Month to month, it can get difficult choosing games to review. Every few
months an obvious candidate comes along--I'm sure the new Diablo game will find a
place in this space when it comes out.
But there is not a raging new game that has the market raving, and believe it
or not, there are times of the year when the gaming industry is downright
sluggish. That's when you need to take a chance on something new.
One of my tricks in selecting games is to go to the local software store
(preferably a large retail store) and observe the gaming customers. I know it
must seem odd, watching people skulk through the aisles of gaming software, but
you would be surprised at what you hear.
I have seen everything from kids arguing with each other about games to an
indecisive adult picking up and setting down titles two dozen times. But during
my last visit, I heard a young boy trying to sell his dad on a game. He argued
passionately about how cool the game was.
Well, I don't know if he was successful, but I figured that if the boy was so
insistent on getting that game, I would have to check it out.
The game
the boy was coveting was Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rouge Spear, made by Red Storm. Rouge Spear is actually the sequel
to Rainbow Six, an award-winning, first-person combat strategy game. Tom Clancy,
the author of several best-selling cloak-and-dagger books, helped develop the
direction of the game, and it retains a Clancy-like flavor.
The premise of the game is somewhat simple: You run a top-secret
antiterrorist organization that is charged with keeping peace. The game is broken
up into missions. At the beginning of each mission, you are briefed on the
crisis.
You then get to choose a cast of up to eight characters to take on the
mission. Each character has attributes that you may or may not need. You then arm
and equip your characters and divide them into teams. The last step is to develop
an assault plan, which constitutes half the battle. If you start with a lousy
plan, your causalities will be heavy.
One mission was memorable, though typical in its level of excitement. It
involved a hostage crisis aboard an airliner. The airliner was on the airport
runway, and the terrorists were threatening to begin executing hostages if their
demands were not met. The player was asked to lead a team of eight assault
specialists to foil the terrorists. Two of the six were snipers who sought
shelter in some nearby rooftop for a clear shot. The others had to run to the
belly of the plane under the cover of a gasoline truck. Once aboard, the player
had to sweep the plane quickly before any terrorists got wise to the assault.
Rouge Spear carries a 13+ rating because it has action sequences that can get
pretty violent. The violence is not graphic, but it is suggestive.
The game also requires a fairly high-powered PC to render its graphics. But
after playing Rouge Spear, I can see why the boy in the software store wanted the
game so much. Even if his dad was not swayed, the boy convinced me.
