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Maps

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Five of Rainbow 6's maps have been included in Urban Ops. Estate, Hacienda, Hot Zone (Bio Lab-woohoo!), Skyscraper, and Amazon are all looking better than ever, and include a few new twists, the most obvious of which is the rock ledge that overlooks the front gate on the Hacienda map. There is also a tunnel that players can run down through from the top of the rock face, and it exits near the wood shed outside of the main Hacienda building. This adds a very interesting new component to multiplayer games on Hacienda, and most players we believe will welcome this change.

Fig. 4. Urban Operation's Hacienda

The new UO maps are very large, and take place in cities that span the globe. The new maps are Turkish Bazaar, Subway Station, Canals of Venice, Warehouse District, and Hotel + Crashed bus. We'll have a close look at these maps next week, but after already playing through each a few times, we can say they play well and their appearance shows the fruits of the art people's labour.

Fig. 5. Exterior view on one of the new Urban Operations mission maps

RSE has also kindly included some new multiplayer maps. Chemical Compound, Graveyard, Old Train Tracks, Snow Base, Storage Depot, Training Maze, and Underwater Habitat are some of the new environments, and they are among some of the cooler maps we've seen in the R6/RS series. Again, we'll have more on these next week sometime. One very important feature to mention is that the full Rogue Spear campaign and missions are playable through Urban Operations.

Terrorist Abilities

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RSE has included some new abilities for the terrorists, and by far the most interesting is their ability to toss grenades. The Tango's will toss frags with varying frequency and accuracy; this makes a tough game even more difficult. We've noticed that the terrorists are using some pretty neat moves as well. They will pop out behind cover and fire a burst or two and then dash back into safety as you turn to engage them. They will also squat down behind objects such as barrels and pop up and down while engaging you. There are quite a few new terrorist skins included in UO. Hostages, team members, and terrorists were the types of characters that made up Rainbow 6 and Rogue Spear. Urban Operations adds civilians to the missions now, so you're going to have to check those targets closely for weapons, since there isn't any IFF in Urban ops other than the Mark 1 Mod 0 Eyeball. This is something actual hostage rescue teams drill endlessly on: Target/friendly acquisition and recognition.

Fig. 6. Here's the windup....

Fig. 7. ..and here's the delivery! Damn, that's all we need...Tangos with frags :)