The Fall of Rainbow Six

[CeeKay]

a lenghty article looking at what happened to what used to be a great franchise on the PC.  reading it makes me really miss to old skool RS games; I think I may be grabbing Raven Shield off of Steam soon since I agree that it was indeed where the series was at it's best.

[Blackjack]

Although I had lots and lots of dial-up co-op fun with R6 while it was a PC-only franchise, I never, ever got the hang of "planning" routes for my AI co-horts in single player. I never quite grasped it, and I could understand why the feature sort of faded away as it became more console-ized (at least, that's how I read it).

I think the franchise for many years also got expansion-packed within an inch of its life. Today, that would probably be endless DLC, but back then it was just run out to the store for a retail box of additional maps. 

[The Rocketman]

I feel Rogue Spear was the best one. It had some very interesting missions, and I always liked the planning phase, which made it stand out. Also, it *felt* realistic, the way guns fired, coupled with awesome death animations... I must have infiltrated that snowy russian base with an M14 50 times or so

[Blackjack]

I threw out a lot of PC game boxes during the "2009/2010 blizzard computer room de-cluttering project." But I at least saved some pix, if you recall my PC game box thread; this is as good a reason as any to dig this up! 

[Teggy]

I spent a lot of time on the original Rainbow 6 planning out routes. It was so cool to be able to set up paths to take out a whole group of tangos and get the hostages to safety all in the space of about 2 minutes. You can't just sit in the hall waiting once you start trading fire, so it felt very realistic.

What I really wanted was to be able to set up a plan and have the computer execute the whole thing while I watched, but that ability didn't come in until Rogue Spear, and I was a little burned out after Eagle Watch. Also, the AI was really poor at flashing and clearing, so it wasn't really feasible to do that without likely losing a team.

[kratz]

I really loved the original games (through Raven Shield), but I also thought that Vegas was a really great game, though very different... overall a more dynamic feeling game.  Lockdown and R6:3 were the lowpoints of the series, not Vegas.  The article is off base on some things.

What amazes me most is that developers think so little of their audience that they feel they have to give them all these crutches to stand on, forgetting why people bought Rainbow Six in the first place.

I think the problem is that not enough people DID buy the earlier games BECAUSE they were so hard... I'm sure the sales of Vegas were much higher (though I'm not sure where to look for the actual data).

I miss the hardness, and I also don't... there's a lot to be said for fun.  Either way, I know why they were forced to go the way they went.

[Roguetad]

The hostage missions were a bitch.  It was easy to spend 30 minutes planning, only to have one dumbshit AI team member botch an entry or go brain dead tossing a flash bang resulting in a dead hostage and mission failure.  They designed some really complex and interesting missions, but the squad AI was frustratingly dumb at times.

I think it was a SWAT game (SWAT 4?) that made the leap forward to realtime action squad commands around the same time, which seemed to heavily influence the RS series going forward.

[Teggy]

The hostage missions were a bitch.  It was easy to spend 30 minutes planning, only to have one dumbshit AI team member botch an entry or go brain dead tossing a flash bang resulting in a dead hostage and mission failure.  They designed some really complex and interesting missions, but the squad AI was frustratingly dumb at times.

Yeah, you were really required to use a lot of go codes and take control at critical points unless the fireteam was just advancing.

I have Raven Shield but haven't played it, I should probably install it some day soon. I haven't played a game like that in a while so I'd probably enjoy it.

[Clanwolfer]

The hostage missions were a bitch.  It was easy to spend 30 minutes planning, only to have one dumbshit AI team member botch an entry or go brain dead tossing a flash bang resulting in a dead hostage and mission failure.  They designed some really complex and interesting missions, but the squad AI was frustratingly dumb at times.

I think it was a SWAT game (SWAT 4?) that made the leap forward to realtime action squad commands around the same time, which seemed to heavily influence the RS series going forward.

SWAT 4 came out in 2005 - seven years after the original R6 (actually, the same year that awful Lockdown game killed the 'original' R6 franchise). I think folks forget just how far ahead of its time R6 really was when it came out. Brilliant, brilliant game.