Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Covert Ops Essentials

I was really looking forward to this game.

I missed the boat with the original Rainbow Six (I had a lot of work to do, so back off. Besides, I had to wash my hair.), but was determined to jump on the Rogue Spear bandwagon. After picking it up and playing a few training sessions, I felt that my history with first-person shooters and debilitating obsession with Starsiege: Tribes had prepared me for some of the much lauded multiplayer gaming provided by Tom Clancy's breakthrough series.

I was tragically, hideously wrong.

Online Rainbow Six is an entirely different world, requiring far more dedication and skill than most normal humans are able to provide (unless you live on campus, have 'net access and do nothing else, which is exactly what these guys were doing, I swear). After many failed attempts (made even more embarrassing by the fact that my teammates were pointedly aware they were carrying my useless butt through the matches), I eventually had to accept that I was not going to be able to keep up with my broadband compatriots and satisfy my Tribes addiction. A choice had to be made, and after many agonizing comparisons, time investment ratios and teammate consultations, Rogue Spear was relegated to that special spot on my shelf next to SimCity 3000 and Alpha Centauri. Each of us has this shelf of great games that we fully intend to return to and conquer, but never seem to be able to stop playing Icewind Dale or Diablo 2 long enough.

Enter: Covert Ops Essentials. I was greatly heartened by the previews and hype that made it quite clear this edition was going to educate you in the ways of true counter-terrorism. I would finally be able to hold my own with the armchair Special Forces experts whose projectile weapons I consistently found myself on the wrong end of.

Once again, I was to be proven disastrously wrong.

Covert Ops does not train you to be a proficient online gamer. Nor does it provide you with more extensive practice than previous games to hone your skills in. Rather, they unload copious amounts of tactical, psychological, and historical information you supposedly would encounter when trying to become a leader of a counter-terrorist team. Video interviews, historical data and accurate weapon and ballistic information are all crammed in to satisfy the insatiable thirst of the true hardcore R6 fan. Once you have familiarized yourself with these lengthy tomes of knowledge, you can then attempt to pass a series of tests, the passing of which earns you increasingly impressive ribbons and medals. (They even tell you where you would put these rewards if you owned a uniform. A nice touch.)

I found three faults with this part of the game.

First, there are four tests per subject, three five-question quizzes, and one ten-question exam. Unfortunately, they are always the same, which means you can pass them all simply through trial and error. (And I might add that I passed quite a few on the first try without any prior studying. I truly hope that our operatives are challenged more effectively before being handed a weapon.)

Second, some of the information (particularly in the psychology section) is essentially propaganda. They ask you for a general psych evaluation of terrorists, as well as their motivations. The choices that the game claims are the correct answers are not only biased and generalized, they're often outright bigotry. The developers also seem desperate to dispel the 'Hollywood portrayal' of Covert Ops operatives. Whether this is out of their own desire to faithfully convey the attitudes and behaviors of these elite special forces, or they were threatened with their lives by said individuals to give a particular version of the truth, is immaterial. The fact is, I have no way of knowing the actual truth, but many of the ideas presented feel decidedly 'off', if I can be so ambiguous.

Third, you take the tests as one of the available operatives from the campaign, but I saw no increase in their skills. After learning all of that information, I was hoping that there would be more of a benefit than being able to say I know what vehicle I should use for a HALO insertion.

And while the first disc is packed like carbon atoms in a diamond, the second disc is almost gaseous by comparison. Now, I'll come clean here and say I was unable to play through every last option in the game. However, this is because the game is so damn hard. Even on the recruit setting, there were some serious difficulties encountered, and don't even get me started on the hardest setting. Have you ever seen the scorpion cages in the pet store? Well try putting your hand in one and resisting the urge to remove it. Playing Covert Ops is actually harder.

Moving right along, I can say that many longtime R6 fans will be a bit disappointed with this outing. There are only three campaign maps, six training maps, and no additional toys beyond what was available in Rogue Spear. On the up side, you are able to play all of the campaign maps and a selection of training maps in each of the single-session games. These are scenarios like Lone Wolf, where you try to reach an extraction point alone, or Terrorist Hunt, where you stalk terrorists by yourself, with no other objectives. The significant factor here is that you can have up to 50 terrorists on the map. That's a lot of killin'. There is also the Defend scenario, where you try to prevent multiple waves of ugly men with guns from pressing a button in your base, and the game I'm most partial to, Recon. In Recon, you have to plant a surveillance device somewhere without being detected. Whether my addiction to this is due to my own fear of confrontation or that I always wanted to be a ninja is something only my therapist knows for sure.

