| Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear | |
| Developer: | Red Storm Entertainment Pipe Dream Interactive (DC) Saffire (PS) Ubi Soft Milan (GBA) |
| Publisher: | Ubi Soft (GBA) |
| Producer: | Carl Schnurr |
| Designer: | Carl Schnurr |
| Programmer: | Todd Lewis |
| Artist: | Steve Cotton Jonathan Peedin |
| Composer: | Bill Brown |
| Series: | Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six |
| Genre: | Tactical shooter |
| Modes: | Single-player, multiplayer |
| Platforms: | Windows, Dreamcast, Mac OS, PlayStation, Game Boy Advance |
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear is a 1999 tactical first-person shooter video game developed and published by Red Storm Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, with later ports for the Dreamcast, Mac OS, PlayStation, and Game Boy Advance. The sequel to 1998's Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, it is the second installment in the Rainbow Six series and the last to be published by Red Storm before its acquisition by Ubi Soft in 2000. The game's plot follows the secret international counterterrorist organization Rainbow as they investigate nuclear terrorism in Eastern Europe.
Rogue Spear was released on September 22, 1999 to generally positive reviews on PC, but mixed reviews for all other platforms. Critics praised its significant improvements on the original Rainbow Six
A PlayStation 2 port was announced, but was ultimately canceled. Three expansion packs for the game were released between 2000 and 2001, adding new missions, weapons, characters, and assorted materials. Two spin-off games—Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lone Wolf, a PlayStation exclusive; and , using Rogue Spear
Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear is a tactical shooter, in which characters are affected by realistic factors and can be killed with a single bullet, thus promoting planning and tactics over force and firepower.[2] Rogue Spear is very similar to its predecessor, Rainbow Six, and uses the same engine and gameplay, albeit greatly modified to feature improved graphics and animations, improved artificial intelligence, and new mechanics such as camouflage selection and the return of the hands-off "watch" mode from Rainbow Six: Eagle Watch.[3] [4] [5] The campaign features a total of 18 missions from locations around the world, while the multiplayer portion features 20 different maps.
Rogue Spear
Rogue Spear features two free-play modes outside the campaign: Lone Wolf, where the player must complete an entire level using only a single operative; and Terrorist Hunt, where the player must defeat up to 30 terrorists in a level, with no other objectives aside from clearing the entire level of enemies.
Rogue Spear
In 2001, Rainbow, led by John Clark, handles a spike in terrorist attacks conducted by various seemingly unaffiliated terrorist groups. Meanwhile, the former Eastern Bloc has fallen into disarray since the dissolution of the Soviet Union a decade prior, with conflict, crime, and corruption increasing as money and necessities become scarce.
Investigating a thwarted nerve agent attack in Oman, Rainbow, assisted by an anonymous informant, sources the agent to anti-Western oil baron Samed Vezirzade. Surveillance of Vezirzade leads Rainbow to an illegal deal between a Russian military unit and Russian mobsters connected to arms dealer Maxim Kutkin and kingpin Lukyan Barsukov. Rainbow interrupts the deal and recovers weapons-grade plutonium, leading them to believe Kutkin is assembling nuclear weapons. Rainbow plants surveillance devices in Vezirzade's mansion and Kutkin's private spa, and discovers Vezirzade has been supporting terrorist groups for his own gain; they also learn he is aware Rainbow is after him.
Rainbow locates and raids Kutkin's nuclear weapons facility in Siberia, destroying the facility and recovering two nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the informant leaves to "set things right", and Kutkin's mafia is promptly embroiled in a gang war; Rainbow analyst Susan Holt learns the informant was Barsukov himself, who was suspicious of Kutkin (his son-in-law) and needed Rainbow's investigations to confirm. Suddenly, Holt and Barsukov are kidnapped by Kutkin; worse, Clark learns two other nuclear weapons were not recovered from the Siberian facility. After rescuing Holt and Barsukov, Rainbow learns Kutkin is personally moving the nuclear weapons to the West, and they intercept the shipment, securing the nuclear weapons and seemingly killing Kutkin.
After Kutkin's defeat, Rainbow raids Vezirzade's personal fortress in Azerbaijan, killing Vezirzade when he fights back. However, Kutkin is revealed to still be alive, having used a double to fake his death. Aware his downfall is imminent, Kutkin seizes a nuclear power plant in Ukraine, intent on causing a Chernobyl-esque nuclear meltdown to take as many lives with him as possible. Rainbow storms the plant, killing Kutkin and preventing the meltdown.
With the threat finally resolved, Clark debriefs Rainbow and notes that Kutkin's spa has been sold to Barsukov, who claims he has retired from crime and will settle down to operate the spa legally; however, Rainbow continues to monitor Barsukov with a hidden camera, and it is implied he has not retired after all. While discussing his plans with an aide, Barsukov suddenly turns his attention to the hidden camera and, after rebuking Clark for invading his privacy, destroys it.
Rogue Spear Mission Pack: Urban Operations, released on April 4, 2000, was the first expansion for Rogue Spear. It was developed and published by Red Storm Entertainment. It added eight new maps and five classic Rainbow Six maps from the original game, three new weapons, and a built-in mod system. Urban Operations was later re-released by Kama Digital Entertainment in South Korea, including two exclusive missions and two new weapons.
Rainbow Six: Covert Ops Essentials is a stand-alone expansion pack of Rogue Spear, released on September 28, 2000. Developed as an educational game and a training simulator, Covert Ops Essentials was developed by Magic Lantern Playware and published by Red Storm Entertainment. It includes nine new maps in total, and a three mission long campaign. Six of the maps were made by Zombie Studios, while the three mission campaign was made by Red Storm. Covert Ops Essentials includes educational materials such as actual military field manuals, view video interviews from counterterrorism experts, take multiple-choice tests to progress in rank, and see live-fire demonstrations of the weapons featured in the game. For the live-fire videos, Sergeant Anthony Levatino, a SWAT team leader of the Santa Ana Police Department, was contracted to provide expertise for the educational material and for the video demonstrations.
Rogue Spear: Black Thorn was developed by Red Storm Entertainment and published by Ubi Soft as a stand-alone add-on on December 15, 2001, featuring nine new singleplayer maps and fifteen new multiplayer maps, along with eleven new weapons and a new multiplayer game mode called Lone Wolf. The singleplayer plot features a mentally disturbed ex-SAS operative challenging Rainbow with reenactments of real-life terrorist attacks, such as Operation Entebbe and the Japanese embassy hostage crisis.
Rogue Spear uses the same game engine as the original Rainbow Six, albeit with new and improved additions and refreshed graphics and visuals. Like its predecessor, Rogue Spear focuses on realism, planning, strategy, and teamwork.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear was met with positive to mixed reception upon release. Review aggregator Metacritic displays a score of 85.97% for the PC version, 75.77% for the Game Boy Advance, 72.62% for the Dreamcast, and 60.07% for the PlayStation. Video game review aggregator GameRankings displays 76/100 for the Game Boy Advance and 75/100 for the Dreamcast.
Many reviewers noted Rogue Spear
Reviewers found notable issues with the game's AI. Blevins noted that while Rogue Spear