Quake 3 Arena
March 17th, 2009
Q3A's aim is to frag, or just kill, enemy players and score points based on the game mode's objective such as capturing the enemy flag. Game modes include deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, and tournament.
An expansion pack titled Quake III: Team Arena was released in December 2000 by id Software. It focused on team gameplay through new game modes and new weapons, items, and player models. Team Arena was, however, criticized as its additions were long overdue and had already been implemented by fan modifications. A few years later Quake III: Gold was released, including the original Quake III Arena and the Team Arena expansion packs bundled together.
On August 19, 2005, id Software released the complete source code for Quake III Arena under the GNU General Public License, as they have for most of their prior engines. This does not make the entire game GPL, the textures and other data were not released. A project called OpenArena addresses this issue, creating open content and bundling it with the engine as a standalone Quake 3 release. Open Arena uses the ioquake3 engine, which is focused on bug fixes, sound and graphical improvements.
Quake III Arena was specifically designed for multiplayer, the game allows players whose computers are connected by a network or to the internet, to play against each other in real time. It uses a client-server architecture that requires all players' clients to connect to a server. Q3A's focus on multiplayer gameplay spawned a lively community, similar to Quakeworld, that is active to this day.
Many touraments take place everywhere. A game, that has been released 10 years ago is still extremely popular and loved by many gamers all over the world.
Crysis
August 9th, 2008
Set in August 2020, the Crysis plot follows United States Army Delta Force operative First Lieutenant Jake Dunn — codenamed "Nomad" — . As Crysis begins, an American team of archaeologists is taken captive by the North Korean Army as they make an important discovery in the South China Sea. The United States responds by deploying a team of Delta Force soldiers — supported by the USS Constitution Carrier Strike Group — who engage the North Koreans' large military installations.
The game begins with the five-man squad (Prophet, the squad leader; Nomad; Psycho; Jester; and Aztec) being air-dropped over the island. An unidentified attacker tears Nomad's parachute causing him to free-fall into the water and miss the landing zone. Working his way up the beach, he encounters Jester, and together they search for Aztec, whose parachute has got caught in the trees. Before they can reach him, however, he is killed (along with a squad of KPA soldiers), again by an unknown attacker. To avoid the Koreans getting their hands on the nanosuit technology, Prophet vaporizes Aztec and his suit via remote control. Jester is left to clean up the scene of any remaining evidence of US forces, and Nomad is sent to destroy a KPA radar jammer.
Nomad then moves up the beach, through a KPA checkpoint and a command post, where he learns that KPA operations on the island are being conducted by General Kyong. Nomad then rendezvouses with Prophet, Jester and Psycho at the battered remains of Dr. Rosenthal's research ship, which has mysteriously become covered in ice. Just then, an alien bursts through the hull of the ship, taking Jester and killing him. Nomad, Prophet and Psycho are left to conduct the rest of the operation on their own. Nomad is sent up the coast, to recover an archaeologist from a KPA installation. The archaeologist turns out to be a CIA spy, sent to investigate the KPA's excavation efforts on the island.
Afterward, Prophet and Nomad continue on, only for Prophet to be abducted by the alien that had killed Jester and Aztec. Nomad, directed by Major Strickland, dismantles a number of KPA outposts and attempts to recover Dr. Rosenthal, who is examining one of the alien machines he has exhumed from the rock, and arguing over the monitor with General Kyong. The machine activates itself, freezing Dr. Rosenthal and the inside of the complex. Nomad then makes his way out of the area along the river, towards the ocean. He is directed to move to an area where he will be picked up by VTOL and transported to the fight. The area turns out to be guarded by KPA soldiers in primitive Nanosuits, who have all of Nomad's abilities, but whose suits are regarded by him as "cheap knockoffs".
