Amazon.com Review: Red Storm Entertainment and creator Tom Clancy's genre-busting game Rainbow Six combined elements of first-person shooters and tactical strategy games and grabbed numerous game-of-the-year awards. With those credentials, it was virtually inevitable that the gaming community would be graced with a brand new--and much improved--sequel. Rogue Spear, the 1999 follow-up to Red Storm's Rainbow Six follows the old adage that if something isn't significantly flawed, don't attempt repair. Though RainbowSix featured some minor bugs and game-play concerns, Red Storm keeps the proven game play intact, but improves the 3-D engine and implements fan requests, such as increasing sniper support and adding a "peer around walls" key, to create a near-flawless follow-up.
In Rogue Spear,,players once again assume command of an elite counter-terrorist group known as RAINBOW and guide them through a dynamic campaign filled with nerve-wracking missions, such as rescuing hostages from a museum and infiltrating a hijacked airliner. Like its predecessor, Rogue Spear uses an elaborate premission planning screen to assign routes and duties to each team member. During the mission, the intensity level and graphical splendor rise exponentially. Rogue Spear eschews typical first-person shooter elements like health packs and armor power-ups; the real-world weapons ensure that one whizzing bullet could be the last thing you see. Tense, strategic missions, various multiplayer options, and a mission editor create one of the most engrossing game experiences around. --Doug Radcliffe
Amazon.com Product Description: Six is back--and tougher than ever. Due to the team's fantastic success with defusing major terrorist incidents, the international community has come to depend on RAINBOW as the main force secretly protecting citizens worldwide. Thus, the story continues in Rogue Spear, with the team's initial missions being business as usual: a hostage situation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and an airplane hijacking. However, the team soon discovers that these crisis situations are actually related to the nefarious plots of not one, but two antagonists: the Russian Mafia and a Middle Eastern terrorist organization--groups who have, until now, been able to escape the jaws of international justice. Through a series of increasingly difficult missions, RAINBOW uncovers the terrorists' deadly master plan, just in the nick of time--to save the world again. Players have new weapons at their disposal as well as sniper specialists to properly take out deadly foes from afar, and with more than four hundred new motion capture moves, terrorists and hostages react even more realistically to you and your team. The frozen breaths of team members can be seen puffing from their mouths in snowy conditions while footprints are left behind. Guide your team with a joystick, add more terrorists with the mission editor, and send your friends a copy of your greatest attack with the cinematic replay feature. All of this and more will make Rogue Spear the greatest action/strategy game you've ever played. Just remember, if you fail, the game isn't over--the world is.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Awsome
This game is a hardcore, blood-filled amazing action game. You get to shoot people too!! Ooga Booga Booga
Rating: - 100 Percent Challenge
This game has been one of the best buys of my life! Even if you are so talented that you beat the game on the hardest settiing, Urban Operations comes with it and thats even harder!! My friend down the street owns the game and we play eachother online, sometimes on a team and others opposing.
Rating: - Excellent Distraction!!!
I think this is the most entertaining game for a computer that I have ever played. After the first game I played, I was hooked! I just won Rainbow Six and will now take on Rogue Spear. Just buy it!
Rating: - Awesome but...
Rogue Spear on the Mac is for the most part awesome but...what hurts it is the feeble online multiplayer support. Graphics are good and game play is fun and intense (especially when you know you have three snipers drawing a bead on you). However, to play others online you're limited to GameRanger that finds online games for Macs (unless u can get IP#s to play on) where you can find all of 8-10 people serving games. Ugh. The toughest part of the game is trying to get in on an online game. If you do succeed, it is fun. Nothing beats running around in immense maps with a small band of counter terrorists knowing your enemy could be just around the corner. Fun missions (run through bunkers, a hotel, a 747, city streets, winter chalet, subway etc.,) and lots of diversity and strategy. But again...not many people serving up mac games. This is however, probably the closest we'll get to Counter Strike or Half-Life on the Mac, as those companies don't have any plans for a Mac port. Still a good buy. Highly recommend.
Rating: - Fan-friendly evolution of R6. Now what?
Every few years, the gaming world is shaken by a new arrival that breaks the mold and sets a new standard. The original Rainbow Six (R6) was such a game: a thinking person's, full immersion CQB shooter, with heavy doses of planning and stealth.
How to follow up on that monster hit? Evolution or revolution? RedStorm opted to tweak and probably did the right thing. Rogue Spear is a fan-friendly, incremental improvement on R6. And the fans are loving it for what it is: R6 as it should have been.
Rogue Spear satisfies as both a sequel and a stand-alone game. R6 veterans buy Rogue Spear for "more of the same, but better": new missions, a few more loadout options, dedicated snipers, and fixes to some gripes.
For newcomers, Rogue Spear rivals prequel R6 as the most realistic, brain-intensive shooter on the market. Truth be told, if you like one game, you should buy the other, too; but play them in the order of release, to appreciate Rogue Spear's improvements.
What next? RedStorm has a real money-making franchise on its hands, and on one level, they'd be fools to mess with it. They can doubtless keep cranking out new missions, maps, and tweaks once every year. Not a bad prospect, but not exactly earth-shaking, either.
On the other hand, one can imagine creative expansions that *would* make the Rainbow series more exciting and challenging. The ability to change plans on the fly, during mission execution. Parachute or helicopter insertions. Rock climbing and rappelling. Water-based missions (SEAL/SBS). Fighting against conventional military units. Calling in friendly conventional military units or air strikes for support. Observing the game through the terrorists' eyes. Enemies who communicate with each other by radio -- making them harder to surprise. Traitors. Hand to hand combat. Knife fighting. Picking up weapons from fallen enemies. Ambushes, booby traps, and claymores. PDA communications during pure stealth missions, as in Traitors Gate. Spying missions, with eavesdropping gadgets and dialogue. Civilian garb. Car chases and shootouts. Desert missions. Unexpected changes in orders in the middle of a mission. Contextual, optional AI advice during the planning phase. Detailed performance critiques from Clark after each mission.
- Awsome
- Awesome but...
