Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (video game)

This article is about the first game in the Rainbow Six video game series. For information on the rest of the series, see Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. For the novel with the same name, see Rainbow Six (novel).

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six
250px
Developer(s)	Red Storm Entertainment
Publisher(s)	Red Storm Entertainment
Designer(s)	Brian Upton
Composer(s)	Bill Brown
Series	Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six
Platforms	Microsoft Windows, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Mac OS, Game Boy Color, Dreamcast, PlayStation Network
Release date(s)	August 21, 1998 Windows Nintendo 64 EU: December 1999 PlayStation Mac OS Game Boy Color Dreamcast PlayStation Network
Genre(s)	Tactical shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player, Multiplayer

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six is a tactical shooter computer game and the first in the Rainbow Six series. It was developed and published by Red Storm Entertainment for the PC in 1998. It was later ported to Mac OS, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Dreamcast and Game Boy Color. An expansion pack, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Mission Pack: Eagle Watch, was released on January 31, 1999. The PC version is available for purchase on GOG.com, while the PlayStation version is now available for download from the PlayStation Store.

Gameplay

Rainbow Six is a tactical shooter, which focuses more on stealth and tactics than on sheer firepower, exploring the lethality of a single bullet. To add to the realism, all in-game characters, terrorists, hostages and Rainbow operatives, can be wounded or dispatched in just fractions of a second with only one or two bullets. Tools such as thicker body armor, automatic rifles, and grenades have little value before the player grows accustomed to the gameplay.

Before each mission is a planning stage, during which the player is given a briefing, and then chooses the operatives to be involved in the mission, their weapons, equipment and uniform/camouflage. In earlier games, the player pre-established orders and waypoints during this step. The planning stage determined elements such as the path the AI-controlled squads would follow during the mission, as well as where they will deploy devices such as flashbangs or door breaching charges.

Successful missions often last just minutes, but may require dozens of repetitions and planning changes (many more for beginners). During gameplay, the player controls only one team member directly, and can see stats for that member and all units on the Heads-Up Display. Teams not under player control follow the orders given to them in the planning stage. The player can take control of any living operative at will, making them the leader.

The game forms a campaign that is a series of scenarios, with the plot being advanced in the mission briefing of each scenario. Any casualties that occur during a mission are permanent, so the deceased cannot be used in future missions. Consequently, many players replay missions that are technically successful merely to reduce the number of casualties.

Online multiplayer gaming was popular on the Mplayer.com and Zone.com services and for a time featured a thriving competitive clan based community with numerous independent ladder style leagues.

Unlike the other versions, the PlayStation version actually showed the gun being held in the player's hands.

Plot

Rainbow Six is set in the year 1999. RAINBOW is a newly created multinational counter-terrorism unit, composed of elite soldiers from NATO countries, formed to address the growing problem of international terrorism. The organization's director is John Clark, and the team leader is Ding Chavez. The term "Rainbow Six" refers to the director of the organization, John Clark.

Soon after its inauguration, RAINBOW finds itself responding to a series of seemingly unrelated terrorist attacks by the Phoenix Group, a radical eco-terrorist organization. Throughout its investigation, RAINBOW is assisted and advised by John Brightling, chairman of the powerful biotechnology corporation Horizon Inc.

However, RAINBOW eventually learns that the Phoenix Group is actually a front for Horizon Inc itself. Brightling's company is developing a highly contagious strain of the Ebola virus, called "Shiva", with the ability to kill every human being on the planet. In order to protect "mother nature", John Brightling is planning to kill most of the human race, sparing only Brightling's chosen few, who will re-emerge and rebuild the planet into a scientific and environmentally-friendly utopia. To achieve this goal, he has used the scattered terrorist attacks to create fear of terrorism, which he then exploited in order to get a security contract for his own private security firm at the Olympic Games. Brightling's plan is for his "security personnel" to unleash the virus at the games, spreading it to all the countries of the world.

RAINBOW succeeds in preventing the release of the virus at the Olympics, and Brightling and his collaborators retreat to their Horizon Ark facility in the Brazilian jungle, from which they had originally planned to weather out the global holocaust. RAINBOW infiltrates the facility, killing all of Brightling's collaborators and capturing Brightling himself.

Development

Red Storm Entertainment (founded by author Tom Clancy) had originally planned to do a special operations game featuring first-person action, and a team of operators rescuing hostages and taking out terrorists. Their first concept was modeled after the FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Later they decided to make the concept more international, as HRT would only operate in the United States, and renamed it "Black Ops" and incorporated operators from all over the world. It was then they found that Clancy was writing a book about terrorism and a special team to combat it, so they rewrote some of the missions to fit within the book plot and Clancy shared his research with the game development team. The book was Rainbow Six so the game was renamed Rainbow Six. However, by the time they finished the game, the book was not yet finished. Thus, the plot of the game does not completely match the plot of the book.

Release

Eagle Watch

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Mission Pack: Eagle Watch was released on January 31, 1999 as an expansion pack to the original game. It adds five new missions, four new operatives, three new weapons and new multiplayer modes. The expansion was packaged with the original game as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Gold Pack Edition in 1999.

Reception

Reception

Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings (PC) 81.81% (N64) 73.71% (DC) 72.28% (GBC) 53.83% (PS) 48.07% Metacritic (PC) 85/100 Review scores Publication Score AllGame (Mac & N64) (PS & GBC) EGM (N64) 7.62/10 (DC) 7.33/10 (PS) 3.8/10 Game Informer (N64) 8/10 (PS) 6.75/10 GamePro (PS) Game Revolution A− GameSpot (DC) 8.1/10 (PC) 8/10 (GBC) 7.4/10 (N64) 7.1/10 (PS) 3.7/10 GameSpy 3.5/10 IGN (PC) 9.4/10 (N64) 8.5/10 (DC) 8/10 (GBC) 5/10 (PS) 3.8/10 Nintendo Power (N64) 7.9/10 (GBC) 6.9/10 OPM (US) PC Gamer (US) 93% The Cincinnati Enquirer

Rainbow Six was met with mostly positive reviews on PC. However, the console versions received average to negative response upon release. GameRankings gave it a score of 81.81% for the PC version; 73.71% for the Nintendo 64 version; 72.28% for the Dreamcast version; 53.83% for the Game Boy Color version; and 48.07% for the PlayStation version. Metacritic gave only the PC version a score of 85 out of 100.

GameSpot described the PC version as "actually a pretty good game, albeit very hard and extremely frustrating", and its "audio cues, background sounds, and other various noises are also represented very well; the immersive feeling of Rainbow Six is perhaps one of the best seen in a game." In 2001-2002, Rainbow Six and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear together sold 450,000 copies. In 1998, CNN working in partnership with Games.Net named Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six as one of the "Top 25 game downloads of 1998".

.

External links

• Rainbow Six official website
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six at MobyGames
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (Dreamcast) at MobyGames
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (Game Boy Color) at MobyGames