No game has me more excited or burdened by anticipation than ‘Rainbow6:Patriots.’ Still clinging to its 2013 release date, details on this installment are slowly but surely beginning to emerge from Ubisoft. As part of the Tom Clancy universe, RB6 maintains its place in history as the quintessential squad-based tactical shooter focusing on close-quarter engagements, nail-biting tension, & the perfect amount of “realism.” But it’s been several years now since the last installment and the “battlefield” has quite literally changed.

Disclaimer: The ‘RB6:Patriots’ information referenced within was compiled from several media outlets and is summarized in the accompanying article. Should anyone be confused, I do NOT claim to be a professional “news generator”/ journalist under the purview of their bylaws & access, traditionally reserved for the strict gathering & reporting of facts. Rather I’m acting as a “news disseminator,” spreading gaming details like an STD while editorializing on previously reported information. Thus, anyone claiming “plagiarism” is welcome to gag on my ‘Rainbow 8-3/4.’

In today’s saturated market, you can’t throw a pirated copy of ‘RB6:Raven Shield’ without hitting another military FPS. In fact, many of them are quite good and offer fans of the genre incremental tactical & graphical updates to an otherwise pigeonholed evolutionary branch of gaming. So where have Bravo team been all this time? Why come back now? And, where will ‘RB6:Patriots’ fit in the grand scheme of things?

The developers have given us just enough details in trade magazines and on podcasts to wet both our appetites and our tighty-whiteys. So I rushed to my laptop (waited several weeks) to share some of these details with all of you. I had intended to do a full write-up on RB6 until I took a ‘Black Arrow’ to the knee. Sorry. Sorry. Terrible joke. Besides, it’s completely inaccurate. I actually took a ‘Rogue Spear’ to the Distal Femur, which in truth, is slightly above the knee; just there (gestures). Never mind. No need to go into the sorted details here. But what I will do is provide you with a list of notable ‘RB6:Patriots’ features and the phone numbers of several physicians skilled in treating knee injuries, in case you’re interested.

Knee injuries are no joke. You can’t kick a football or a homeless person anymore – and did you know, knee injuries limit your ability to lift your leg and let off a ‘triumphant bum-flapping blast’ at a store or on the street. I’m tell’n you – If you fart in public just standing there, with no boisterous performance to go along with it, people look at you like you’re pathetic! There’s no appreciation for diet, effort, or the very real risk of ‘sharting’ – Ingrates! That’s the last time I ruin a perfectly good pair of pants just so they can tell their friends at lunch about the guy who spontaneously walked up and “nurtured a Hufflepuff “ (copyright 2012 – H34DCA5E) while everyone was waiting to cross the street!

Just Give Us the List, FFS!:

The fluid 2013 release date, coupled with developer fidelity claims & recent rumors concerning next gen consoles, has some speculating that ‘RB6:Patriots’ may, in fact, be one of the first titles we play on a new console.

Developers have claimed that despite the early state of the game, it already features the most realistically rendered & functioning gun models of any game to date. Reload times, operating procedures, & animations are said to be unparalleled in the current FPS space. Developers are said to be committed to real-world firearm handling that translates seamlessly to analog sticks without negating the need for accessibility and fun. Realistic melee options will be available as well.

Previous installments of RB6 games all utilized tweaked versions of the Unreal Engine. But ‘RB6:Patriots’ will use a new Ubisoft proprietary engine. This engine is a direct descendant of Anvil, known for its use in the Assassins Creed titles. Developers claim that their absence has been due, in large part, to the need to evolve a propriety next gen shooter engine from the bones of this outdated Anvil platformer.

The game features a PlayStation Home style lobby system (the HQ) for both coop & multiplayer. You’ll no longer be stuck looking at a list of pot emblems while people trade racial slurs and question your sexuality. (Sorry for that by the way. I get bored waiting for the next round to start.) But in RB6, you’ll be able to walk around, talk to teammates, and check out their customized armor, uniform, & weapons. There’s still no word on whether or not you’ll be able to do each other’s hair or shower together after the match. (Insert your own ‘soap dropping’ joke here. – Sh*t. – Just mentioning dropping the soap is a joke, isn’t it. I had wished to avoid that. – Well, as the saying goes: you wish in one hand and grope strangers with the other and see which yields better results… or something like that.)