If you've never played a Rainbow Six campaign, be forewarned: the action is brief, intense and a very small part of each mission. These titles have traditionally required many hours of planning before diving into a few minutes worth of conflict. And this time around, the mission planning is just as, if not more, intense. In fact, with all the focus on 'real' covert ops training, you feel like a chump if you don't try to come up with the best mission plan possible. This is a good thing I believe, since you feel more inclined to play the game to its full potential. But as always, it's a bit difficult restraining your glory-hound instincts. You may very well feel let down when you play a mission where the other teams get all the action and you never fire a shot, but that's probably the best proof that you did an excellent job planning the mission.

However, there are still some problems. Nothing is more frustrating than stalking a tango (this is the covert op term for an enemy...hey, I'm no expert, so I have to assume some of you reading this aren't either) and suddenly getting shot in the face, only to see the other members of your unit innocently stroll into the same hail of bullets. You watch them drop like rocks as you desperately pound the keyboard in an attempt to speed up the painfully slow death animation and allow you to switch to another operative. Snipers are also apparently still stuck in the cross-legged stance, preventing you from moving when crouched and holding a sniper rifle. Many problems would be solved if the sniper could inch forward or to the side when in position.

These are minor quibbles however, and you soon learn to set up your attack plan to compensate for the worst of these. Of course, you could avoid them entirely by playing Covert Ops Essentials on the net. Stupid mistakes would still happen, but at least there's someone to yell at.

As for the multiplayer, it's as difficult as ever, and probably worse, since the hardcore Rainbow Six gamers have only gotten better. Becoming proficient is worth the effort though, since the multiple styles of play make the nail-biting gameplay of Unreal Tournament and even Tribes (my personal fave, if you couldn't tell) look like a pleasant stroll through Central Park. The standard 'kill everyone else', 'kill the other team', and 'protect your general' are all available, but the double stronghold (each team tries to get a member into the other team's base and stay there for at least 3 seconds) and double bluff (each team races to their own base to disarm a bomb planted there before the other team does the same) have a sort of 'magic' to them.

Nothing though, is quite like teaming up with other people to run through the single-player campaigns. I didn't see this happening on the times I tried to play (though they were admittedly odd hours) but it's a great idea nonetheless. The only down side to playing with other people? You stay dead until the match is over. But some sacrifices have to be made to keep the reality of the game consistent.

So here's the big question: Should you buy this game? If you're a long-time fan of the series, then you probably already own it. However, on the off-chance that you don't, I'd like to suggest you consider that the main draw of this installment is the encyclopedic content of the first disc. The single-player campaign is incredibly short, so getting the full life out of the second disc will require playing many different types of games on the same maps. This type of thing wasn't a big problem back in the days of the Intellivision or even the Nintendo, but in this particular circle of video accelerated hell, I often find the inhabitants often require a bit more diversity. If you feel this isn't a strong deterrent, then by all means, I suggest you pick up Covert Ops, since it will do nothing if not increase your skills.

But what about newcomers? That's a little trickier. Obviously, this is a quality game that I recommend. On the other hand, the learning curve is incredibly steep, and multiplayer gaming is often more confusing and difficult than fun for beginners. You can very quickly adapt if you're willing to accept that Covert Ops is rarely about you, and the opportunities to be the top dog are few and far between. And don't think you'll run through the training missions and be even moderately prepared. In fact, these missions give you a false sense of accomplishment and do very little to bring you up to speed with the current online community.

In short, no pain no gain. And there's a lot of pain, but a comparable amount of gain, particularly if you want to know what Anti-terrorism is really about.

Installation: Easy Not a single problem. However, the game doesn't allow other programs to be running, and also doesn't support the alt-tab command to exit the game and check your mail.

Gameplay: 9 Any more realistic, and flak jackets would be in the box. Intense, high-pressure gaming at its best.

Graphics: 7.5 Nothing special, but it looks good enough. The mission planning screen is pleasant to look at, and the lighting is well done if you have the power to support it.

Sound: 8 I had a friend over to check this game out, since he is a former Airborne Ranger. He thought the weapon effects were realistic, though felt that they didn't sound quite right. Something about the bolt sliding on the fully automatics. He did like the minimal chatter of your team mates and found the startled yells amusing.

Difficulty: 10 If it gets harder than this, they won't be called 'games' anymore.

Concept: 8 We've seen it before, but the game is still fresh. The test disc is an interesting feature, even if the rewards are minimal.

Overall: 9 This is one hell of a game. The multiplayer is amazing, and the single-player can be very rewarding if you're willing to go the extra mile, and you have to be willing to spend a lot of time perfecting your skills. If you want tons of frags and high-speed mayhem, you'll need to look elsewhere.