Rainbow Six is loosely based on Clancy's novel about an anti-terrorist team that is not directly controlled by one country, but moves to where they are needed around the globe. The game opens up with a short video showing explaining the reason for Rainbow's creation. The most interesting element of this movie is that after watching what seems like real world footage of military forces in action you realize that it is really an assortment of captures from the game itself, foreshadowing the stunning realism in character movement in the scenarios to come.

The story in Rainbow Six is one that the player can choose to ignore if they wish since the plot is revealed mostly through an assortment of pre-level reports, character profiles, and news briefs. This seems like a good choice for a game that is trying not to offend the action gamer by using long between level movies.  During the planning stages of each mission you take on the role of John Clark, Rainbow Six's commander. The story is well thought out, but will probably seem a bit too unimportant to gamers looking for a long Clancy epic.

Players should probably begin by going through the training levels to help acquaint  themselves with the assortment of commands, weapons, and actions that they will be required to know in the later scenarios.   Learning the assortment of team commands and communications are vital.  The game also has an assortment of primary and secondary weapons to choose from, as well as a number of choices for back-up ammunition, grenades, flash bangs, and other technical equipment. 

The game itself begins with a simple hostage rescue from a terrorist held consolate. The first phase of the missions in Rainbow Six is planning. Rainbow gives the player complete freedom on how a team should move into a location. You decided who is in what team, what equipment each team member has, specific places for the different teams to pause, and even how fast they should move through a given area. The interface can be a bit confusing at first, but becomes very easy once the basic controls are understood and you learn how to coordinate the different group's efforts.

The graphic engine of Rainbow Six is definitely one of the most versitile engines I have ever seen used in a game. It surprised me how well it could handle such diverse locations with ease.  Some of the locations that the levels take place include a in-door theme park ride, a drug dealer's villa in Mexico, an oil rig, and a electric generating dam.  All of these levels look so good that it appears that the engine was designed just for that specific level.

The sound in Rainbow Six is pretty bland for an action game, but still realistic. The levels themselves don't have background music or grandiose sound effects. You can hear the shuffling of feet as your team moves down a hallway, or gunfire in the distance from another team clearing a room, but there's still a hollow, unrealistic feeling to it.

Control in Rainbow Six is where the game gets a bit buggy, and it's not from trouble controling your own character or planning the levels. The computer controlled team members just seem to be a bit lacking in the reasoning skills department.  It is frustrating when two team members get trapped at the base of a flight of stairs because they both want to go up, but can't fit, or when team members stand in a group and get picked off by terrorists one by one without even turning in the shooter's direction. Even with the ultra-realistic character movement, this can really frustrate you when you have a perfect plan that your own team screws up.

In the end, I do have to admit that Rainbow Six does have some flaws, but its good mix of action and strategy still provides more fun than frustration. This is especially true due to the game's extreme amount of freedom and control over how you can approach each level.   The AI in the game is still not perfect, but with a good graphics engine, a lot of realism, some uncanny character movement, and a Clancy storyline holding it all together, Rainbow Six is still one of the better action/strategy games out there.

System Requirements: Pentium 166 (200 w/ No 3D Accelerator), MMX Recommended, 16 MB RAM minimum (32 preferred), Windows 9x, Direct3D compatible accelerator, 4X CD-ROM drive, and 100 MB of disk space. Supports 3Dfx.

Tested on a: Intel Pentium II 400, 128 MB RAM, 20X CD-ROM, Sound Blaster PCI 128, DirectX 6, ATI XPert@Play AGP, a Microsoft mouse, and Windows 98