Raven Shield (RS) is the third installment in the series inaugurated some years ago by Rainbow 6. That game was not merely the first in a series, it was also the first in a genre. Since then several other tactical-shooter games have been released, but none, in my estimation, have matched the offerings from Red Storm Entertainment. That says a lot for Clancy's company, of course, but it also sets some pretty high standards. Read on to see if RS lives up to its pedigree.
To be blunt, the visuals were one of the big weaknesses of the previous two games in the series. The developers previously relied upon a home-grown, proprietary engine to power their titles, and it really showed. Whereas other games of the same period looked great, due in large part to engine technology licensed from Id Software and Epic Games, Rainbow 6 and Rogue Spear looked somewhat "weak" by comparison. They looked good enough to get the job done, mind you, but I don't think anyone would have objected to better graphics.
To be crystal clear: that issue has finally been put to bed. Without question, RS is the best and most realistic looking tactical-shooter game made to date. Period. The developers did exactly what I suggested in previous reviews; i.e., RS is powered under the hood by a variant of the engine that powers the amazing Unreal Tournament 2003 (UT2k3), the best looking first-person-shooter (FPS) game made to date. The level of detail and realism with the new engine is something that must be seen to be believed.
What grabs me the most is that the character animations are as perfect as they could be. All actions are fluid and believable. Walking, crouching, and running look downright dangerously realistic; i.e., the counter-terrorist operatives really look like a bunch of guys who've been there and done that, like some pretty deadly chaps. Even the animations for reloading the various weapons are absolutely spot-on. I don't think any other game has as professional a level of character animation as RS. Truly the developers have set the new standard against which other games must be compared in this regard.
If the animation is impressive, the modeling and texturing are as good or better. I love all the wonderful little touches on the character models. You can tell simply from looking at a person (1) what weapon he's carrying, (2) the accessories with which it's configured, (3) what kind of secondary weapon he's carrying, and (4) what other gear he's packing. Flashbangs, frag grenades, and other accoutrements are clearly visible right where they should be. What's more, if you stop and zoom in on the grenades on the characters' belts, you can actually read the text describing what kind of grenade it is! Truly, this is as real as it gets.
The environments are also incredibly detailed, beautifully textured, nicely lit, and seem more alive than in any other game in the genre. When you're tromping around in the snow, you can practically feel the chilly air moaning in the rafters while the snowflakes fall gently around you. RS pushes the edge of the envelope in terms of details and realism, giving the areas a wonderfully immediate and lived-in feeling. Again, this is as real as it gets.
Further, the special effects have been much improved. The flashbangs and frag grenades of previous titles in the series were somewhat lame compared to those in other games. In contrast, the frag grenade effects in RS are particularly impressive, leaving rising clouds of dust and debris after detonation. I don't think anyone is going to be complaining about the effects—well, except perhaps that the smoke and dust really do obscure your vision as they would in real life! Perhaps most impressive of all, in this respect, are the effects of experiencing tear gas, flashbangs, etc. The developers clearly put a lot of thought and effort into making the game realistic.
Finally, the pre-rendered cut-scenes for the game have been improved from previous titles. I've always enjoyed the approach that these games take; i.e., I've always thought it really cool that the pre-rendered scenes are little machinima bits, always using the game engine itself so that the cut-scenes look very much like the regular action. That does much to avoid dispelling the illusion, as happens with so many other games. The pre-rendered cinematics still aren't up to Blizzard's standards, but they're certainly better than the previous games. Some of them are truly powerful in their emotional affect, as after the third mission when a female hostage thanks an anonymous team member for her rescue.
My only complaint with the visuals, really, is that all of this comes at a price. The system requirements for running RS with all the goodies enabled are very stiff. It doesn't help either that the game was released with a host of bugs. It was literally unplayable right out of the box for me, simply because of the frame rate. Despite my system featuring an Athlon 2400, an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, an Audigy 2 Platinum, and 1024 MB of physical RAM, my frame rate was barely chugging along in the low teens—dropping frequently down to 1 - 2 frames per second. That made the game completely unplayable. It was only after I discovered some workarounds, which I've documented elsewhere, that I was able to play the game at all.
