A covert action game in the Rainbow Six series where you have to stop the latest terrorist threat!
Rainbow Six Lockdown (or RSL as I'm now gonna call it) is the latest instalment of the Rainbow Six series for your phones. The game is a covert espionage type of game in the mould of Metal Gear and Splinter Cell.
The graphics are quite nice. The developers went for 2D but managed to add a fair amount of detail. The characters, buildings and explosions all look like good 2D graphics. Nothing that looks absolutely stunning but a solid job.
The sound is not bad at all. There is a cool tune when you load the game up and also plenty of sound effects. You can turn the sound on or off and you get little tones when you complete a mission, rescue hostages or fail and die. There are also some effects when you're shooting, grenading, flash bombing etc. I think this is a good level of sound to have for a game, not too much or too loud but a decent amount nonetheless.
The controls are ok, they take a little getting used to. You can use the D or key pad to move your characters around the screen and all the buttons do something. There is a cursor which you can move around the screen, move it to where you want your characters to go, press the main button or 5 and they'll move there. This changes shape if you want to hide or if you try and kill people with a knife or try and unlock a door / rescue hostages. Also the 7 button will throw flash bombs to where the cursor is and 9 will throw grenades. Press zero to change the cursor to a knife. There are detailed instructions during the game and on the menu as well. You can also open and frag doors if you have a grenade which is a cool touch.
The playability is actually pretty good. Even though moving the cursor takes some getting used to, you can perform head shot kills (move the cursor over your enemies heads and you will see the head shot kill appear in the box at the bottom left of the screen). You can perform knife kills and also throw around frag grenades and flash bombs. You don't get loads of items so you have to use them sparingly and use them well. The game is fun to play and while you generally have hostages to rescue in one level you have to defuse bombs and another you have to take out a helicopter. My one gripe about the game is that the control system takes a little getting used to. What I mean is that it's easy to forget which key does what so you may well find yourself throwing a grenade instead of a frag. Also, the cursor has to be pretty accurate for head shots or knife kills and this would be fine on snoozing targets but moving targets present more of a challenge and so if you miss placing the cursor on the right spot, you'll end up moving there, probably right in the middle of a group with lots of guns. There are bunkers to hide behind but there's not a whole lot of stealth. Just skill and timing is generally required. You also start with two guys on each mission so don't panic if one dies, you can still finish the mission if you're good enough. In fact I tended to always finish the mission with a loss of men. |
