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Monday 19 April 2004

Raven Shield: Athena Sword [slim]

An expansion to the fantastic Raven Sheild for a tenner? Bargain!
The returns on this small investment are quite significant however. You get a new single player campaign, if you're into that kind of thing. It's quite nice, but also quite short, but hey, it's only a tenner right? The new maps look foxy, and seem to be larger than the original RS maps in european settings like a Castle and a Greek Marketplace. One of the missions even deviates from the ole defuse or hossie rescue and has you tracking down a perp, which is a nice change. Shame you can't play all the maps with this objective, it's fun.
They've also included some new multiplayer dedicated maps, including some old Rainbow Six classic levels from past games. These aren't just cynical re-skins either, they've added stacks more detail to them and they really don't look much different from the brand new levels. These new levels are really worth the price of admission alone, they're tried and tested and brought bang up to date, sweet.
Theres some new guns, I'm not really that bothered about that really, I pretty much stick to the AUG anyway...
Finally they've given some new game modes for multiplayer. Capture the enemy is fun, you shoot your tango, he surrenders, you have to go and cuff him or he'll wake up and have a go at you again. While he's cuffed, he can't do anything but can be rescued by his mates. Cuff all the other team and you win. It's quite smart, because it means one guy can't easily ownor, as he's vulnerable while cuffing. You need to team up and coop to spank. A new adversarial terrorist hunt mode is lots of fun. It's your team vs the terrorists vs the other player team. Either cap all the other team or more terrorists than them to win. It's tense stuff, as you have to be wary of your room cleaining of the terrorists because fo the human threat. Other modes are less leet, a pilot mode that rips off CS's, a khamakazi mode that's pilot with a slight twist, but it's not really worth your time.
Patching sucks in Athena Sword, as it did with RS, and you have to uninstall all your cd emulation shit like Daemon tools and Alcholol 120% to get the damn thing installed. A tenner for 15 odd new maps and a couple of genuinley new and fun multiplayer modes is pretty good value for me though, even if the single player experience is a bit short.

7 comments:

  1. Co-op in straight T-hunt mode is much better because they seem to have made the AI move of a roamer and sensitive to noise. They seem to hear running, reloads, investigate and if spooked they'll run around like crazy which can get interesting. The buggers also hear my beloved TMP but now strangely don't all come running when you mow them like grass with a shotgun. Weird but fun!
    Also, while I'm deeply unimpressed by Ubi's stance on the whole optical writer and CD emulation tools, I don't appear to have been bitten by it. My only optical drive is a DVD writer and I have Daemon Tools installed. Works even though I haven't disabled it, let alone uninstalled it. YMMV as they say.
    The patching is fucking comedy. Of course there's no Linux server so we're running a server on Wench rather than our elite Game2XS box. Do you think the French go to special Sucking Schools?

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  2. There's no fucking excuse for the lamo technical shit either. It's UT engine ffs, yet it has no Linux server, the ping's fucked without icmp enabled on the server, it requires 20 fucking inbound ports instead of UT's 1 and you get some fucking strage 'waiting for server' shit still on map change. Quite how they've managed to break such a stable bit of software is beyond me!
    Such a fucking shame, because RS is a superb game online, if you make running servers easier and remove the fucking dire ubi.com propriatory shite there'd be loads more servers and players. Instead people are limited to just firing the thing up and running round with their mates.
    Course the whole sketch is a huge improvement over previous R6 games that didn't have a dedicated server at all for fucking years. TWATS!

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  3. Ah, the blog of the devil. Excellent. Screenies:It's puuuurdy sometimes, and sometimes it's fugly. This is one of the magazine-friendly maps.countar-terrorizm is sexeh!!!!!1 It makes you want to dress up in black and sneak around the neighbours' garden... or is that just me?You have to sit and watch your arse FOR HOURS if you get cuffed and your mates aren't aroundNice cod0ring, sighI don't know what to say about this shit. This kind of crap mapping passes QA? fucking slack crate fucks

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  4. Crates! What a superb idea for an FPS! How do they come up with this, they must be really smart!

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  5. Hehe, that reminds me of the q3 mod where you were a crate.

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  6. That market level last night was fookin' ace. We're getting the RS effect already though - maprot can get tiresome.
    Why have they made such iffy alternate game modes?
    Kamikaze mode just isn't what it should be. One team go tangos, they've all got bombs strapped to them which they can detonate whenever they like. They have to rush the target, being defended by the other team, all shit-hot counter-terrorist bastards like me. If they blow your team mates up, tough luck! If you shoot them and the bomb detonates, you'd better hope you're not too close! And if they get past you and go KABOOM at the target, too bad suckers, you lose!
    But no. In Kamikaze, there's only one bomber, and you escort him with guns. To a beeping laptop. And that's it. Um... wow. Amazing game mode Ubi...

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  7. Ordered this from Play. Might as well - a bit of CT/T ackshun always good for the nerves. That crate level looks SHIT though. Cheap ass nasty basic by the numbers unimaginative SHIT.
    Ho hum!

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