The audio in RS is absolutely superb. In terms of audio, RS is the best of the breed, and is possibly the best game ever made in this regard. I am a long-time firearms enthusiast, and I can promise you this: the developers recorded the real things. The sounds of these weapons are dead-bang realistic. Seriously, I can tell; these sound effects were not generated from clips out of some audio library. All of the weapon sounds that I've heard thus far had to be recorded by somebody in the field. I've had good things to say about the realism of the sound effects in certain other games (e.g., Operation Flashpoint, Ghost Recon, etc.), but this game takes the cake. The developers deserve to win some kind of award simply for the sounds of the weapons.
Further, all of the other sound effects measure up nicely. Doors open as they should and sound differently depending upon how quickly you open them. Footsteps sound exactly as they should and vary perfectly with the kind of surface on which one is treading. The grenades, the ambient sounds, glass shattering, barrels exploding, and everything else is simply perfect. The raw sounds are easily as good or better than any other game made to date.
Better still, the music is both familiar and much improved. To be honest from the outset: I love the music from the original Rainbow 6 and from Rogue Spear. The composer, Bill Brown, has been my favorite video-game soundtrack composer for a while, and I am becoming a serious fan of his music more generally. The themes developed from the previous games are expanded, altered, and improved greatly in RS. I never got tired of listening to the audio tracks in the planning room, and that's really saying something with as often as they loop. If Mr. Brown ever sells a CD of this stuff, I'll buy it the day it's released. Suffice it to say that RS has one of the best game soundtracks you've ever heard.
Finally, RS gets the virtualization of audio absolutely perfect. With EAX audio enabled and full virtualization, the audio is positionally enhanced to the point that the player can tell exactly from which direction every sound is coming. The developers have also made good use of the EAX occlusion features and other effects, insofar as it seems to me that you can also tell exactly how far away every sound is. Of all the many games I've played, I have to say that RS has the best overall audio, and that's high praise coming from me.
The interface of RS is streamlined and somewhat improved from the previous games. The menu system is better designed than past games, in my view, and I particularly like the nice key-binding interface. I tend to make mistakes binding keys in other games, but RS makes it so idiot proof that even I get it right. Overall, the menus, selection controls, and so forth, all work well and look good.
Particularly worthy of mention, though, are the improvements in the mission-planning interface. One of my biggest complaints with the series in the past has been that the mission planning stage simply doesn't give you a good enough feel for the mission to come. A limited 3D representation of the terrain was provided previously; RS goes one step further and provides a 3D-windowed walk through of the waypoints in order! I honestly can't think of any better mechanism than that, and I'm very pleased to see the developers adopt it.
Better still are the controls for hosting a multi-player server. This has been a long-running complaint of mine against other games. I've administered an Unreal Tournament (UT) server for years, and so doing has forced me to learn the details of the UT initialization files, the UT server command-line, etc. RS gets it right. Launching a multi-player server, dedicated or otherwise, is a piece of cake. The user simply picks the options he wants and pushes a button. That's exactly how it should be, and I applaud the developers for getting it right.
Finally, the in-mission controls are much improved over previous versions. The ability to vary the speed with which you open a door seems like a small thing, but it plays a big role in the game. Better yet, the fluid-motion controls are simply astonishing. I said previously that the character animations were great, but I have never seen another game that allows the user to set the character's stance to any position as RS does. The basic prone, crouching, and standing positions are a button-press away, but you can achieve anything in-between as well, including leaning to either side as needed. With RS, players no longer have any excuse for not staying behind cover. The fluid-motion controls are wonderful.
I have no complaints with the interface of RS. In every aspect, it seems like the developers have taken what worked from the previous games in the series and have improved on it. Selection of operative weapons and equipment, configuring your system, binding keys, browsing multi-player servers—complete with a very flexible filtering system—are all just as simple and functional as they should be. It would be nice if you could run at a somewhat higher resolution while planning missions, I suppose, but that's a pretty niggling item.
