Like the previous games in the series, Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield has a really well thought out command and control system. At the start of the round, you’ll head to the planning room, in which you’ll assemble your team then set up their battle plan. Planning is extremely important in Raven Shield as a poor plan means certain death to your entire team, no matter how good you may be at the first-person aspect of the game.

The planning interface is cake-simple; you are given a map of the level, which pinpoints the locations of your objectives. From here, you set waypoints for both teams to follow as they set forth to complete the mission. If you’re used to just jumping into a level without much of a plan, the terrorists will stomp you into the dirt. If you’re not much of a planner and just want to get into the action, you can choose a pre-built plan, which your teams will follow to the letter. Along with setting the basic "go here then here" types of waypoints, you can set "wait here and snipe", "wait here until I signal" and quite a few other types of tactical waypoints. If you expect to succeed at Raven Shield, you’ll need to learn how to utilize every one of these waypoint features.

Once you’ve completed planning your assault and have equipped your team, you’ll be dropped into the mission. From here, everything switches to a first-person perspective; almost tricking you into thinking you’re in one of those twitch-based FPS titles. You couldn’t be more wrong if that’s what you’re thinking Raven Shield is. While you’ll experience plenty of firefights, you’ll spend most of your time commanding your teammates as they open doors, clear rooms and save hostages. This is a game that requires you make plenty of tactical decisions in order to complete your objectives and keep your team alive. Twitch gamers looking for a quick Quake style FPS fix need not apply.

Commanding your team members is really pretty simple to get the hang of. Whenever there’s an action to be performed, an icon representing it will appear. If the icon is brightly illuminated, that means you’ll be performing the action if you hit the action button. You can back away however, and the icon will go dull, which means once you hit the action button, your teammates will take care of the task. Holding down the action button pulls up a more in-depth menu so that you can have your team not only open the door, but also throw a grenade into it, then clear the room of any stragglers. The command menu can also be accessed by pointing your crosshairs on a location, holding down the mouse button, then selecting an action from the available choices. You can easily switch between team members and entire teams by hitting the appropriate keyboard button, allowing you to control ever aspect of every team member quickly and efficiently.

The only real weakness in Raven Shield’s gameplay are the missions, which I found to be a little too scripted and too obvious after awhile. The bad guys are always in the same location, and generally fight the same way, and the missions aren’t all that varied in the tasks you need to accomplish. Also, the terrorists aren’t always as intelligent as they should be; sometimes gladly standing still and sucking down all the lead you send their way. Other times, they can be very sneaky, employing cover and sending grenades your way to force your team to scatter. This lack of consistency isn’t so obvious as to ruin the game for you, but it certainly makes some rounds a bit too easy.

Raven Shield follows the proud tradition set by recent Ubi titles by sporting some really outstanding graphics. Textures and backgrounds are well done, and the special effects are simply amazing at times. My favorite effect appears when you throw a flash grenade a bit too close to your team, causing them all to be stunned. During this stunned period, your speakers will emit a shriek that’s a perfect simulation of ears ringing, while the screen goes into a loopy slow-motion psychedelic spin. During this time, it’s best to duck and cover, since you only gain your sight back though time, and it’s really quite amazing to watch how the game simulates the slow return of normal vision. Objects start out as blurs, then slowly change to fuzzy shapes and finally the double vision ends and you can see again. Smoke grenades are also something to see as they slowly fill the area with a hazy smoke that gradually thickens to block all vision. As you move towards the periphery of the smoke, you’ll find it’s much thinner and your visibility slowly returns. Lastly, there are the gas grenades, which I won’t explain the effects of, suffice it to say they are just as realistic as the rest of the effects.

For gore fans, there’s plenty of it in Raven Shield. Headshots give off a sickeningly wet sound as the target’s fluids spray against the wall behind the victim. Dead terrorists crumple and crawl almost too realistically, forcing you to look away from the screen at times.

My only quibble with Raven Shield is the polygonal nature of your teammates' bodies and the lack of detail in the terrorists. They (the terrorists) are all really generic looking and don't move with the fluidity of your teammates.

Go ahead, step on some broken glass in a room and see just how realistic the sound is in Raven Shield. No stone has been left unturned in this game when it comes to sound, ok, maybe the character voices, but I’ll cover that in a minute. All of the weapon sounds, from the thump of a silenced machine pistol to the crack of a sniper round sound incredibly realistic. Sound plays a huge role in this game, and as such, Ubi spared nothing in making it perfect.

My only gripe is the voice acting, which is flat and repetitive, just like in the other Tom Clancy games. I love how my Russian marksman sounds like he’s from the Midwestern United States. It’s pretty rare they speak with any sort of accent, which kind of irked me since this is supposed to be an international team of special operatives.

Just like every other single-player campaign, Raven Shield’s, once completed, won’t give you any reason to come back for more. That’s not to say it’s "bad" in any way, it’s just that there’s nothing in it that compels you to pick your way through it again.

Multiplayer is really where this game shines. Much like its predecessors, Rainbow Six: Raven Shield allows for online multiplayer through LAN play and the Internet. The Internet version is limited to play on Ubi Soft’s "Ubi.com" service, which is, thankfully free, but known to have outages on more than one occasion. There are plenty of multiplayer missions and modes to keep you playing Raven Shield until Rainbow Six 4 comes out. It is important to note now that multiplayer requires every player have his or her own legitimate copy of the game. If you try to play with a copy of someone else’s CD, the CD Key system will prohibit you from joining the game. There were also some issues with the game thinking you had it installed incorrectly if you had two network cards in your PC, but that is fixed in the 1.1 patch released in early April.

While hardcore deathmatch fans might be put off by the planning and teamwork elements of Raven Shield, nearly everyone else will have a great time with it. Sure the AI goes from insanely stupid to insanely good, and the lack of original levels can get boring at times, but once you get into the groove of this title, you’ll have a hard time putting it down. The online multiplayer introduces a whole new level of fun to the game, ensuring you’ll get your money’s worth when you purchase it. This is a definite "buy" in my book.