Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown [PS2]

Over the past few years, Ubisoft has been constantly porting and re-porting the various Tom Clancy's games from PC to Xbox to PS2 to GameCube and to every other platform under the sun. As each successive port got further and further from the original versions, it became more and more of an arcade experience. Historically, the Xbox ports of these games have been closest to the overall experience of the PC titles, but with Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown, that's changed. Lockdown plays like the video game version of a Michael Bay movie inspired by Rainbow Six 3, and that mix of Hollywood-style action and Tom Clancy-style realism doesn't quite work.

The storyline here is an action-packed cocktail of bioterrorism and nanotechnology. A terrorist group has managed to steal a deadly cyber-virus consisting of nanotech machines that infect and break down human flesh. This simple premise turns into a globe-trotting anti-terrorism tour of destruction and hostage situations. You, alternating between team leader Ding Chavez and sniper Dieter Weber, must lead your team and, for the first time in the series, work solo against a common threat.

Going solo shatters the traditional team-based aspect of the game, and goes completely against the feel of the game. For instance, in previous Rainbow games your team almost always worked in close proximity to your opponents, so taking a sniper rifle into a level was rarely a smart move. In Lockdown, when you jump into Dieter Weber's head you'll be treated to a Silent Scope-like sniper-fest of long-range target shooting from helicopters and rooftops. These sequences try to be a little too dramatic and wind up feeling stale.

More traditional team-focused room clearing action is still here in force, but those who have spent weeks with the originals will still feel a difference. The AI is initially incredibly stupid, and while it does get smarter later in the game, it seems to rely more heavily on scripted events than it should. Try a level over and over and you'll always see the same schmuck with an AK-47 run away screaming when you come around the corner, and the other guy yells the same thing before he lobs a grenade at you, which always lands in the same place.

Additionally, the game is definitely friendlier to automatic fire than the previous ones; everything just feels a little less hardcore. If there's one major indicator of this, it's the generous health bar that spreads across the top of the screen. Previous Rainbow Six games had minimal health indicators, because all you needed to know was whether you were healthy, about to die, or dead. Now, at least on the default difficulty, you can be shot numerous times before succumbing to your wounds.

Anyone who has spent much time online in Rainbow Six 3 knows that matches tend to turn into run and gun escapades anyhow. So, the less hardcore feel is somewhat less tangible once you jump online. However, the same life bar is present here, and the same feel pervades the various online modes.

New in the Xbox version of Lockdown is what's called Persistent Elite Creation, an attempt at turning the game into a lightweight RPG. It tracks your online exploits and rewards you with better stats and money that can be used to purchase goodies like weapons and body armor. When creating your online persona, you can select to be an all-purpose soldier, a sniper, a demolitions engineer, or the always rare combat medic. Your choice of class will to some degree determine the upgrades and items available to you, and will dictate your style of play.

Online or off, the game is decent looking but doesn't provide the sense of immersion that Rainbow Six 3 or Black Arrow did. Levels are detailed and the textures look good, while new lighting effects provide some subtle (and some not-so-subtle) blooming in bright areas. However the anti-aliasing seems to have taken a step backward, along with player animations, which seem stiff. The rag doll physics work well, but watching your AI teammates set up a door breach isn't quite as compelling as it once was.

Audio, too, doesn't impress like it did in Rainbow Six 3. The concussive booms of grenades and well defined acoustics surrounding other weapons fire have become strangely more mellow. The comments from your AI teammates are far more irritating than they are helpful, and the voiceovers themselves could use some work. Cover all that with a layer of riff-heavy 80s style hair metal and you're not left with much worth listening to.

Lockdown is a perfectly serviceable shooter; it's just an unfortunately confused one. The hard-core realism and punishing difficulty that earned this franchise its rabid fan base has been diluted, and what's left is a hardcore strategic series that's trying awfully hard to be a little more run and gun. It doesn't quite work, and so here's hoping for a little more focus in the next inevitable port.