After evac, Nomad is transported to the bay, where he is ordered to disable a number of KPA anti-air units, so that heavy VTOLs can airlift tanks to the area. After a drawn out armored assault, the mountain at the center of the island begins to crumble, revealing a two-kilometer high alien structure beneath the surface, out of which alien machines emerge and begin attacking both US and KPA forces. Nomad is sent into the excavation site to stop General Kyong. Inside the mine, he is ambushed by two KPA nanosuit soldiers and held while Kyong activates the structure. The resulting energy pulse causes Kyong's nanosuit to malfunction, and the two soldiers' suits vaporize, killing them. Nomad kills Kyong, and he and Helena Rosenthal attempt to escape via the lift. The lift fails, and Helena is airlifted out by VTOL. Nomad is left behind, and is forced to enter the alien structure.
Exploring the zero gravity environment, he gathers valuable information about the alien invaders, who try to halt his progress through their sanctuary. Upon exiting the structure, Nomad discovers that it has affected the surrounding area around the island by creating a frigid energy sphere that lowers the ambient air temperature to −200F (−129 C) and flash freezes every living being within it. Making his way through the frozen environment, Nomad encounters Prophet, who wields a weapon he constructed from his own gun and parts from one of the alien war machines. His suit has been damaged, and Nomad must escort him from heat source to heat source in order for him to survive. They exit the sphere by crossing a partially destroyed bridge, as an alien warship flies overhead.
After exiting the sphere, Nomad and Prophet link up with some of the survivors of the attacks. The men, commanded by Lieutenant Keagan are soon ambushed and are forced to leave their temporary base behind. The two are later forced to rescue a trapped Helena Rosenthal in a downed VTOL, after, intense battles with the new alien attackers outside the sphere, Nomad and Prophet are given time to escape the sphere's expansion using a VTOL by Major Strickland, who deliberately chooses to sacrifice himself. Flying back toward the USS Constitution, and escorting a flight of VTOLs as they evacuate stragglers. Once aboard the carrier, Prophet repeatedly tells Admiral Morrison, the commander of the USS Constitution Carrier Strike Group, that they must go back to the island. Morrison does not listen, and after having a few repairs and upgrades made to his suit, Prophet returns to the island in a stolen VTOL, with the weapon he constructed. During this time, Nomad also receives some upgrades to his suit, allowing Helena Rosenthal to broadcast a signal through his suit to disrupt alien defensive systems. A nuclear strike is then ordered on the island, despite Prophet. The strike only fuels the alien machinery, expanding the sphere and prompting a massive attack on the fleet by alien forces. Prophet is presumed dead. The attack destabilizes the ship's reactor, and Nomad is sent belowdecks to fix the problem, lowering a few stuck control rods and shutting it down. Nomad then returns to the flight deck after acquiring a prototype nuclear TAC cannon from the weapons lab, just as the carrier is attacked by an alien Hunter exosuit. Helena then uses the upgrades to Nomad's suit to disrupt the Hunter's shielding, allowing him to destroy it. The brief victory is overshadowed by the appearance of the alien warship Nomad and Prophet had witnessed inside the energy sphere. Helena again uses Nomad's suit to deactivate the warship's shielding, and Nomad is able to destroy it using the TAC cannon obtained from the weapons lab. The warship's destruction sinks the USS Constitution in a massive whirlpool. Helena informs Nomad that a U.S. Navy fleet is en route from Japan, and will arrive within the hour. They then get a transmission from Prophet, who is still alive, and inside the Ice Sphere on the island. The final scene sees the camera pulling back from Nomad, and the VTOL with him, Helena and Psycho on board flying back toward the sphere.
Crysis uses a new engine—the CryEngine 2—that is the successor to Far Cry's CryEngine. CryEngine 2 is among the first engines to use the Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) framework of Windows Vista, but can also run using DirectX 9, both on Vista and Windows XP.
Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA, has spoken on the subject of the engine's complexity, stating that Crysis has over a million lines of code, 1GB of texture data, and 85,000 shaders.
