If you prefer your hyper-realistic military simulations to be developed by private corporations, rather than by the US government (with your tax money), perhaps Raven Shield deserves your attention.
Most Nintendo fans will be most familiar with the N64 version of Rainbow Six, which was developed at Saffire. Unfortunately, N64 fans never got a version of the sequel, Rogue Spear, but the third game of the series is headed to GameCube now that Ubi Soft is the exclusive publisher of all Rainbow Six titles. Xbox and PC versions will come out first, with GameCube and PS2 ports to follow.
Raven Shield is basically just like its predecessors: you’ll control a team of tactical experts through several missions, usually to thwart a terrorist or something along those lines. The game’s style is extremely realistic; often it only takes one bullet to kill someone, including you! The key is to move in slowly and quietly, and to strategically place the other members of your team.
The newest game runs on the Unreal engine and boasts many graphical improvements over its predecessors. Apparently the controls will be upgraded as well, though we have no specifics on how. Multiplayer features should include both deathmatch and cooperative modes, but we don’t know how many players can join in via splitscreen, or whether any home versions might include online features.
Look for Rainbow Six: Raven Shield in early 2003.
Rainbow Six 3
