After a successful completion of that takedown you’ll move on to the Forbidden City in Beijing. In an uncharacteristic move by the Chinese government, Rainbow has been called in following a failed rescue attempt by Chinese forces. Chinese revolutionaries have seized this Forbidden City and have taken hostages, it’s up to you to rescue the hostages and take them all down.

Bad day at the office?!

You’ll find the tangos aren’t too hard to take down outside but that will change a bit once inside as you must move up stairs to reach the hostages, who are held in several places throughout the map. Luckily one of the tweaks made to the R6 engine has been on the use of grenade throwing making it easier for you to toss grenades to levels above you. Lead into these areas with flashbangs and quickly follow up with your teams clearing the room and removing hostages to safety.

Traveling the tight stairwells of Big Ben

Finally you’ll be called upon to rescue a US Senator and another hostage that have been taken in the Senate wing of the US Capitol Building. This mission has the same code designation as the mission pack itself, Eagle Watch. Coupled with that challenge you must also disarm another bomb in this mission, just as in the Taj Mahal mission. Again you will be facing tangos on multiple levels in some areas of this map and must be always alert and aware of your surroundings. This is another challenging mission and should be another great mutliplayer mission as there are scores of rooms to hide in.

One less bad guy...

I haven’t yet had the opportunity to do a multiplayer test on these maps but judging from past experiences with the original R6 maps these look to be as good if not better than some of the originals! With the already solid multiplayer aspects of this game in place there should be no problems with gamers finding some great, high-speed action.

Click to continue . . .

An additional feature thrown in to the mission pack is the allowance for the gamer to choose what is being called ‘Free Watch Mode’. If you choose this mode you can set up your teams plan and then sit back and watch it unfold on the screen before you, from either the first person or third person perspective.

This is a nice feature for a couple of reasons as it allows you to ‘let the pros do it’ and watch the AI carry your strategy to the enemy. It also serves as a great learning tool for those new to the game as a tutorial of sorts that lets you not only see how a well thought out plan is executed but as a sort of ‘leaders recon’ of the layout of the maps.

Nice paintings adorn the walls of the Capitol

I would love to see this feature carried into the sequel by allowing gamers to create demo videos similar to Quake demo’s so you can swap and share your great battles with your friends. Unfortunately this feature does not carry over to the original Rainbow Six game and let you use it for those missions, but it is a great feature that just further enhances an already outstanding game.

Another satisfied customer...

There are new operatives from which you can choose as well as three new weapons to add to the arsenal from Rainbow Six. I’m not going to spoil the fun for readers of the Rainbow Six novel, but you may be happy to see characters from the book starting to filter into the game itself!

The new weapons include the Desert Eagle .50, HK G36K and the HKG3A3, all nice additions to help you in your fight to take on terrorism wherever it rears its ugly head. They also can punch through bodyarmor well and have serious man-stopping power to put down those tough to take on tangos.

Hey don't I know you from somewhere?

On January 28th there’s only one purchase to make, Rainbow Six Mission Pack: Eagle Watch at $19.99 you can't go wrong!

Stay tuned for the multiplayer review coming soon that will cover the new missions and training maps in better depth both in co-op as well as head to head play.

Rating:

• Core Rating : 100
• Gameplay : 95
• Graphics : 90
• Sound : 92
• Intelligence/AI : 92
• User Interface/Mission Planner : 100
• Fun Factor : 100
• Learning Curve (in hours) : 2-4 hours
• Overall Rating : 95