Crysis was awarded a 98% in the PC Gamer U.S. Holiday 2007 issue, making it one of the highest rated games ever in PC Gamer, tying with Half-Life 2 and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. The UK edition of the magazine awarded the game 92%, describing the game as "A spectacular and beautiful sci-fi epic." GameSpot awarded Crysis a score of 9.5 out of 10, describing it as "easily one of the greatest shooters ever made." GameSpy gave it a 4.5 out of 5 stating that the suit powers were fun but also criticizing the multiplayer portion of the game for not having a team deathmatch. X-Play gave it a 3 out of 5 on its "Holiday Buyer's Guide" special episode, praising the graphics and physics, but criticized the steep hardware requirements as well as stating that the game is overhyped with average gameplay. GamePro honored Crysis with a score of 4.75 out of 5, saying it was "a great step forward for PC gaming," but criticized the steep hardware requirements. IGN awarded it a 9.4 out of 10, hailing it as "one of the more entertaining ballistic showdowns in quite some time."
Crysis was announced to be the first game in a trilogy by Crytek. It is expected that the sequel will continue where the first game ended. In addition to seeking a United States trademark on the name Crysis, Crytek is seeking to trademark the names Crysis Wars, Crysis Annihilation, World in Crysis, and Crysis Warhead. While it is possible that a sequel is in development, GameSpot commented that the trademarks also "could be nothing." However, as Crysis Warhead turned out to be the title of an upcoming Crysis game, it can be assumed that the other registered titles will be the names of other upcoming Crysis games.
On June 4, 2008, a teaser image of Crysis Warhead was on the main Crysis website. On June 5, EA and Crytek released more information about the game through a press release. Crysis Warhead will be released in fall 2008 for PC.
Doom 3
May 10th, 2008
Doom 3 is a first-person shooter video game. Developed and published by id Software, it was released on August 3, 2004. Doom 3, despite its name, is not a direct continuation of the original Doom series storyline. Doom 3 is a re-imagining of the first game in the series, and has a completely new game engine and modern graphics.
Doom 3 is set in the year 2145 in a fictional Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) research center on Mars. In the game, the player takes control of a UAC security replacement marine as he fights to survive a mysterious invasion of inter-dimensional demons. In the process, the marine learns more about the nature of the shadowy research being conducted within the massive base, as well as information on its main instigator, Dr. Malcolm Betruger.
The gameplay of Doom 3 is almost the same as the original Doom. The main objective of the game is to navigate through the hostile game environment to an area of safety at the end of each level. Doom 3 favors a 'run and gun' strategy, requiring the player to essentially shoot anything that moves. Movement in Doom 3 is more simplistic than many other FPSs released in 2004. The player is able to move in the four cardinal directions, crouch, jump, and sprint, but cannot lie prone or lean around corners. The level layout and design architecture are quite linear, but access to certain destinations may require the player to complete a number of tasks first, such as the total destruction of all enemies, collection of specified items, and basic puzzle solving.
Numerous weapons are available in Doom 3. The game inherits a number from its predecessors Doom and Doom II, while adding several new weapons and modifying several of the old standbys. The iconic chainsaw and BFG 9000 return, as do the pistol, shotgun, chain gun, rocket launcher, and plasma gun. New additions include the flashlight (vital as a light source), hand grenades, a submachine gun, and an alien artifact known as the "Soul Cube".
Let's look back how it all began with Doom 3.
In June 2000, John Carmack posted a plan announcing the start to a remake of Doom using next generation technology. This plan revealed controversy had been brewing within id over the decision.
