Rainbow Six by Zack Stern If you want to be a bad-ass in the military, you have to work for years and train for months to be a SEAL. But if you want to open a can of digital whoop-ass you just have to wait a few more weeks for Rainbow Six. Tom Clancy built Red Storm Entertainment with Rainbow Six in mind. He was a lead designer of the game, drawing from his experience writing best selling, espionage riddled books. The PC game has done well enough to spawn an expansion pack, Eagle Watch, and inspire a new Rainbow Six-type game in development. And now, with the help of MacSoft, the RAINBOW team is poised to make its debut on the Mac. Call in Rainbow RAINBOW is the top international anti-terrorist force. It is made up of only the brightest and best that each country has to offer. RAINBOW is so secret, that only the top few members of each government know of its existence. RAINBOW is so covert that it is an acronym that even we could not decipher. This game is realistic. If a terrorist shoots you, you will die. There are no power-ups and no telefrags. Clancy’s team has created a seemingly accurate simulation of an elite fighting force. The graphics are sufficient. They are somewhat dated by today’s standards, but they don’t detract from gameplay. Textures are simple and they repeat, and little is visually impressive. Also of note, this is one of the first games that renders only in Open GL. Although it is still beta, Rainbow Six ran fine with Apple’s Open GL drivers, and even worked reasonably well with the MESA drivers. While the graphics are only adequate, the creativity in level design is captivating. The situations that you will be thrust into include rescuing hostages in an embassy and a biotechnology facility in the Congo. MacSoft has bundled the Eagle Watch expansion with this game, and those levels are even more exciting. They include an oilrig, a space shuttle launch site, and Big Ben. The training missions help teach you the skills you'll need. In the first few, you will learn simple things like changing magazines and picking locks. Both of these have a progress bar that is superimposed over the action window. These bars move at a variable rate depending on the inherent skill of a character. The training progresses to hostage rescue with computer-controlled teammates. On these missions, it becomes necessary to throw a flashbang into a room before entering so that you have a tactical advantage over the terrorists. After these assignments, you advance to the real missions. The Interface Rainbow Six is almost as detailed as the current crop of flight simulators. It takes seven screens of configuration to start each mission. The order is Briefing, Intel, Roster Selection, Kit Selection, Team Assignment, Planning, and Execute. The Briefing screen gives an overview of the current mission. Your Commander and other advisors inform you of the situation through well produced voice acting. The Intel screen throws as much information at you as you can handle. It includes dossier files on all of the important people involved in conflict. These files are detailed down to educations. Intelligence on the organizations involved is also provided. This includes strengths and weaknesses of the terrorist groups that can prove invaluable in combat. The "newswire" service displays a recap of your last mission, and a "miscellaneous" area provides extra history and background. The Roster Selection screen lets you choose the members of your team based on evaluations of ten of their skills. You build your crew after considering things like aggression, leadership, teamwork ability, and demolitions ability. Certain characters are more suited to diffusing bombs, picking locks, or even blowing up doors. Wise decisions pay off in the field. You outfit your team in the Kit Selection screen. Each person is capable of carrying up to four items including two guns. These firearms are, like everything else in the game, modeled from reality. Primary weapons include a full range of assault rifles, submachine guns, and a Benelli Tactical 12-Guage. The secondary weapons span a range of handguns. Things like flashbangs, demolitions kits, fragmentation grenades, or lockpick kits can fill the other two slots. On top of all of these options, you have to choose the kind of armor that each member will wear: from light gear to demolitions-grade protection. The Team Assignment options are refreshingly brief. You simply choose which character will be on each of up to four teams. Enjoy this concise page, because the next one requires not just planning, but also study. The Planning screen lets you draw routes to complete your mission objectives. Each team has its own path, and the map ends up looking like trails, Billy, from "The Family Circus" traveled. More information about specific areas is provided including areas that may prove to be deathtraps, where the hostages may be held, and known locations of certain terrorists. Planning the routes gets even more complicated when you have several floors to search. Memorize this map; it is imperative to know where all the teams are at a given time. The Execute screen lets you choose which character you will take. To play as the leader of any team, you click on that team. Ready to Play That’s it! Now you’re ready to play. Thankfully, you also have the opportunity use a preset plan that sets all of these selection screens. You can still modify these options, if you wish. The gameplay looks similar to a first person shooter, but there are more displays and readouts. With these gauges, you can keep tabs on your teams and personnel, and counters keep track of your magazines and rounds left. There is even a corner map that shows the route to follow. You didn’t memorize it, did you? Neither did we. Even though it looks similar to FPS-type games, the action in Rainbow Six is unique. You lead a coordinated attack on the enemy and, depending on the circumstances, rescue hostages and diffuse bombs. The stakes are higher than in an FPS because you are traveling in groups where each person has a duty, and terrorists usually only need to hit you once to kill you. There is also more tension because direct conflicts are spread out. In FPS games, dodging projectiles is more important than discerning the location of an enemy. In Rainbow Six, covertly locating and stalking enemies is paramount. While engaged in a level, you communicate with your AI teammates. Everyone automatically announces their situation. If they defeat a terrorist, they call it out. If the strategy is falling apart, you’ll hear many shouts of "man down," and "I need backup, now!" Back to the planning room. You also have to control the progression of your teammates. Teams announce when they reach certain points and require instruction from you to continue. Certain buttons send radio commands like, "Alpha, go!" And if that isn’t enough control over your people, you can cycle through team leaders and play their characters. The multiplayer capabilities of Rainbow Six add another element to the game. There are various adversarial options including direct conflicts, or trying to assassinate a person the opposing players guard. The most exciting multiplayer aspect is the cooperative play. You run the same missions as the single player game, except your teammates can be humans. This works through IP networking, including the internet. Rainbow Six is sure to find a niche in the Mac gaming crowd. It will be the only game of its type available on the Macintosh, and it will succeed with its delicate balance of planning and execution. We are eagerly awaiting its public release. Until then, our local video store’s copy of Delta Force is perpetually checked out.