The Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® 3 games are known as tacticalshooters. The genre itself should be hint enough that blind running and gunning will merit little reward. You need to think before you shoot, lest you be shot by the guy who thought. You dig? Luckily, common sense and awareness will provide you with much of the strategy you'll need, but the following basic—and advanced—pointers will give you an extra edge.
Team communication.
There Ain’t No Hop This is less a pointer than a general observation, but many have questioned the lack of a jump button in realistic shooters. Gamers are so used to jumping as an instantaneous defense mechanism that single-player and multiplayer first-person shooters often degenerate into ridiculous hop-a-thons, as people leap about to avoid gunfire. Imagine sitting in a hot fire zone, crouched behind some flimsy cover and laden with 50 pounds of gear; the gunfire starts heading your way, and you’re spotted. What do you do? Expose yourself and get your kangaroo on. It not only looks ridiculous, but it also just doesn’t make sense.
Just peeking.
The Lean Now, this is a bit more pragmatic, I’ve got to say. Good cover is all the defense you’ll ever need in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six® 3 Black Arrow™, but operating in a perpetual state of hiding does not make a good goal-oriented soldier. Try this four-step strategy.
1.Locate a good spot for cover. If possible, try to find protection for both your flank and your front. 2.Run to said cover and crouch down. The lower you are, the less of you there is to shoot. 3.Lean out (press right or left on the directional pad) and check your surroundings. 4.Wait till the coast is clear—or clear the coast with a little gunfire from your secure position—and then find the next bit of cover to move to.
This strategy is equally effective in both single-player and multiplayer, so use it often.
The Three-Round Burst Again, we butt heads with the unrealistic (typically sci-fi) shooters of the past. Before, in many games, you could rattle off clip after clip in auto-fire glory and rarely worry about a lack of accuracy as a result. The real world—and subsequently Rainbow Six 3 Black Arrow—doesn’t work that way. There’s a little thing called recoil. The more you shoot, the more your gun vibrates, kicks into your shoulder, and generally flies about outside the target zone. But, there’s an easy remedy. Don’t do it! Stick with controlled three- to five-round bursts, which are far more effective.
Night Vision: Use it often.
Areas of Responsibility In multiplayer team matches, it’s essential that you and your teammates have specific assigned tasks. For example, in Total Conquest, your team is required to reach and maintain control of three satellite uplinks. Let’s say you have seven men on your team. A quick and dirty strategy would be to assign two people to each of the three objectives and have the seventh operate as a rover, assisting where necessary.
The Buck Stops Here There’s a reason why the single-player campaign casts you in the roll of team leader Ding Chavez. Effective combat quickly breaks down if there is a lack of order in the ranks. The same applies online. It may hurt your pride a bit to be taking orders from someone, but you’ll find victory will come more often than not if one player is placed in the “team leader” role.
The Right Stuff There’s a reason the game lets you pick and choose your armament before each round or mission. Different guns and equipment work for different circumstances. Choose carefully and choose what fits your style. If you like close combat, maybe the street howitzer (the shotgun) is right for you. If you’re going into a close-quartered map or level, perhaps the grenade launcher isn’t the best idea. You get the point. Think about your style and environment. Then, choose accordingly.
Rainbow Six 3 Black Arrow requires an equal blend of twitch shooting and scratch-your-chin strategy. Perhaps the biggest obstacle is understanding that it's not a fantasy-sci-fi-action shooter. Black Arrow is grounded in reality, and therefore you must take the fast pace and the importance of smart strategy into account.