Kevin Cloud and Adrian Carmack, two of id Software's owners, were always strongly opposed to remaking Doom. They thought that id was going back to the same old formulas and properties too often. However, after the warm reception of Return to Castle Wolfenstein and the latest improvements in rendering technology, most of the employees (including John Carmack) agreed that a remake was the right idea and presented Kevin and Adrian with an ultimatum: "Allow us to remake Doom or fire us." After the reasonably painless confrontation (although artist Paul Steed, one of the instigators, was fired in retaliation), the agreement to work on Doom 3 was made.
id Software began development on Doom 3 in late 2000, immediately after finishing Quake III: Team Arena. In 2001, it was first shown to the public at Macworld Conference & Expo in Tokyo and was later demonstrated at E3 in 2002, where a 15-minute gameplay demo was shown in a small theater. It won five awards at E3 that year.
Early in Doom 3's development, Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails, who is a fan of the Doom games, was set to compose the music and sound effects to Doom 3. This later fell through, and none of Trent Reznor's sound effects or music made the final product. However, his early sound effects are available for download on various web sites and are considered by many to be superior to the game's final sound effects. Eventually, Nine Inch Nails' drummer at the time, Chris Vrenna, did the game's theme song. Numerous ogg files in the retail version of Doom 3 are still labeled under Reznor's name.
Some speculated that id Software was targeting the 2002 holiday season, although others believed a 2003 release date would be more realistic. After E3, there was no further press release from id Software regarding the project; the company's website only had Return to Castle Wolfenstein as the latest game. Late in 2002, a couple of employees at ATI Technologies leaked a development version of Doom 3 onto the Internet.
Next year, a new trailer was shown at E3 2003 and soon afterwards the id Software homepage was updated to showcase Doom 3 as an upcoming project but it was also announced that Doom 3 would not be ready for the 2003 holiday season. According to some comments by John Carmack, the development took longer than expected. Originally, the game was planned for release around the same time as another highly anticipated game, Half-Life 2, in Christmas 2003. Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and Halo 2 were considered among the most anticipated games since their announcements in 2001/2002, though all three of them would not make the planned 2003 holiday season.
Doom 3 achieved gold status on July 14, 2004, and a Mac OS X release was confirmed the next day on July 15, 2004. Doom 3 was released in the U.S. on August 3, 2004. Additionally, a Linux version was released on October 4, 2004. The Mac OS X version was released on March 14, 2005 and on February 20, 2006 the patch 1.3 Rev A included a universal binary, adding support for Mac OS X on the x86 architecture. Finally, the modified Xbox conversion was released on April 3, 2005. Due to high demand, the game was made available at select outlets at midnight on the date of release. The game was released to the rest of the world on August 13, 2004 (except for Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union, where official localization was delayed and caused the game to be released about four months later, on December 10, 2004).
A week before the game's release, it became known that an agreement to include EAX audio technology in Doom 3 reached by id Software and Creative Labs was heavily influenced by a software patent owned by the latter company. The patent dealt with a technique for rendering shadows called Carmack's Reverse, which was developed independently by both John Carmack and programmers at Creative Labs. id Software would have been putting themselves under legal liability if they used the technique in the finished game, so to defuse the issue, id Software agreed to license Creative Labs sound technologies in exchange for indemnification against lawsuits.
Two days before its official release, Doom 3 was released by pirate groups onto the Internet. As the game's focus is its single-player mode, the need for a valid retail serial number for online multiplayer gaming was a weak deterrent against piracy.
Still, huge queue's were lined nearbefore the shops a day before the relesea of this game. Those, who got it first, turned of their real lifes for a few days. Doom 3, even after 4 years, is still very modern and popular. Extremly good graphics and gameplay can make you come up with only 1 question - is there going to be something more?
Half-Life : Episode Two.
April 5th, 2008
Review of the game.
Half-Life 2 is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game and the sequel to the highly acclaimed Half-Life. It was developed by Valve Software Corporation and was released on November 16, 2004, following a protracted five-year development cycle during which the game’s source code was leaked to the Internet. The game garnered near unanimous positive reviews and received critical acclaim, winning over 35 Game of the Year awards for 2004. Originally available only for Windows-based personal computers, the game has since been ported onto the Xbox, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 video game consoles.