The game mechanics are the tried and true stuff of tactical shooter dreams. As in previous titles, the player's best approach is to lay out a detailed plan for each mission, specifying waypoints, actions to take, etc. The developers have provided a quick-launch feature for those with short attention spans, so the need to plan isn't forced onto anyone. If you're the type of gamer who hated the previous games because of the mission planning phase, you can skip it altogether in RS if you like.
For the rest of us, though, the mission planning is likely to suffer from the same syndrome as the other games, though to a lesser degree. The problem with it, in my view, is that no plan survives contact with the enemy. As such, no matter how much time you spend trying to put together a plan, you're virtually doomed to fail. It's only after you've played through the mission a few times that you'll be able to get all the right tweaks in place, many of which are greatly complicated by the AI as I'll soon explain. This portion of the game mechanics is sort of broken by design, I think, but maybe there isn't much else to be done.
Otherwise, the game mechanics are solid. The one-shot-one-kill damage model is as intact as ever, and it seems very realistic. If you get hit in the head, well, it's game over, mate. If you take a round or two to the chest, then it will depend entirely on your outfit, the weapon(s) used against you, and even the ammunition with which they're loaded. The focus is clearly on realism, and it comes through in every element of the game mechanics. RS doesn't break any new ground here, but it does the typical stuff as well or better than it's ever been done before.
The most obvious improvement RS brings to the table in terms of game mechanics, though, is surely the weapon modifications. The developers have given the player a host of different implements of destruction, but that's just the beginning. Each gun can be customized in various ways, adding a mini-scope for more precise aiming at long distances, a larger ammunition clip for less frequent reloading, a silencer (for obvious reasons), etc. What's really neat about such modifications is that they really do factor into the gameplay.
For example, if one chooses a mini-scope, it takes up a non-trivial portion of the visible viewing area, so there's a clear tradeoff for using it. Similarly, a silencer diminishes the effective range and damage of the weapon; keeping things quiet has a clear cost in terms of penetrating and stopping power. These sorts of trade-offs allow the player quite a bit of flexibility in choosing and configuring the weapon that best suits his style of play, and that's doubly important in the multi-player game.
I have only one substantive complaint with the mechanics, and that concerns the addition of the real-time control options. RS strongly encourages you to develop a plan before going into hostile territory, but it also includes the ability to give certain orders in the field. For example, you can command your team to open a door, optionally using a breaching charge, a flashbang, or other grenades in the process. This is pretty cool, really, as your teammates can be pretty darned effective when used correctly.
The problem is that once they're done, they stupidly hold their position until you tell them otherwise! Trust me on this one, folks, it's way too easy to forget to tell them to fall back into formation. I've gone bursting into rooms and died a loner too many times, and all because I didn't realize my stupid teammates were still keeping watch over the previous area. That seems like a terribly silly choice to me in terms of game mechanics, and I hope they change/fix this.
Is it just me, or do others agree that maybe Tom Clancy was on vacation during the story-boarding portion of the game's development? The original Rainbow Six featured a bunch of environmentalist nuts and their plan to create a global pandemic, killing most of the human race to let Our Fragile Earth™ repair itself from the ravages of man. Despite the fact that most contemporary environmentalism is pure bunk, I still found the story of the original game compelling. It reached out and grabbed you as both plausible and frightening.
The second game, Rogue Spear, was somehow even better. Every time I saw the introductory movie—and I watched it almost every time I played the game if you can believe that—I got chills creeping up my spine toward the end. Those same chills were with me on several of the missions. The whole bad-guys-get-a-nuclear-thingy plot device has since become more than a bit tired, but it was still a real thriller in those days. The story of the second game managed to top that of its predecessor in my book.
