Rainbow Six: Lockdown: Worst AI in a Game EVER

[AaronGF]

GamesFirst has a review of Rainbow Six: Lockdown that includes video clips of the stupidest AI (http://www.gamesfirst.com/?id=526) to ever exist. Apparently, enemies are virtually unable to hit a stationary, exposed target, and taking cover actually increases your chances of dying. On normal difficulty, they timed how long it took for an enemy to kill them at point blank range: 7 minutes and 33 seconds. One of the clips shows the player being shot at by four guys without being hit.

The videos make the stupid AI really obvious.

Quite a step back from the nearly-too-difficult Rainbow Six 3. Too bad. The tactical elements are being stripped out of the series. Let’s hope that the Rainbow for the Xbox 360 fairs better than this.

[Nintendo Revolution]

Yeah it really is a shame. Rainbow Six: Roque Spear and Ghost Recon were some of my favorite games.

[Red Cloak]

This game is an abomination. I really liked the original Rainbow 6 for Xbox, and thought this would be a nice game to play online coop. It sucks, hard. I took it back for Black Arrow and have been MUCH happier. Great game, 28 online maps, tons of game modes and great coop with excellent AI.

I think they built Lockdown on the PS2 and ported it out. It's crap.

[Varsity]

Stupid AI is the one that hits you all the time no matter what. At least they tried.

[doyama]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2004-08-18

One could argue this has always been an issue :P

[XxSATANxX]

Can this possibly be worse than the AI in Delta Force?

[Evil Avatar]

That sucks, I was hoping this would be a good co-op game for Xbox Live.

[Roc Ingersol]

Rainbow Six 3 was pretty damn tough, but I never caught it cheating.
It just punished you like all hell for your mistakes.

I'll take it over that stupid AI any day.

[Red Cloak]

I don't get that comic at all if it isnt reference to Black Arrow. That game has great ai, super brutal on the hardest difficulty. Lockdown's is a joke, in fact that isnt the only thing that is a joke abotu the game, it's just a clusterfuck of a game.

[president_fred]

Can this possibly be worse than the AI in Delta Force?
I don't think that counts it seems like the guys in this game deliberately programmed the enemies to be the opposite of intelligent and logical ie. having an easier time shooting you out in the open whereas delta force there was no A.I you were just this positive global magnetic force and all the terrorist were minus.

[Metal Jesus]

I read this and thought: HEY! A game based on the A-Team!

I pity da foo!

[holysin]

**SIGH**
hopefully they'll fix that before releasing the pc version.
better yet, make a new game altogether.

rainbow six on videogames, what a joke :P

[mpsmith]

I hate what consoles have done for all the Tom Clancey franchises. Everything is simplified for the retarded hyperactive kids... oh, theres no point.

[earthworm48]

That PA strip is about bullet collision registraion not AI. Read the newspost if you are unsure.

[carneconcarne]

I hear that. Do you guys remember Rainbow Six: no subtitle? Frickin great.

[Rangoth]

I bought the original Rainbow Six for XBOX. It was good, didn't get any of the others. The Splinter Cell games have stayed top notch IMHO. I never liked the Ghost games but thats a personal preference thing more then poor gameplay.

[Last of the Red Hot Mamas]

There was a budget PC title called Extreme Paintball that probably takes the "worst AI" prize. The enemies had a tendency to run into walls and just stay there running in place until you killed them. A developer who supposedly worked on the game wrote to PC Gamer and claimed the game had literally no AI because the publisher pushed it out the door too early.

[Commissar Rob]

I read this and thought: HEY! A game based on the A-Team!

I pity da foo!

DAMN! You beat me too it! :mad:

But I do love it when a plan comes together. :D

[Liquidize105]

Why isn't SWAT4 on LIVE?

[GrinR]

Original Rainbow Six... hmm. Oh yeah, I remember. I was on a mission against "activists" armed with small arms and handguns. While running in the dark, I got headshotted by a handgun at about 500 yards through heavy cover, and then I laughed and uninstalled the game.

All subsequent RS titles had this similar problem in varying degrees.

[AaronGF]

Haha... well, except for this one. This one doesn't have that problem, much. More the other side of the scale. :)

And now that you mention it, Red Hot Mamma, I remember Extreame Paintball. Never played the full game, but I think I got a demo of it back in the day on an old PC Gamer demo disc. :)

[mos]

There was a budget PC title called Extreme Paintball that probably takes the "worst AI" prize. The enemies had a tendency to run into walls and just stay there running in place until you killed them. A developer who supposedly worked on the game wrote to PC Gamer and claimed the game had literally no AI because the publisher pushed it out the door too early.

