Anti-terrorism for beginners
For those who are coming into this for the first time, I'll explain the basic premise. The world is full of terrorists doing unpleasant things to people who really and truly could do without it, so an elite anti-terrorist force called Rainbow has been formed to be at the forefront of the counter-attack (the 'Six' part of the title comes from John Clarke's call sign - John Clarke is pretty important in the book but a bit of a side character in the games). The team is made up from people of a variety of nations and designed to be pretty much invincible due to their rigorous training and the fact that Rainbow Six has the pick of the world's crop, soldier-wise. On top of this the rules have been relaxed quite a lot so that they have fewer restrictions than operatives from other elite forces, thus giving them a major advantage. Generally, as long as the objectives are completed no one asks too many questions about the methodology. You're probably getting the idea now why this makes such a good basis for a game.
The most noticeable improvement in R6:RS is the artificial intelligence of the Non-Player Characters (NPCs), which is really important, as this is a team game with most of the team being computer controlled (in single player, at least). In previous versions of Rainbow Six I was definitely beginning to get the feeling that they'd nicked the Artificial Stupidity engine from Sheep for the gig as the co-ordination of team-members tended to end up referring to the headless-chicken school of tactics. You'd have men standing at the bottoms of ladders and spinning in circles thus blocking the ascent of his slightly less befuddled teammates and invariably getting you, them, or everyone in the vicinity, killed. Or they'd be disappearing off in the wrong direction, or getting defeated by the presence of an unexpected corner, or some damned thing. So far I have encountered none of the above bugs in the current AI although there was, possibly, a slight disagreement over ladder climbing tactics in the first level (I said 'climb,' they said 'won't,' I said 'fine,' and walked away) but we sorted it all out in the end and parted friends. Other than that you do get the feeling that you're part of a reasonably well-trained team of men that can generally be relied upon to deal with tricky situations. I even find myself sending computer controlled guys into situations that I figure are a bit tricky to co-ordinate from a first person perspective which is a first - before R6:RS I'd make sure that they were well out of the way of danger and then go it alone. I'm not saying that they don't get shot up from time to time, but then again even real Special Forces guys get shot up from time to time. It's just an occupational hazard and the main reason why these games sell really well whereas games with titles like Mr Buggles Has A Pleasant Afternoon While Doing Nothing In Particular tend to have a somewhat specialist, and not to mention limited, market.