So now we come to the third game. Though I think RS arguably does a better job of telling the story through its use of cut-scenes, dialog, and so forth, the story itself is... well... odd. And that's putting it somewhat charitably. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but suffice it to say that I felt like the writers from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the other Indiana Jones films, had been hired to bring their hackneyed Nazi villains into the mix.
Honestly, what the heck were Clancy and company thinking? Can anybody else take a contemporary Nazi movement seriously? Heck, the Nazis seem to be the one group of historical villains that our politically correct world thinks it's alright to hate. I just didn't get it. It just didn't "feel" right to me. Still, there's a lot more story here than in many other games, so maybe I should cut RS some slack? I just don't know what to make of its story. I guess I can say that it isn't more of the same, but it's not clear that it succeeds at what it is.
The game both shines and stumbles in the content department. First, the positive. There is a lot to this game. At a time when many other games ship with but a single-digit's worth of playing hours, RS comes through with no less than fifteen solid missions in the single-player campaign. What's more, all of the maps can be played via the quick-mission feature in several modes. That alone adds a lot of replay value to the single-player aspect. As if that weren't enough, the multi-player aspect of the game lets the player enjoy all of those maps, and several others as well, in all those great game modes. In terms of stuff to do, RS includes a great deal.
Also in the plus column, all of those missions are quite well done. There are a number of very different environments and conditions in which to play. The maps vary in their style, their composition, and so forth. It's pretty clear to me that a great deal of thinking went into making sure that the environments were believable in every case. When you're crawling around in the Swiss snow, for example, it really feels like you're there, and this is due in no small part to the wealth of detail in the missions.
Where RS goes positively over the top is in the sheer amount of gear available to play with. This game features literally dozens of different weapons across several categories. There is a veritable slew of submachine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, side arms, grenades, and gadgets from which to choose. If anything, the player will likely be overwhelmed with choices. I don't think I used more than about 15 - 20% of the available stuff, and that gives me something to look forward to during future replays.
The developers also deserve kudos for making sure that at least some of the missions really give the player flexibility in terms of equipment. In the previous games in the series, for example, my operatives almost never used anything but the MP5SD5, the reason being that the report from firing anything else drew too much attention. That's still true of RS in some missions, but others let you equip your troops with some big, powerful, and noisy (i.e., fun) guns. That's one of the things that made Ghost Recon such a blast to play, and it is wonderful to be able to cut loose at times in RS.
But not everything is rosy in the land of the contemporary counter-terrorist operative. RS also stumbles in several ways, all of which stem from the way the game's artificial intelligence (AI) works, or rather doesn't work. The most egregious of all the problems, in my view, is that AI-controlled agents, friendly or otherwise, can see things they shouldn't be able to see. I've walked into a hallway only to be shot dead by a guy around the corner ahead of me who isn't visible and cannot possibly see me—well, unless he's Superman and is using X-ray vision. It's as if the enemy can see through, and more importantly shoot through, corners, doors, closed shutters, and all kinds of other obstructions. The same is true of your AI-controlled squad mates (thank God!), but I find this overall to be more of a liability than an asset.
Less onerous is the lack of consistency. Sometimes when I shoot a terrorist his buddy will scream for help and start running for cover. At other times, he'll continue walking right over his friend's corpse without so much as hesitating. Sometimes the enemy pulls off some pretty impressive moves, ducking behind cover then coming at you from a different direction, climbing to the high ground to get a better angle, etc. Much of the time, though, they simply rely on inhuman reflexes to keep you off your game.
Speaking of which, I'm playing on the normal (i.e., veteran) level of difficulty, and I can say only that if the world's terrorists were as fast and accurate with their guns as the terrorists of RS, civilization would have no hope. I've poked my head around a corner and had it blown off by a guy 30+ yards away with nothing more than a hastily-aimed pistol. The relatively inhuman accuracy gets positively annoying after a while. You can tone it down by playing at the easy difficulty setting, but the easy setting is far too stupid. I wish there were some way to configure the AI more realistically. As things stand, the player has to choose between Deadeye Dick or Terrorist Gump, village idiot with a gun.