At first I thought you were making a joke about how the "enemies" on a pinball table never try to dodge your ball. Then I realized that you said "Paintball."

Either way, you could have been funnier. I rate it, 5.7 out of 10.

[zorper]

I hate what consoles have done for all the Tom Clancey franchises. Everything is simplified for the retarded hyperactive kids... oh, theres no point.

So there wasn't bad AI before consoles? I played the orginal Delta force and R6: one had guys stand there to get mowed down, the other picked off my snipers with glocks at 1000 yards.

[Murtaug]

It should be said that in order to watch these video you must have Real Player.. I would rather buy this game after reading that review then install Real Player on my machine.

[Adam Blue]

It should be said that in order to watch these video you must have Real Player.. I would rather buy this game after reading that review then install Real Player on my machine.

That was fucking funny.

[AaronGF]

Funny... and I absolutely agree. Real Player sucks. I'd much rather see a DivX or flash based encoding. It's the next step.

[Frogleg Special]

I think they built Lockdown on the PS2 and ported it out. It's crap.

And I think they built Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games after the originals on Xbox and ported them out. They're crap too.

Moral of the story: Xbox isn't exactly the top of the heap from a PC gamer's perspective. So stop blaming other platforms for the game's deficiencies.

[Dirty Harry]

Original Rainbow Six... hmm. Oh yeah, I remember. I was on a mission against "activists" armed with small arms and handguns. While running in the dark, I got headshotted by a handgun at about 500 yards through heavy cover, and then I laughed and uninstalled the game.

All subsequent RS titles had this similar problem in varying degrees.
the pc versions of rainbow six have great AI, and the expansion just makes it better. I dont know about the console versions though but the AI in rainbowsix 3 is really good i think.

[score]

I too will never install Real Player but you can use a little something called 'Real Alternate' to watch real player movies in windows media player. Google it (realalt).

[jim_rock]

Are you guys not gonna say a single fucking nice thing about this game? Are you guys even playing the same game Im playing on my xbox? Have half of you guys even played it, or are you just jumping on a bandwagon of whining and pissing on things?

Bad AI? Absolutely.

Other than that, a great game, its campaign mode is very polished. It has cool non scripted events and situations that are really cool and unique and just kind of happen. Its very immersive. I've been doing the single player for a while and it is really really cool. I've found myself yelling at my pc controlled teamates to get their shit together and yelling "oh fuck" when I get myself in a bad situation. I don't usually talk while playing a single player game so thats definitly saying something.
Grapics are hot, 5.1 surround is incredible, there is replayability by the bags. The game has crazy deep xblive support complete with rpg like character customization that affects your gameplay. Gain xp for multiplayer kills and accomplishments than use them to upgrade your character. Its too cool.
The game has great support for controlling your cpu-mates too, its kind of a cross between SW: republic commando, and full spectrum warrior.
The enemy AI is mysteriously poor but its wierd because your cpu controlled squadmates are bizarely adaptive and clever in their own kind of way.. I don't know if you've ever played SW: Republic Commando, but its kind of similar to that vibe.

This is a great game, I'm ashamed that you kids wanna piss on everything. Let the people who spent their 50 on it bitch about it.

[AaronGF]

In a game that's famous for being tactical and realistic, having AI that can't hit you in the open and can hit you when under cover is a pretty big drawback. The game actually rewards you for abandoning the tactical nature of the series by keeping you alive longer if you don't take cover, peek around corners, and proceed with caution. Considering that an adherence to realism and realistic detail is what made Rainbow Six famous, tweaking the AI to punish tactical play virtually ruins the single player game. You can't rely on the AI to be consistent. Then it becomes Halo with bad guys that die in one shot. And people don't play Rainbow Six for that sort of gameplay. They play Halo.

As for the graphics, I'd venture to say that they're really not all that great. The environments are more complex, but the textures in general come across as more muddy than in Rainbow Six 3.

On the other hand, I have to agree with you completely about Xbox Live support. If you only play online, competitively, and don't care about the single player experience, then this is a good game. But still, I'd venture to say that Rainbow Six 3 had more and better weapons and near equal level design.

[AaronGF]

And the terrorists talked about in the review were able to shoot at the player, standing upright and in clear view, for 7 minutes and 33 seconds before actually scoring a kill. That's not just poor AI. That's near worthless AI.

[Azrikam]

And yet the game scored 3/5 stars. Time for some required math training for all game reviewers. First lesson: 3/5 > 50%.

