Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (video game): Difference between revisions

The ''Rainbow Six'' series was the originator of the tactical shooter genre, and was responsible for launching the wave of "[[Tom Clancy]]'s" military-themed video games. The games detail the adventures of covert international anti-terrorist strike force "Rainbow", and their battles against the world's terrorist element.

 

 

The original ''Rainbow Six'' for the PC was a first-person combat game which was revolutionary for its realistic combat, feature slow and steady character movement and one-shot-kill gameplay, in contrast to the [[One-Man Army]] approach taken by all previous [[First-Person Shooter]] games. The most notable feature was the tactical planning map before each mission, in which you organized up to 4 separate fire-teams and planned out their movements throughout the map, allowing you to plan out and implement complex maneuvers using multiple teams. During the mission itself, you controlled 1 team while the computer A.I. controlled the other 3 teams following the path and instructions you laid out in the tactical planning map. Players could switch to direct control of any team and any team member on the fly. Along with its stand-alone expansion pack ''Rogue Spear'', ''Rainbow Six'' was critically acclaimed for its serious and tactically deep gameplay.

* [[BFG]] - The most powerful handgun in ''Vegas'' and ''Vegas 2'' is a revolver normally used for hunting large game like elephants.

* [[Blatant Item Placement]]: How convenient, a crate filled with every type of weapon Rainbow carries sitting in a half-finished Construction site! Admittedly, many of the item boxes in ''Vegas'' could be enemy supplies, but they appear in empty, unguarded rooms, sometimes in places where they couldn't have fit through the doors.

* [[Boom! Headshot!]]: Instantly fatal. Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 allows them to go towards getting rewards.

** This makes shotguns very effective compared to other games. Get nicked in the side of the head by even ONE pellet, and you're dead.

* [[Escort Mission]]: Just before the Anti-Climax showdown with Irina mentioned above, you must defend your teammate while he hacks a computer in a much, much harder sequence.

** In the original, any hostage rescue mission, assuming you didn't already clear out all the terrorists. The fourth-to-last mission is one for its entire duration, as you have to escort a member of the conspiracy while protecting him from forces trying to kill him.

* [[Final Death]]: In the original 3 games, characters killed during a mission are gone forever, and are replaced on the team roster by generic masked [[Red Shirt|Red Shirts]] with lower stats.

** And even characters who are simply ''wounded'' may be unavailable for several missions while they recover. Basically, this is a game franchise where you want to be ''very'' careful when it comes to the safety of your team members.

** Armor actually is fairly effective. In multiplayer when there are no [[A Is]] shooting you in the head with autoaim all the time.

** The ''Vegas'' series, while easier than the original games, is still very difficult, especially if you try to Rambo your way through. Even with heavy armor you die after taking only 2 or 3 assault rifle hits, so use of cover is ''extremely'' important. For reference, on Normal difficulty you can survive about as much damage as you can on [[Harder Than Hard|Veteran]] difficulty in ''[[Call of Duty]] [[Modern Warfare]]''.

* [[No Name Given]]: Bishop in ''Rainbow Six: Vegas 2'' is referred to only by his/her callsign, rather than every other member of Rainbow, who are referred to by their given names. This is because Bishop is a high customizable character who serves as the player's avatar.

** In Co-Op, the second player is '''Knight'''.

* [[Omnicidal Maniac]]: John Brightling. Believes human civilization is doomed to collapse within a century anyway, so he and the Phoenix Group plot to hasten its demise with a genetically-engineered Ebola outbreak.

* [[One Bullet Clips]]: Realistically averted in the first 3 games in the series, where you carried several separate magazines and swapped between them when you reloaded. Played straight in ''Lockdown'' and ''Vegas'', though if you completely empty your gun, there's an additional animation of you cocking the gun to load the first round into the chamber, and if you reload early you still keep the extra bullet in the chamber.

* [[Viva Las Vegas]]: Hits every major landmark, including The Strip, Brand X knockoffs of the Stratosphere and Caesar's Palace, a casino vault, a monorail station, a random desert oil refinery, and the Hoover Dam.

* [[Walk It Off]]: The ''Rainbow Six: Vegas'' series had regenerating health, a far cry from the series' original [[One-Hit Kill]] tactical shooter roots.

** Averted in the first game; it's quite possible for Ding to get killed ''in the first mission'' depending on how badly you play, and the game goes on anyway. In fact, the game continues even if literally ''all'' of the named characters are killed, you're just stuck with useless [[Red Shirts]] for the rest of the game.

* [[Western Terrorists]]: ''Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield'' was widely criticized for making the main villains ''Nazis'', a couple years AFTER the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The console version went the exact opposite direction, trying to be topical in an [[Anvilicious]] way by changing the plot to involve Middle-Eastern terrorists, and making the [[Big Bad]] the President of Venezuela.

** {{spoiler|Gabriel Nowak.}}

** The True Patriots in Rainbow Six: Patriots.

* [[What Could Have Been]]: The first game in the franchise began life as a tactical shooter based on the FBI Hostage Rescue Team. It was changed to an adaptation of Tom Clancy's novel to give it more appeal to international audiences.