Perhaps most irritating of all, I think, is that your teammates can be dumb as a post. Despite being highly trained operatives, I've personally watched them get caught in doorways, refuse to return fire while a lone bad guy kills the whole squad, blind themselves (and not the enemy) with flashbangs, gas themselves (and not the enemy) with tear gas, blow themselves up (and not the enemy) with frag grenades, refuse to open a door because they just can't get into position, etc. I guess gaming AI is still stuck in the stone age. RS has come a long way from its predecessors, but it's still got a long way to go before it's really where it should be.
The multi-player aspect of the game, insofar as it's possible to enjoy it in light of the prevailing technical problems, is almost uniformly wonderful. Frankly, I think this game should be a Counterstrike (CS) killer, but it won't be. What I mean is that the experience of playing RS on-line is probably the closest most of us gamers are ever going to come to an honest-to-god military battle. When you're on a server with a bunch of good people, this game is gripping in a simultaneously frightening and joyous fashion. Yeah, it's really as good as that description makes it sound.
The reason I say it won't be CS killer is that it demands too much intelligence. This game lacks the "realism" of CS. That is, it doesn't allow players to hop hither and yon like bunnies in heat; nobody survives a nearby frag grenade; getting hit with a shotgun blast isn't merely an inconvenience; etc. In other words, the pacing of RS is so different that I simply don't see it catching on with the terribly llama-infested CS crowd. Of course, that's both a blessing and a curse, right? On the one hand, I've yet to see many "1337 d00dz" on the RS servers, for which I'm very thankful; yet on the other hand, the number of available RS servers as I write this is roughly 2% of the number of available CS servers. Here's hoping that the quality of the RS players will generally be high enough to make that a non-issue.
Let me give you an example of why I think RS multi-player is so great. To date I've had the time to play but a few dozen games, each of which consisted of several rounds, which are typically three to five minutes in duration depending on the server settings. You get to select your own preferred kit, which is maintained from round to round, and that's great. I much prefer this model, which Soldier of Fortune 2 also embraces, in contrast to the frantic "buying" phase of CS. Once you're in the action, you spawn with your teammates and get to work.
In one particular game last night on the private airport multi-player map, my team had some serious cohesion. One guy selected a huge machine gun (the M249?) and dropped to the dirt to cover the approach from the runway. A couple of teammates flanked him on either side to help out with frag grenades. At the same time, two other small fire teams went their separate ways. I was with a team that ran up the stairs to get a better view of the runway. Sure enough, the guys down there, who were busy engaging the machine gunner, didn't see us coming. A couple of tight bursts later, there were three more enemy corpses.
By now, though, our other fire team had gotten into trouble, and the machine-gunner had somehow been overrun from the rear. That left my colleagues and I to end the action successfully. Unfortunately, both my partners got gunned down walking around a corner. I took out their killer with a grenade, but the damage was done; I was the only guy alive on my team, and there were three still left on the opposing force. I headed quietly into the nearby hangar and got lucky for a change, coming across two fellows expecting me from another direction. I crouched and gave them both 5.56 mm headaches from my L85A1, which is presently my favorite among the assault rifles.
I was thinking that narrowed the odds a bit, when I heard footsteps coming from my rear. This was it. It was going to be him or me, and there was nowhere to run. So I spun around, still crouching, and covered the open door, hoping against hope that he didn't have any grenades left (or wouldn't think to use one since my previous firing had obviously revealed my position). Fortunately, he either didn't have grenades, didn't have the presence of mind to use them, or was confident enough of his own skills. He came running through the open door, and... I blew it. My adrenaline level was running so high that I choked and shot before I had a good bead on him. His own burst was on target, sadly, and I lost the round for my team.