Taking place in and around the fictional City 17, Half-Life 2 follows the adventures of scientist Gordon Freeman. Dr. Freeman is thrust into a dystopian environment in which the aftermath of the Black Mesa Incident has come to bear fully upon human society. Freeman is forced to fight against increasingly unfavorable odds in order to survive. In his struggle, he is joined by various allies, including former Black Mesa colleagues, oppressed citizens of City 17, and the Vortigaunts.
The game uses the Source game engine, which includes a heavily modified version of the Havok physics engine. Half-Life 2 has been critically acclaimed for advances in computer animation, sound, narration, computer graphics, artificial intelligence (AI) and physics. As of June 8, 2006, over four million copies of Half-Life 2 have been sold. Exact numbers for digital delivery service Steam and retail have not been revealed, but in general, the former accounts for 25% of Valve’s business and is significantly more profitable per unit. As of July 14, 2006, the Half-Life franchise has sold 16 million units. As of February 28, 2007, Half-Life 2 is the second most played online computer game (excluding MMORPGs), behind Half-Life, according to GameSpy.
The original Half-Life, released on November 19, 1998, largely took place at a remote civilian and military laboratory called the Black Mesa Research Facility. During an experiment, researchers at Black Mesa accidentally caused a "resonance cascade" which ripped open a portal to an alien world, Xen. Creatures from Xen flooded into Black Mesa via the portal and started to kill anyone in sight. The player took on the role of Gordon Freeman, one of the research scientists involved in the accident, guiding him in his attempt to escape the facility. At the end of the game, Gordon was extracted by a mysterious figure colloquially known as the G-Man who "offered" him employment. Gordon was subsequently put into stasis by the G-Man.
Half-Life canon dictates that Gordon Freeman either agreed or was not given a real option with respect to the G-Man's offer. Half-Life 2 picks up the story with the G-Man taking Freeman out of stasis and inserting him on a train en-route to City 17 an indeterminate number of years after the Black Mesa Incident. Official sources differ on the actual length of this intermission—a story fragment written by author Marc Laidlaw for the development team puts the intermission at 10 years, while Half-Life 2: Episode One's Web site puts this intermission as "nearly two decades" after the end of the events of Half-Life.
The environments in Half-Life 2 are varied, ranging from the generally Eastern European-styled City 17 and the zombie-infested town of Ravenholm, to the coastal Nova Prospekt prison and the massive Combine Citadel. Viktor Antonov, the art director of Half-Life 2, being a Bulgarian, spent his childhood in Bulgaria, wrote that Eastern Europe was favored as a setting for the game as it is capable of depicting a combination of both new and old architecture, creating a city with history; "gothic themes associated with Prague and vampires" were also overlooked in favor of a different aspect of the region.
The game's setting sees frequent appearances of Cyrillic letters on signs and graffiti (written in Bulgarian spelling); this has led some to argue that City 17 is in fact a Combine-altered Sofia, Bulgaria. Old cars scattered throughout the game are Soviet-made and used to be commonly found in Eastern Europe, such as Moskvitchs, Zaporozhets, East Germany-made Trabants, Volgas (GAZ-24), Latvias (RAF-2203), and GAZ-53s. During the game, Gordon comes to a coastal Resistance settlement called New Little Odessa; Little Odessa is the nickname for the Russian community in Brighton Beach, where many ex-Soviet immigrants settled (the original Odessa is a major city located on the coast of Ukraine). Father Grigori has a name common in Slavic Eastern European countries, an accent that is stereotypically Slavic Eastern European, and has been identified as a clergyman of the Orthodox Christian Church, the predominant religious institution found in some Slavic Eastern European countries.
Half-Life 2 differs from many other FPS by incorporating elements of survival horror, most notably in the Ravenholm level. The anguished atmosphere of this is akin to the likes of Silent Hill, combined with a large and intricate level design.
