While there were some games based on Tom Clancy’s work before this, Rainbow Six was the first major* game that used his name as a brand name. Published by Red Storm Entertainment (who were bought out by UbiSoft a few years later), this adapted one of Tom Clancy’s novels into video game, starting a massive franchise spanning multiple genres (although mostly shooters). The first Rainbow Six is a tactical-based shooter for PC that was ported to other platforms.

*The very first video game with the “Tom Clancy’s” name was Tom Clancy’s Politika, a digital version of a board game heavily inspired by Risk.

I remember playing this as a kid, and never got past the first level, being confused by one large component of the game: the planning. Before each mission, you get a layout of the level, as well as enemy placement and hostage locations. You can set waypoints for you and your team so you can plan your mission, ideally so you and the other squad can enter difficult rooms from different sides at the same time. Although I could never accurately plan anything.

The levels are quite small and compact, and it feels like the developers had higher ambitions than what the hardware could handle at the time – you can tell that they were going for some lovely looking areas, but the attempt to do so much detail just makes everything look blurry and ugly instead. The HUD fares better, with a really awesome map taking up a large corner of the screen (you can make it take up the full screen, or turn it off) that lets you see where enemies are.

Ultimately, though, I found that on easier difficulties, I could ignore the planning and shoot everyone, with some very generous auto aim. A lot of the time I didn’t even need to shoot, as before I could react, my teammate had already killed the enemy. In one part of the game, I walked around a river for a bit before heading up to a bridge, all the enemies were dead with a hostage kneeling in the middle of them. I had no idea who killed them all. The most difficult parts of the game are when enemies are above or below you, as the auto targeting only works horizontally.

In most levels, your objective is to rescue hostages, either by leading them to the extraction zone or taking out every enemy. On some of the more complicated levels (such as one that takes place in a theme park boat ride building), leading the hostages out of the area can be an issue due to them getting stuck on walls or objects, so I had to abandon my original plan and take out all the enemies instead. There are a few other missions where you have to download data instead, and one where you can’t be spotted at all.

On the N64, Rainbow Six feels a bit unfinished. The story is really poorly presented, and it really does feel like they’ve left stuff out instead of adapting it to the N64. The PC version is probably the one to play.

Fine

It’s not all sweetness and silencers, though. Some of the missions are unexpectedly and disappointingly quick thanks to the CPU team polishing off their objectives – and yours – in a matter of minutes while, conversely, sometimes they just go completely haywire and take it upon themselves to wander into a roomful of terrorists and compromise your mission. hey also have a nasty habit of following right on your heels so that, when you end up at a dead ends, you turn around and find them right on you, often so close that you get stuck and have to plug them yourself, just to get them out of the way.

Tim Weaver, N64 Magazine #35. Review Score: 87%

Remake or remaster?

A remaster or remake of the first few games combined would be nice.

Official ways to get the game.

The PC version is available on GoG and Ubisoft’s PC store.