What was so amazing, as I thought over the details, was that the whole thing was so gripping. There are some games that are fun to play, that draw you in simply because of the fast paced graphics and pure action (e.g., Unreal Tournament). Then there are other games that draw you in because of the interesting tactical and strategic possibilities (e.g., Command & Conquer: Generals). Still other games suck you into the action simply because of the white-knuckle realism (e.g., Ghost Recon). Because it gets so many things right, RS manages to do all of these things with its multi-player aspect. The visuals are stunning, the tactical possibilities are surprisingly broad, and the realism tops that of almost any other game (i.e., I still think Operation Flashpoint is more realistic insofar as you can pick up weapons on the ground, drive vehicles, etc.).
The only negative elements of multi-player RS are the bugs in the game. First and foremost, there is the absolutely egregious set of CD-key-related issues. Many players can't even get into the multi-player menu because the game won't accept their CD key. For those who get into the menu, many more find that their game crashes back to the desktop because of some kind of runaway looping error. There is a command-line switch to avoid that problem, as discussed in my support tips for the game, but that can take some digging to discover for the first time.
For those who actually get far enough to try joining a game, many find that they cannot connect to any server because of some problem with their CD key. The first patch is supposed to fix this, but it's absolutely unforgivable that the rotten anti-piracy garbage (1) does absolutely nothing to prevent piracy (I've already seen sites where the game, CD keys, and key generators can be downloaded), while (2) screwing large numbers of legitimate players. Get a clue, developers! The only people you're hampering with your inane copy-protection schemes are paying customers!
Worse, there are problems with CD keys that have nothing to do with piracy at all. Apparently, more than one computer behind a router cannot play at the same time, even if more than one legitimate copy of the game is being used! It seems that by design the game somehow checks both the CD key and the IP address, and it refuses to let more than one CD key play from the same IP address. In other words, if you've got a couple of friends over and y'all want to play on-line together, you're out of luck if you're behind a firewall. Gee, aren't you glad the developers are going to such lengths to protect their "rights"? This garbage has got to stop. CD key checking should be disabled completely until the developers extract their heads from their collective nether regions and implement it correctly.
Second, there is a weird but frequent problem with the scoreboard. On too many occasions, I've joined a server, waited until the end of the current round, and found myself screwed at the beginning of the next round because my scoreboard stays visible and cannot be dismissed. When that happens, you cannot move, shoot, or do pretty much anything but use the chat facilities. If you're lucky, somebody will kill you, which dismisses the scoreboard. I've been told that bringing down the console and entering the "suicide" command will also fix it, but I haven't had a chance to try that yet.
Third, there are the problems with the game's network code. Because RS is built on top of a variant of the UT2k3 engine, you would expect things to be pretty smooth, and, speaking generally, they are. Unfortunately, there do seem to be a few bizarre glitches. To date I've personally witnessed grenades disappearing in mid-air only to reappear elsewhere after a delay, as well as exploding barrels that explode long after they're actually shot. I've heard a number of others complaining of excessive lag as well, but I personally have had no problems with the connection quality once its established. Suffice it to say that there are a few odd bugs remaining in the multi-player code.
If you're a fan of the tactical shooter genre, then RS is a must-buy game, period, and I say that despite my painfully intimate familiarity with its many bugs. I do suggest waiting until the game is patched at least once, but assuming some issues get resolved it's a no-brainer buy. RS gets a great deal right in the single-player game, and the multi-player game is what CS and other squad-based games should have been. If you're not presently a fan of the genre, then you might want to give RS a try, for it's the best game you could buy to get into it. Even at full price, I think RS is quite a good value.
So, RS is the best tactical shooter ever made. I think its multi-player component is what CS should have been. Its graphics, audio, and other implementation details are generally superb. Sure, it has its flaws, and I think the bugs with which it shipped are positively inexcusable. Nevertheless, RS is a best of breed game, and it easily lives up to and surpasses its pedigree. Frankly, I have no idea how the developers are ever going to top this game by a significant margin (once the bugs are squashed), but I guess that's a pretty good problem to have, eh? Now if you'll excuse me, I think I hear my L85A1 calling.
04/07/2003