In Half-Life 2, player takes on a role of Gordon Freeman, as in original Half-Life. Armed with numerous weapons he has to make the way through a series of levels, encountering both human troops and hostile alien creatures. As in Half-Life, the gameplay is broken up with a series of puzzles; however, Half-Life 2 includes physics-based puzzles. For example, one puzzle requires the player to either turn a seesaw-like lever into a ramp by placing cinder blocks at one end, or to stack the cinder blocks into a crude stairway.
The use of physics extends into combat with the gravity gun. This unique weapon plays a crucial function throughout the game, granting the player an unprecedented amount of creativity in its use, such as picking up and throwing objects at enemies, holding objects indefinitely for use as makeshift cover, grabbing medikits and ammunition from out-of-reach places, pulling plugs, returning enemies' grenades, building makeshift bridges, making crude stairs out of crates, flipping over an overturned buggy, or manipulating objects through Combine forcefields.
Vehicles are another major gameplay addition. The player has the ability to drive two vehicles during the single player campaign; an air boat, which Gordon uses to navigate through the "Subzero" canal network, and a dune buggy which Gordon uses to get to Nova Prospekt. The air boat is initially unarmed, but is later mounted with a Combine weapon from a downed hunter-chopper. The buggy is armed with a Tau Cannon that functions very similarly to the one found in the original Half-Life. It, however, does not overload if the secondary fire is held for too long.
The game also integrates tutorial-like tasks in the storyline itself and includes on-screen instructions on game controls (but no longer includes separate tutorial levels featured in the original) to allow familiarization of the game’s mechanics and weapons for players as they go. Several such examples include an early incident in the game where a Civil Protection unit orders the player to "pick up" a tin can and "throw it" into the trash can, and Alyx Vance’s introduction of the gravity gun at Black Mesa East, which incorporates an impromptu game of "catch" with her robot, Dog.
Several of the weapons featured in Half-Life 2 are carried over from Half-Life, including the trademark crowbar for melee fighting, and the conventional firearms of a SPAS-12 shotgun, a .357 Colt Python, a crossbow that fires molten rebars, and a AT4 RPG launcher as well as the tau cannon, an experimental particle weapon that is mounted on the dune buggy. Several new weapons are also introduced: an MP7 submachine gun, a 9mm USP Match, the AR2 Combine Overwatch pulse rifle; 'pheropods' which grant control over Antlions, and most significantly, the Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator, or gravity gun.
Half-Life 2 was released without a multiplayer component, and was instead packaged with Counter-Strike: Source. This changed on November 30, 2004, when Valve released the Half-Life 2: Deathmatch component on Steam for US$9.95.
Like other deathmatch games, the aim of Half-Life 2: Deathmatch is to kill as many other players as possible, using a variety of means, in either free-for-all or team matches. The player spawns with a gravity gun, a pistol, a sub-machine gun, and grenades. All weapons included in the single player portion of Half-Life 2, with the exception of the pheropod (bugbait), are available and scattered around the maps. Players can be killed in a number of ways, including gunfire, explosions, or through contact with physical objects traveling at high speeds. Vehicles do not exist in the unmodified game, but custom maps and modifications to the engine can add them.
Half-Life 2: Deathmatch's February 17, 2005 update introduced a new map (dm_steamlab) and three new weapons that had been missing from the game previously, or cut before it shipped. This included the crowbar (for human player models) and the stunstick (for combine player models), and the SLAM, or Selectable Lightweight Attack Munition, a real-world weapon which can either be thrown and detonated or planted on walls to produce a "tripwire" laser which detonates the device when in contact with an object or person.
While the Xbox release of the original Half-Life 2 contains no multiplayer component, the re-release of Half-Life 2 (packaged as The Orange Box) for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 includes Team Fortress 2 and Portal, in addition to Episodes One and Two.
