‘Rainbow’ rocks, ‘Crimson’ is eye candy
“Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow”
•••• (out of four).
Ubisoft for Xbox, $39.99.
Rating: M (Mature).
Sorry, casual gamers. This “Rainbow Six 3” installment has been built, from the ground up, for the die-hards. And it’s those core fanboy gamers – the nuts who are up until the wee hours of the morning sniping at every Tom, Dick and Jane who peek their head out too far around a corner – that are the target of “Black Arrow.”
Ubisoft looks to cash in again on its Tom Clancy shooter franchise while giving the hefty fan base – the original “Rainbow Six 3” is the most played Xbox Live game of all time – what it really wants: more of the same, only better.
The campaign mode is again a stereotypical paint-by-number tale of intrigue. This time, terrorists, armed to the teeth, have nabbed hostages for political ransom in a wide array of European locales. You lead the Rainbow Six team to save the day, using the Xbox headset to bark out commands to your teammates.
While these story-driven scenarios prove to be solid (and occasionally painstaking slow), they are just the sideshow to the main attraction: online play. Series newcomers will face a steep learning curve, but die-hards will quickly embrace the new enormous online arenas that offer close-quarter and wide-open firefights.
“Black Arrow” has all the intense online modes of its predecessor (deathmatch, terrorist hunt, sharpshooter, etc.), but it also has two new game types: retrieval, a glorified capture-the-flag showdown, and total conquest, where two teams struggle for control of strategically placed satellite uplinks.
It’s also the first game to support clans on Xbox Live, allowing for clan rankings, matchmaking and user-created armbands for your squadmates. Voice and text messaging has been seamlessly integrated into the game’s interface.
But is it worth $40 for what amounts to an expansion pack? Head to head, “Black Arrow” tops its predecessor in every aspect of design, and its tweaked game play makes this new “Rainbow Six 3” the most engaging online first-person shooter on the market. Every Xbox Live gamer ought to give it a look.
– Ryan Huschka, Knight Ridder
“Crimson Tears”
•• (out of four).
Capcom for PlayStation 2, $39.99.
Rating: T (Teen).
“Crimson Tears” is a beautiful action game (running, fighting, shooting) that includes some role-playing-game-like character development along the way.
But sadly, despite the fact that this game is much like a futuristic dungeon-crawler — and no one likes dungeon-crawlers better than I do — I just couldn’t get into the skimpy storyline or repetitive action of “Crimson Tears.”
The graphics are lovely, a sort of 3D cell-shaded look like a cross between a truly cartoon-style game like “Viewtiful Joe” and a fully 3D-animated title like “Jak 3.”
The frame rates were smooth, and I liked the variety of animations for the special moves and abilities your characters learn along the way. The variety of bad guys that you fight in major boss battles was pleasant as well.
Unfortunately, the rest of the game settled into a never-ending series of hallways for me.
Your warriors gain experience and abilities as they fight through the complex, and so do their weapons.
That and the character advancements make “Crimson Tears” a little more interesting, but I found the story line — which mostly appears as cut scenes in between the action — less than enthralling, and the action wasn’t really different enough to hold my attention.
– Heather Newman, Knight Ridder