Rainbow Six: Lockdown – Review

Rainbow Six, the name itself has become pretty synonymous with gamers now as we’ve enjoyed various incarnations both online and off. And here comes another one, but is it anything new or just more of the same regurgitated? Let’s take a peek and see shall we?

I’m not going to beat around the bush here, it is more of the same, there, I’ve said it, but let’s not forget this doesn’t automatically make something bad, particularly if previous outings have done fairly well, there’s an old saying ‘if it aint broke, don’t fix it’ and that appears to be the credo followed here for the most part. The command interface is still well done and it’s a ‘good’ FPS title. Team AI and enemy AI is also not too bad, though there will be times your own team will have you wondering whether these guys and gals ever did attend any sort of training. All in all though this is a fairly minor complaint, with few games getting team and enemy AI spot on anyway. The enemy AI is also dopey at times and sheer genius at others, all in all it’s quite hit and miss, so to speak. The overall story is brought together well in a sort of cinema styled format which works well, as it has previously.

Graphically it’s more of the same, Ubisoft usually do release fairly polished titles and this is no exception, even if it is yet more franchise rehash. Nice use of dynamic lighting, smoke effects, IR and night vision all still exist and are done well. Nice character models and fairly detailed characters and weaponry and finally, female team members, but more on that shortly. The only real graphical problem appears to be a slight judder in framerate which occurred only rarely and didn’t ruin the game overall in any way.

Sound in the title, like with the graphics is also well done and polished. Some nice voice acting and I have to say it was a pleasure to hear some female voices in the fray, all except for ‘Mrs Chripy’, the woman who introduces the briefing… good Gos she’s annoying. The music as always is also very cinematic and well done, certainly bringing across a film styled feel. A lot of speech in this one and no sub titles so the deaf or hard of hearing gamer may be at a slight disadvantage, but when you strip this title back to the bare bones it’s point and shoot and that is where the fun lay.

Female Gamer angle, finally, female soldiers, cool female soldiers in the form of Annika Lofquist, Ayana Yacoby and Renee Raymond. About bloody time. We really have to give it to Ubisoft here for ensuring this is the case, it didn’t ruin the game having a couple of kick ass girl soldiers in it, the world did not end and silence did not covet the earth… see, you can do it and everything is okay. There’s also the option of creating your own player for multi player mayhem, male or female. Wonderful.

Overall it’s more of the same, as I mentioned at the start of this review. If you loved the previous Rainbow Six titles, chances are you’re going to love this one. It’s got some great multi-player, nice graphics and sound. The addition of female characters was a major plus for me but not enough for me to go bananas, though it is going to score an additional point from the above average 6 I was going to give it, not purely for the addition of female characters, but also for bringing yet another well polished title in the franchise to life. They could easily have just thrown something together here, but it doesn’t feel like that. You usually do get a good product from Ubi and nothing’s changed here. It doesn’t do anything new overall but what it does do it does well and always has, I’m just not sure how many more updates the series can take before we all get a little bored of it.

Review by Angela

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