then point at the hostages or terrorists and say "Secure [hostage|terrorist]" and my team will do just that.

So it's a sweet way to play and coupled with the fact that my team is talking back to me via my earpiece (and it sounds like a radio) it can be very immersive.

I still need to figure out all the commands I can issue and how I should proceed in ordering my team around the place so as to not get them or me killed in the process and subsequently killing or capturing all terrorist and rescuing all hostages. So far I haven't been able to successfully complete any of the missions past the training missions. I feel that's partially my fault and partially the fault of my team. Here's why...

My team is very obedient. They never question authority. I'm sure if I could tell them to jump, they'd ask "how high?". That being said, they are more like computers in that I need to tell them everything to do... or not do.

If I need windows to empty the recycle bin I can pretty much tell it to do that (not via voice, but still), and it will empty the recycle bin and that's about it. I don't also have to tell it that while it's emptying the trash that I'd appreciate if it didn't also:
a) format the hard drive
b) add my email address to a bunch of spam lists
c) double the processor voltage
d) try to read cds at 300x speed
e) switch the video mode to something my monitor doesn't support
f) shut down and install OS/2 warp.
g) run all email attachments
h) replace work wallpaper with lesbian Pr0n

These things typically go without saying. If we did have to worry about that then there'd hopefully be some programmer's that would have new burger flipping jobs and more people would be using linux.

Unfortunately with RB63, you cannot take for granted that your team has any more sense than that of a bagle. While they will flawlessly execute your commands when a door is involved, ie

[open|breach], [flash|frag], and clear [on zulu], when there's no door way, they don't seem to know quite what to do, or I don't know the correct commands to tell them to get them to do what I need them to do.

For instance, last night, I'm clearing out a small village in Switzerland where the G8 conference had been invaded and a couple of Venezuelan high-muckamucks were being held. I was in process of clearing out a house to get to another area of the map. I happened to notice a terrorist down the stairs and facing away from us who must have been unaware to all the shooting and flash-banging that was going on in the upper parts of the house. I didn't know if there were more down there and didn't have a great shot on him, so I told my team "Frag" which to me means, throw a frag grenade where I'm pointing.

So I hear "Roger, frag" and the other three members of my team step up in front of me. Out comes a grenade, out comes the pin, and down the stairs goes the now live grenade. Perfect. One dead terrorist coming up.

So somewhere in my team's AI must have been some logic along the lines of "Crap! I was keeping that grenade, it was signed by General Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell and I need it back now!"

So my team proceeds to run full speed down the stairs to retrieve the aforementioned live grenade. The terrorist who isn't deaf and isn't completely stupid proceeds to turn around and open fire just as

BLAM!

The presumably autgraphed grenade explodes, killing the terrorist, and the first two of my team members who chased it down the stairs. The third was severely injured.

I'll take a look at the manual tonight and see if there's a "Frag and then stay up here with me. No really, that grenade's gone, you should have made sure it wasn't the signed one before you threw it, yes, I'll buy you another when we get home." commmand.

I mean you've got to assume that if you're throwing a live grenade, about the last thing you want to see after pulling the pin is that grenade either coming back or getting closer to you. I know I wouldn't. Apparently my team really liked that thing.

I can tell a 4-year old to use the bathroom and there's certain things that are implied with that. Mostly they'll be followed, but the result of any thing that was implied being followed can usually at worst be resolved with a mop and/or a bath. I don't need to tell them to go to the bathroom and then follow it up with:
1) don't crap on the seat
2) don't crap on the floor
3) don't crap/pee in the sink
4) don't re-wallpaper the bathroom
5) do wash your hands when you're done
6) don't eat the poo
7) don't play with the poo
8) don't eat anything in the bathroom
9) do nothing that involves smearing in any way

So either the kid knows all of this stuff, or knows that doing (or not) anything will result in bad consequences, or they haven't ever used the bathroom on their own before. I'd assume the military would probably train their forces with something along the lines of
1) Grenades blow up
2) Blowing up a grenade will hurt or kill someone in the vicinity of the exploding grenade
3) Don't be in the vicinity of an exploding grenade

My guys, if the thing actually wasn't signed must have figured out that the grenade was probably going to really hurt the nice terrorist, so the whole team needed to run down the stairs and jump on top of it so the guy didn't get hurt.

Anyway, that was my experience with the game last night. I couldn't continue playing after that. I'll try again of course, after I learn the commands to make my team "heel", "stay" and "sit" and if they're good boys then I will give them a treat. It just won't be an autographed hand-grenade.

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