MobyGames Classic: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six community stories

Shacknews readers share their own stories revolving around the classic Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, the latest game inducted into the “Moby Games Classic” series on Shacknews.com.

March 11, 2012 2:00 PM3

On Thursday we announced 1998’s tactical shooter Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six was the next addition our growing list of video game classics, presented by MobyGames.com.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six impressed and thrilled gamers with its real-world scenarios and ridiculously robust tactical elements when it first hit the PC gaming scene. Arguably one of the most realistic shooters of the time, players spent hours tackling it’s lengthy single-player campaign which required pre-planning the routes of multiple squads via a top-down tactical blueprint. Executing said plans were a tense affair, where one bullet could mean the difference between life and death–an attribute that also carried-over to the game’s excellent multiplayer components.

Shacknews user creepjack calls Rainbow Six a game that was “Only surpassed by Rogue Spear for me as best multiplayer of all time. Bold statement, but this was an incredible tactical shooter once you got past the shitty graphics.”

Shacknews user Sideways Bob explains how what seemed like an incredibly difficult shooter ended up being a tactical joy, once he took the time to effectively use the game’s strategic pre-planning stage. “I remember trying the first mission and getting a feel for how the game was supposed to work, but then just outright ignored the suggested mission plan for the next mission or two and just treated the game as a rather standard first person shooter with an unforgiving damage system,” he writes.

“Then after a while they stop holding your hand and I found that trying to solo the missions just wasn’t going to work,” he continues. “When I finally sat down and really planned out my strategy, then worked the minor oversights out, there was nothing as satisfying as sitting back and watching it all play out just as I’d planned.”

Yet another Shacknews user by the name of Jobos notes how subsequent iterations of the Rainbow Six series lost some of their old-school tension, due to things like recharging health. “Rainbow Six was filled with intense, white-knuckle action. In New Vegas, I yawned a lot while I held down the trigger button,” he states.

“It has to do with the life system,” he explains. “In New Vegas, you were super-human: you’d get shot up and then just wait a few moments and you’re entirely healed. In many of the previous R6 games it was one or two shots, which really ratcheted up the tension!”

Check out the original Chatty thread for more stories and memories from Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six.

MobyGames Classic is our chance to look back at the games that helped shape the video game industry with the help of our sister site MobyGames.com. It combines a short history lesson on the title and anecdotes from the Shacknews community.