Half-Life 2 earned over 35 Game of the Year awards, including Overall Game of the Year at IGN, GameSpot’s Award for Best Shooter, GameSpot’s Reader’s Choice - PC Game of the Year Award, Game of the Year from The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, and "Best Game" with the Game Developers Choice Awards, where it was also given various awards for technology, characters, and writing. Edge magazine awarded Half Life 2 with its top honor of the year with the award for Best Game, as well as awards for Innovation and Visual Design. The game also had a strong showing at the 2004 BAFTA Games Awards, picking up six awards, more than any other game that night, with awards including "Best Game" and "Best Online Game."
Rainbow Six
April 5th, 2008
Red Storm had originally planned to do a special operations game featuring first-person action, and a team of operators rescuing hostages and taking out terrorists. Their first concept was modeled after the American FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Later they decided to make the concept more international, as HRT would only operate in the US, and renamed it "Black Ops" and incorporated operators from all over. It was then they found that Tom Clancy was writing a book about terrorism and a special team to combat it, so they rewrote some of the missions to fit within the book plot. The book was Rainbow Six so the game was renamed Rainbow Six. However, by the time they finished the game, the book was not yet finished. Thus, the plot of the game does not completely match the plot of the book.
Rainbow Six is a tactical shooter, which focuses more on stealth and tactics than on sheer firepower. Terrorists (or "tangos") can be dispatched with one or two shots, as can the player or any teammates.
Before each mission is a planning stage, where the player is given a briefing, and then chooses the operatives to be involved in the mission, their weapons, equipment and uniform. Then, the player gives orders that each team will follow during the mission. The planning stage determines elements such as the path the AI-controlled squads will follow through the mission, as well as where they will deploy devices such as flashbangs or door breaching charges.
In the mission itself, the player takes control of one team leader, and can see their plan of action on their Heads-Up Display. The teams not under player control follow the orders given to them in the planning stage. The player can take control of any living team member.
The game forms a campaign that is a series of scenarios, with the plot being advanced in the mission briefing of each scenario. Any casualties that occur during a mission are permanent, so the deceased cannot be used in future missions. However, the player has the ability to "rewind" to retry a successful but disastrous mission.
Online multiplayer gaming was popular on the Mplayer.com and Zone.com services and for a time featured a thriving competitive clan based community with numerous independent ladder style leagues.
Unlike the other versions, the PlayStation version actually showed the gun being held in the player's hands.
It is the year 1999. RAINBOW is a newly created multinational counter-terrorism unit, composed of elite soldiers from NATO countries, formed to address the growing problem of international terrorism. The organization's director is John Clark, and the team leader is Ding Chavez. The term "Rainbow Six" refers to the director of the organization, John Clark.
Soon after its inauguration, RAINBOW finds itself responding to a series of seemingly unrelated terrorist attacks by the Phoenix Group, a radical eco-terrorist organization. Throughout its investigation, RAINBOW is assisted and advised by John Brightling, chairman of the powerful bio-tech corporation Horizon Inc.
However, RAINBOW eventually learns that the Phoenix Group is actually a front for Horizon Inc itself. Brightling's company is developing a super-virus, codenamed "Shiva", with the ability to kill every human being on the planet. In order to protect "mother nature," John Brightling is planning to kill the entire human race, sparing only Brightling's chosen few, who will re-emerge and rebuild the planet into a scientific and environmentally-friendly utopia. To achieve this goal, he has used the scattered terrorist attacks to create fear of terrorism, which he then exploited in order to secure a security contract for his own private security firm at the Olympic games. Brightling's plan is for his "security personnel" to unleash the virus at the games, spreading it to all the countries of the world.
RAINBOW succeeds in preventing the release of the virus at the Olympic games, and Brightling and his collaborators retreat to their Horizon Ark facility in the Brazilian jungle, from which they had originally planned to weather out the global holocaust. RAINBOW infiltrates the facility, killing all of Brightling's collaborators and capturing Brightling himself.