[AaronGF]

I don’t think that 40% would have been a better accumulative score. While the single player missions are virtually broken, Rainbow Six: Lockdown is an excellent multiplayer game with really strong Live support. When AI isn’t a factor, as in online, there’s little to complain about. The level design is top notch, far better than Black Arrow. I personally think that the single major flaw of the AI drops the title from a high 80s or low 90s to a D level, but that production values are fairly strong, and there are aspects of the game that are very good. If I cared more about playing online than offline, I'd care almost nothing for the single player mode; it took me months before I got around to playing the single player aspects of the original Rainbow Six 3. It's a matter what you value.

Also, it's interesting (and this is really a discussion for another topic... but... :) When people talk about game review percentages being skewed because no one uses the lower half of the scale, it's good to remember where we traditionally learn what those percentages mean. In the US, that tends to be in school when papers are returned to us, and 90+=A, 80s=B, 70s=C, 60s=D, 50-=F. Basically, it doesn't matter how far below the half-point you are, anything down there is failing. Just different levels of mediocrity, at that point. I personally think that the reason so few reviewers use the lower half of the scale is that they're simply less familiar with it. Getting a D on a paper is generally considered bad, the worse you can get and still pass a class. Below that is just F, and so our scale really starts at 50 and goes to 100.

Interesting enough, for all the specifics that grading on a 100% scale gives, five point star systems have less of this problem, since reviewers are far more statistically likely to give a game 2 out of 5 stars than a 40%.

Kinda weird, eh?

[Xerxes]

And now a word from Video Game Masterpiece Theatre...

Dost thy forgeteth thine tragedy, Star Wars: Battlegrounds. Wherest enemy leaped forth to fight the walls that hast not attacketh them.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

Can I now stop hearing about how great UbiSoft is, how they are the best of the big publishers, and the antithesis of EA? First Ghost Recon, now Rainbow Six. These were critically acclaimed titles on the PC, and now they are a joke.

I'm not against the Xbox per se, but the raping of various PC franchises that have been ported to the Xbox makes me sad.

[jim_rock]

Can I now stop hearing about how great UbiSoft is, how they are the best of the big publishers, and the antithesis of EA? First Ghost Recon, now Rainbow Six. These were critically acclaimed titles on the PC, and now they are a joke.

I'm not against the Xbox per se, but the raping of various PC franchises that have been ported to the Xbox makes me sad.

Wow this guy is cool. Elitism is so cool. My Xbox360 is gonna have watercooling. Do you have watercooling on your haughty-taughty PC, bitch?

[The Iron Weasel]

I dunno its definatly not as good as Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield (the pc version) i loved that game, but its still a good game, i really am enjoying it, and its nice to see that they are taking a chance and making a new game, and not just rs3 again.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

Wow this guy is cool. Elitism is so cool. My Xbox360 is gonna have watercooling. Do you have watercooling on your haughty-taughty PC, bitch?


How was I being an elitist? Anyone without Xbox blinders on can clearly see that many franchises suffered in the move from PC to Xbox. Microsoft repeatedly said that this would not happen, and then it did.

Oh, I almost forgot: BITCH. :p

[Salat]

Oh, I almost forgot: BITCH. :pHa - first guffaw of the day! Thanks, Gnome.

Your point about raping PC franchises misses the mark a bit (though not completely). Sure, some of the older Clancy games were PC titles (Rogue Spear for instance). Some weren't. Ghost Recon was an XBox live launch title that was then released on the PC. Even though the XBox version came out a month before the PC version - and the XBox version may well have been a port of the PC version - it's hard to claim that it was a PC franchise.

Anyway - nowdays, Ubi tends to release to all the major platforms simultaneously - which I suspect is the problem here. They didn't focus on putting together a high quality title, and instead tried to spread the love around, and ended up getting ubispooge on the PC/PS2/and XBOX at the same. As we know - just cause it compiles doesn't make it fun.

[civx]

Ha - first guffaw of the day! Thanks, Gnome.

Your point about raping PC franchises misses the mark a bit (though not completely). Sure, some of the older Clancy games were PC titles (Rogue Spear for instance). Some weren't. Ghost Recon was an XBox live launch title that was then released on the PC. Even though the XBox version came out a month before the PC version - and the XBox version may well have been a port of the PC version - it's hard to claim that it was a PC franchise.


Ghost Recon came out on the PC almost a year before the XBOX version.

[Salat]

Ghost Recon came out on the PC almost a year before the XBOX version.You are right and I was wrong - the PC version of GR came out before the XBox version.

I still stand by my support of Magnanimous Gnome's Bitch comment - even though I doubt the problems with R6L are the result of a porting issue. This is the kind of thing that happens when you rush something to market without adequate QA - kind of like my earlier argument.

[leo2005]

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[civx]

Hello!

WWW.TOOWAY.COM is a professional WORLD OF WARCRAFT
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Your site sucks, sorry.

[jim_rock]

leo2005 you need to die