Need a mentor? A life coach? A “shoot’em in the face” how-to instructor? Patriots is implementing a system by which new players or teammates can ask to be “mentored” by a more experienced player or, as I like to call him, an elected nob-jockey. But this feature may just work. We often tell new players to “find someone & stick with them to learn the ropes” in a game they’re unfamiliar with. Apparently, once agreed upon, squad members/underlings will be privy to this Colonel Sanders’ battlefield communications, tactics, commands, and HUD-based intel.

Want to build a sand castle? Well, RB6 has a “sandbox” to use in the HQ lobby area. This is a virtual mini-map of all the multiplayer arenas complete with windows, doors, ladders, stairs, etc. Players can now learn the maps and coordinate their efforts without the hours of getting pwned in matches normally needed to acquire this info. You can also put markers on this map so that everyone knows where & what you’re talking about even though they’re busy checking Twitter and don’t really give a sh*t.

Your character is now an imposing hybrid of Marcus Phoenix and Mikhail Baryshnikov. He can nimbly vault over obstacles whilst violently slamming into cover with the full weight and resonance of a human wearing a tactical loadout. And after all of the Cirque Du Soleil training during your 2-game stint in Vegas, rappelling is now a fluid ‘death-from-above’ tactic that even Batman would be jealous of.

Stats at the end of a match will no longer appear in boring spreadsheets. Players return to the HQ room and witness visual presentations of their performance. One example given was that of a human silhouette firing-range target depicting accuracy and hit locations. This is a nice touch. (The feature is cool, but right there I was referring to the wife trying to distract me while writing this. Whoa, another really nice touch. brb).

Where was I, oh yes. RB6 hopes to immerse you IN the game and forces you to play from different character perspectives. An example is when a hostage is strapped with a bomb, and must keep his finger on the detonator to prevent it from going off. That’s right, YOU are the hostage for this sequence. Get comfy holding down that ‘A’ button while trying to navigate & cope with the anxiety and chaos of events around you. In addition, squad commands promise to be more intuitive, streamlined, and contextually sensitive to keep you playing rather than looking at a command interface.

Options, options, & more options with no “right” answers. That’s the goal; to present numerous black & white choices in frustratingly grey situations, and force the player to deal with the outcome. Witnesses to one gameplay demo recounted a situation where the playtester deliberately chose to shoot a cop in the leg in order to hobble him. It turns out that this cop was about to confront the hostage with the bomb, making it all but certain that it would detonate and kill many others. His tactic allowed the hostage to pass unfettered and saved countless pixilated lives for the time being. Panicked players have been known to actually kill cops and civilians in other similar types of situations.

Cyberdyne/Skynet is here. ‘RB6:Patriots’ A.I. is said to be second to none. Teammates take appropriate actions based on their skill set and loadouts. Thus the sniper hangs back while the shotgun-pimp hits the kill funnel first. Both friendly’s and tangos alike utilize cover, bounding, suppression, & flanking with lethal efficacy. You’ll witness A.I.’s stumble, make mistakes, gun jams, and decision-making. In fact, desperate enemies may barricade themselves or grab a human shield. Bullets and body parts react as they should, impacting and affecting NPCs in an impressive visceral feedback system.

Morality. In ‘RB6:Patriots’ you have choices and those choices have consequences. Do you sacrifice the few to save the many? Do you risk a shot when the baddy’s got a human shield or let him get away? Your team even reacts visually, verbally, emotionally, and efficiently based on their trust in your leadership decisions.

Although FPSs are certainly part of a dried-up, clone and sequel spawning, gene pool, I have real hope for ‘RB6:Patriots.’ Firstly, they correctly predicted who would make it to this year’s NFL Super Bowl. Who really wants to see ‘RB6:Packers’ anyway. But besides that, the details emerging demonstrate that the developers are fully aware of the rinse-&-repeat formulas out there today.

As we all know, there’s more competition at the level of mediocrity. So ‘RB6:Patriots’ is striving to be the best. The FPS genre is and always will be, at its core; “person with gun.” And wow, has that translated well to countless systems and interfaces throughout gaming’s relatively short lineage. But I get most excited when a “person with gun” game gets made by a proverbial “person with insight.” We’ll just have to see if all of these things actually come to fruition when the game is finally released. Until that ‘Critical Hour,’ keep an ‘Eagle Watch’ on 360GamerCast for updates.

- H34DCA5E