Release Date: August 21, 1998
Developer: Red Storm Entertainment, Inc.
Publisher: Red Storm Entertainment, Inc.
This past weekend, I was bombarded by Tom Clancy in effigy. My son gifted me a key to the closed beta for Ghost Recon Wildlands. Around the same time, I found out that Ubisoft set Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege, a game I do not yet own but enjoy, to be free to play for the weekend. For three days, it was a Clancy-fest.
(I have a dual impressions article with Punisher for Ghost Recon Wildlands coming up soon. Spoiler alert: I think it’s The Division: Bolivia with bugs expected from a beta. More to follow in the impressions article.)
For the record, I am a big fan of Tom Clancy. Most of my favorite books of his occupy the space that is known as the “Ryanverse”, the tales which involve unwitting CIA hero-turned-president Jack Ryan. My favorite Clancy book, however, is Red Storm Rising, a separate book which examines a war involving NATO on one side and the former Soviet Union on the other. The book’s main focus, at least for me, is a modern re-enactment of the Battle of the North Atlantic. Story-wise, it’s a bit hokey. But Clancy’s attention to detail in military affairs is ever present, and every tactical engagement in the book is mesmerizing to me.
Why am I bringing Clancy and Red Storm Rising up? Well, he’s the whole reason Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon are even game series, and his love for details in military engagements fueled his gaming endeavors.
Back in the 90s, Clancy yearned to venture past his novels and into video games. To that effect, he founded Red Storm Entertainment in 1996 with friend and former submarine commander Doug Littlejohns. They began their venture with two titles loved by only pure strategy game wonks: Tom Clancy’s Politika and Dominant Species. However, it was with his take on his enviro-terrorist novel, Rainbow Six, where Red Storm Entertainment really took off.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six debuted on the PC in August of 1998. The game, a mix of FPS and strategy, was the antithesis of the FPS’s of the day. Where games in the Doom, Quake, and Unreal series focused on balls-to-the-wall, consequence-free combat, Rainbow Six grounded itself in brutal realism. The amount of rounds a player can absorb in the game is exactly one. No armor bonus, no respawn, no second chance. It was one shot and done.
Rainbow Six places the player in the role as the commander of Team Rainbow, a multi-national outfit of counter-terrorist operatives. In his book, Rainbow Six, the team’s organizational director, is John Clark. In the game, you are the team’s leader, Domingo “Ding” Chavez. The game’s campaign places you in a series of counter-terrorist operations where the goal is to rescue hostages and eliminate any hostiles.
Where this game differs from its FPS forebears is in its execution. Rather than just jump in, guns blazing, you begin each mission with a planning phase. The objective site is shown on a tactical map, and you must plan the infiltration of said site. You do so by planning the team’s roster, orders, rules of engagement, entry points, waypoints, loadouts, and fire plans, among many other things. It’s a lot to take in, but it must be done to ensure success. This phase of the game is nirvana to strategy fans like me and can easily take up hours of time on its own.
Once done with planning, it’s time to execute the mission plan. Control is in first-person and carries way more weight than any FPS in its time. Contrary to every instinct cultivated at the time, players must maneuver their avatars with absolute care and patience. Clancy and Littlejohns were nothing if not sticklers for realism, and Rainbow Six stuck to that philosophy. Rushing in without care was certain to end in mission failure.
In this game, one shot kills. There is no regenerative health, no first aid, and no recovery of any sort. You get shot, you die. And if a character dies, he’s dead throughout the entire campaign. No rezzing, no Jesus moments. DEAD! Worse, the terrorists you are pitted against have hair triggers. If they hear a gunshot of any kind, they are killing hostages without remorse. You can go through an entire mission without casualty, but make the wrong noise and the terrorists spray the hostages with gunfire, and you fail anyway.
The name of this game is realism. 100% brutal realism.
Of course, the terrorists fall under the same rules as Team Rainbow does. A well-laid plan allows you to dispatch targets in one shot, without noise. That will allow your squad to reach waypoints without fuss and enter target buildings without notice. Completing a mission without friendly casualties results in the best possible outcome. Lose a team member, and your team is hobbled by one less available operative from then on. This game gives zero shits; someone dies, they’re really dead.
The amount of planning needed and the consequences of failure are extremely draconian. This game easily buries the needle on the “hard as fuck” side of the difficulty gauge. That will turn off Call of Duty-style FPS lovers off immediately. There is little to no recovering from a bad plan or a slow trigger finger. If you are not up to the game’s vicious difficulty, you will fail. But a flawless plan and execution rewards players with more than just a trip to the next level. Beating a mission in Rainbow Six is extremely satisfying. I remember suffering quite a few failures during the campaign. But a successful mission made me feel like I accomplished something massive.
Unfortunately, Rainbow Six is very dated visually. The graphics are very blocky, indicative of the time in which it came to be. But the visuals convey what they need to. You might not see advanced bump-mapping or beautiful textures, but you will see exactly what you need to see in order to complete a mission. Controls are extremely tight, a requirement in a game as unforgiving as this. The audio conveys everything needed as well. There is no muss or fuss here; the game is a no-nonsense military simulation.
Does it still hold up? Yes it does! Although the graphics may offend some, the gameplay is still engaging. Being on point, leading a squad of trained-counter-terrorist operatives into danger, is as exhilarating today as it was back in 1998.
The Rainbow Six franchise would spawn two direct sequels, each better than the one before. The latter two were released under the Ubisoft moniker, as they acquired Red Storm Entertainment in 2000. Ubisoft would release more games under Tom Clancy’s name, including games in the Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell series. Some of those games would rankle Clancy, especially the Splinter Cell games, whose protagonist’s iconic night-vision goggles were seen by Clancy as easy to spot and wholly unrealistic. By 2008, Ubisoft bought out the Clancy name completely, obviating the need for more royalties to Red Storm Entertainment’s namesake. Gone with the name, evidently, was also the realism. Rainbow Six: Vegas was fun, and sold a bunch, but it was not as hard-nosed and realistic as its progenitors.
By the time Tom Clancy died on October 1, 2013, the games that bore his name were about as realistic as Star Wars: Battlefront. It wasn’t until 2015’s Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege that games under the Rainbow name embraced something akin to true realism. The modern tactical FPS embraced some of the elements that the original game pioneered: teamwork, planning, and the consequences of being hit. It also did so in a very competitive environment, where two teams of five can duke it out in multiplayer, something the original game lacked.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six is an unforgiving tactical shooter, but it is a very rewarding one. It was ported to Mac OS, Nintendo Game Boy Color, Nintendo 64, Sony PlayStation, and Sega Dreamcast. Anyone brave enough to tackle the game can find it on GOG.com today. For anyone who loves tactical FPS games, this game is a no-brainer. People more accustomed to the Halo-style shooters that feature regenerative health and recovering from multiple shots need not even try. This game will beat them up, take their lunch money, and Instagram their battered faces to the world.
Good: Excellent tactical gameplay; sharp focus on military tactics
Bad: Vicious difficulty; dated graphics
Final score: 7.5/10
