OK, OK, technically Rainbow Six is an international antiterrorist task force but, heh, we all know who's really calling the shots here, don't we. *Wink wink*

This is just such a manly game (some of the Rainbow 6 troops are women, but they're pretty darn manly too), it makes the Duffer want to quaff a beer and wave a flag for the rest of the afternoon. You get to sneak down dark hallways barking out macho jargon like "Bravo! Go, go, go!" and "Target eliminated!" while you blast away at hairy, sweaty enemies of freedom with the latest military ordinance. Defending freedom is fun!

OK, so let's get serious.

Raven Shield is the third entry in macho/military/'Merican icon Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six franchise. Athena Sword is its expansion disk. Rainbow Six 3 (that's s-i-x six, numeral 3 - we reviewers have to notice that kind of stuff) is a first person shooter set in the immediate future that aims for tactical realism over cinematic flash. That means that there are no "health bars" - if you get shot you're down, and a well-place enemy sniper can take you out literally before you know what hit you. (It is possible, technically, for a character in the game to get wounded or incapacitated, but it doesn't mean much - wounded characters carry on pretty much like normal, while incapacitated characters might as well be dead, they're equally out of the game). On the upside, you don't (with a couple of exceptions) go into a fight in solitary, Rambo-like splendor. Instead, you're with up to seven computer controlled buddies who have your back. It's pretty easy to switch around from one character to the next, especially if your current character gets taken out.

The Duffer is pretty sure that this game really comes into its own in multiplayer games, when the whole team (either the eight-person task force or the three or four person fire teams) is made up of human-controlled characters all trying to keep one another alive. The Duffer, however, doesn't do multiplayer, and while I enjoyed the solo campaign, there is definitely some weirdness in playing with that many computer-controlled bots behind you. A couple times the backup members of my fireteam got jammed in the door, and I had to body slam them with my character to bust them loose. And it's always a temptation to let your teammates draw the enemy fire, dropping like flies while you poke around for the safe option. Using your buddies as cannon fodder is probably not the kind of tactical and procedural realism the designers of the game were aiming for.

The Duffer freely admits that most of this game is totally over his head. For example, lovingly realistic depictions of dozens of real-world weapons is a major feature. The Duffer, however, honestly didn't care which gun he was a-totin' most of the time (other than a certain hard-won preference for light automatic weapons with large-capacity magazines). There's also a large and intricate mission planning interface that lets you pre-plan your operations to control every movement of every man in your squad. The Duffer never did figure out how to make this part of the game do tricks, however, instead being content with the pre-loaded mission plans, which seemed to work fine. (In this, the Duffer comforts himself, he was being very realistic, in that soldiers from the dawn of time have just gone where their bosses told them to, shooting at anybody along the way who looks unfriendly.)

In my peculiar and limited way, however, the Duffer enjoyed this game (despite the fact that my friendly body count was truly appalling). At first it was kind of frustrating, particularly those aforementioned enemy snipers and gun emplacements that could take you out with such appalling ease (as long as you have squad members left, you can switch bodies when you're killed, but there are no in-mission saves, so if your mission fails you've got to go back and redo from start - fortunately, most missions are fairly short). After a few missions, though, I started developing the kind of instincts the game required, using kneel and prone positions defensively, leaning around corners before stepping out, and making creative use of cover and concealment. I started to feel like I was thinking like a real soldier under fire, which I suppose is what the designers were after.

The campaigns do have a coherent Clancy-esq plot, and the storyline from the Raven Shield campaign carries on into Athena Sword (more than a dozen missions in Raven Shield, plus six more in Athena Sword). The maps are gorgeous, and the enemy is reasonably intelligent. The biggest problem with the missions is that after awhile they all start to feel kinda the same. A couple of valiant attempts to break up the monotony proved a bit problematic - a solo, stealth mission in Raven Shield proved to be so tough I finally had to finish it using a somewhat bogus work-around I found on the net, while a timed mission in Athena Sword was exciting, but didn't live up to the game's realism test (if one fire team is escorting the hostage out of the hotel, wouldn't it make more sense to send in a second team to disarm the bomb - especially since it's located so conveniently close to the exit?).

I also found the campaign's choice of enemies interesting. Neo-Nazi South American gun runners. Given the real terrorist threats out there in the world today, Latin American fascists seem almost, well, quaint.

For the record, the new content in Athena Sword is four very nice new maps, used in the previously-mentioned six-mission mini-campaign, and a half dozen new weapons (none of which I could tell apart from any of the weapons in Raven Shield).

The game looked great and ran smooth on a Mac that's somewhat past its first bloom of youth. There was a little bit of slowdown in firefights with five or more participants, but it was liveable.

If you're already a fan of multiplayer gaming, the Duffer suspects this may be the game for you, particularly if you're a bit of a gun nut or Military buff. If this describes you, try the game out with your buddies, and then send GamersInfo a review of the game as it's supposed to be played. If you're like the Duffer, and looking for casual, solo gaming thrills, you could definitely do worse than this game, but wait until it hits the bargain bins.