One of my fondest gaming-related memories is of playing the original Rainbow Six. It was exhilarating, intense, and so damn fun that I could barely stand it. I can't even count the number of times that it kept me awake until the wee hours of the morning as I desperately fought my way through wave after wave of crazed terrorists. Sadly, the only reason Rainbow Six: Lockdown, the fourth installment in the series, kept me awake late into the night was my befuddlement over how such an innovative and classic game series could have gone so horribly, horribly wrong.

The single player campaign is cast across 16 missions and tells a rather uninspired story of terrorists who have stolen a bio-weapon called Legion. You play as Ding Chavez (you can no longer move between the members of your team), and you lead three other ass-kickers into each mission. It's all extremely generic and forgettable.


As has always been the case with the R6 series, before each mission you receive a mission briefing and are given the ability to outfit your squad with specific weapons and equipment. Unfortunately, the briefings are no longer as detailed as they once were, and you can no longer formulate a plan of attack using waypoints and the like. (Undoubtedly, those omissions are the result of the game originally being designed to play on the Xbox.) Instead, you're simply shown a map (that cannot be accessed once you're in the game) and then thrown into the mix. You can issue basic orders to your squad, like telling them to hold a position, attack, or move to a certain location, but none of those commands come close to replicating the brilliant tactical aspects of the previous games in the series.

Subsequently, Lockdown doesn't feel at all like a Rainbow Six game. It's just another generic "special forces versus terrorists" shooter, a concept that has been done to death over the past few years. Any tension that was once present in this franchise has been stripped away.

That said, the level design in Lockdown is fairly decent. Instead of each mission consisting of a lone level, they are usually spread across multiple levels, which adds some variety. For example, during the course of one mission you may fight through a terrorist camp and a cave system. It's a nice touch, but one that is soiled by lazy enemy placement and some of the worst AI ever seen in an action game.


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