Its predecessor, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® 3, is reputedly the most popular game on XboxLive™. I have little trouble accepting this as fact, as every time I go online, nearly half the folks on my Friends List are playing it. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six® 3: Black Arrow™ is Ubi Soft Montreal’s follow-up to this phenomenally successful title, and while it is not a true sequel in name (much like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is not Grand Theft Auto 4), this is no mere expansion.
Not only is the offline experience tweaked and tuned to smooth-running perfection, but the award-winning multiplayer gameplay has also received numerous upgrades and additions. Take, for example, the two new game modes online.
Take control of the satellite receivers.
Total Conquest, Team-Based Nirvana This mode, which bears remarkable similarity to the Onslaught mode in the PC game Unreal Tournament 2004 (this is a good thing, trust me), asks you to gain control of several different satellite uplinks that are spread throughout the map. When your team controls all the satellite uplinks, they begin uploading information. Your team wins when the uplink is finished. You can imagine the importance of strategy as you determine who will go after which uplink and how, while keeping tabs on your enemies and their activities.
Capture the Flag, Minus a Flag In Retrieval mode, you’re asked to retrieve a canister containing bad biological mojo. Once you’ve achieved ownership of said canister, you’ll need to deposit it in a drop location. A few sets of matches in this mode have taught me one thing: The Black Arrow developers are mean little bastards. The drop locations for the canisters tend to be on the enemies side of the map, if not right by their spawn. It’s a rare feat indeed to solo the run to the drop location.
This map rules on Sharpshooter.
Create-a-Squad Call them clans, squads, groups, teams, or whatever you want. It all comes down to this: You can finally bring your friends together under the same flag—literally. The new Xbox Live features enabled the developers to offer clan creation, and Rainbow Six 3 Black Arrow is the first game to do it. Gone are the days of manually pulling people together for some group-against-group competition. Black Arrow allows you to do everything you want with your clan, all within the framework of the game. For example, when creating a “squad,” you can assign a:
Team Name: I created Dumbledore’s Army (I’m a Harry Potter freak).
Tag: Your tag is what appears next to your Gamertag while you're playing, thus denoting your clan affiliation. I, naturally enough, assigned DA as my clan’s tag.
Logo: Here’s where things get creative. You can choose from different logo shapes (I snagged a shield shape), colors, patterns, and symbols. (There are dozens of choices.)
Motto: I can only imagine what the XboxLive faithful will put into this category. Try to keep it clean, folks! I hate griefers above all else (meddlesome little … ), so I kept my motto simple: “Death to Griefers!”
Description: You have the length of a couple sentences to work with here. I used it like a classified ad. “Serious gamers wanted. No griefers (see motto), no pansies. Give me the proud, the great, the hardcore!”
URL: This is just cool. Those dedicated enough to create a Web site to honor their clan can list their team’s Web address here.
A little team survival strategy.
Now that you have a squad, what are you going to do with it? Competitions, that’s what! It’s all sugar and spice and everything nice when you see you’re playing a sharpshooter match with some squad-mates, but it’s the squad-on-squad competition (also set-up and arranged in-game) that will get your competitive juices and clan pride flowing.
Don't Mess with a Good Thing If you’re worried about the application of all these new features having an unwanted effect on all your old standbys, don’t. The online co-op missions are still alive and kicking, the Terrorist Hunt is ready to roll, Sharpshooter mode is back for your deathmatch pleasure, and there's always Survival and Team Survival if all that isn't enough for you.
Black Arrow may get tagged with the expansion descriptor, but with expansions this good, you don’t need sequels. With a slew of new maps, new co-op missions, and two brand-new game modes online, Black Arrow is sure to keep the Rainbow Six series at the top of the Xbox Live heap. Hope to see you online!
