SimHQ.com - Land Combat Zone - Review: Rainbow Six: Lockdown

Really thou... I was kind of hard on the artificial intelligence, it's really great, best of any Rainbow Six game, best of any tactical simulation, and Lockdown has the best artificial intelligence ever, NOT! Don't you worry, I haven't sold out. Lockdown has the worst friendly and enemy AI I have ever seen in a computer game, ever.

Do you know what the F5 key does in Lockdown? It's the quick save and you better use that key every single time you stack on a door. And let me tell you, no bull here, you will find that 5 out of 10 times after you give a order on a door, whether it's to flash, bang, and clear, or just to open and wait, you will be reloading your last save.

First off, we will start with your teams AI. They kill themselves; they bounce grenades and bangs off door frames onto the team. They stand in an open door way, taking hit after hit, saying "I'm hit" over and over, till they go down. Your left thinking, "hey dude, one small step to the right and they won't be able to get you." You order your team, with the action key to a location overlooking the direction we are moving, they get there, the whole team, stops, kneels, and faces the way we just came from, meanwhile the enemy steps out behind them, in the direction we haven't cleared, and wastes them all, without them doing anything, well, except for saying "I'm hit" over and over.

You tell them to stack on a door; they go to the door and face away from it, looking at a blank wall. You tell them to enter and clear, if it's a small room they may do it right, enter, then call all clear, or maybe they won't see the guy behind the glass, they call all clear, then you walk in and the bad guy engages you. If you order them into a big room, you'll see a team member moving through all this fire, and again yelling "I'm hit", and/or "I need suppressive fire", all the way to the other side without clearing anything before hand. They of course go down, and you're yelling at your screen again, "Get back here you F'in moron!" And then, you know that your team is a bunch of morons so you got to do the heavy stuff yourself, you order your team to go stand in the corner and count the cracks in the wall or something, while you go off to play the game, you hear those idiots telling you to hurry up or waiting for orders in a sarcastic tone. I tell them, really, right to the monitor, "If you weren't such a moron I wouldn't leave you over there, I'm doing you a favor, now shut up." The AI has no programming tactics what so ever. Once in a while you'll see them do good only to screw up 10 seconds later. The artificial intelligence in this game is completely unacceptable and both Ubisoft and Red Storm should have known about this because of the comments of the demo, and beta testers should have reported this also.

As for the Tangos, it's like shooting little clay targets at a fair going from side to side. You turn a corner, and you can expect a number of tangos standing in the hallway to fire on you. If you go into an open area, you'll see a beautiful environment with lots of stuff, and out of those stuff pops a tango for a second or two, then back down again, just wait and he'll pop up again in the same spot. As my friend JediMaster said when we were discussing the game over team speak. "Someone needs to make a mod that changes the sound of a moan to a DING sound whenever a tango gets hit", that you hear at the fair.

Oh, don't you worry my friends, they will flank you, not because they're trained (or programmed to flank) but since you must go down the death trail, after you pass an area, even if you have cleared everything behind you, tangos will spawn behind you or at your flank to come in an kill your team. And if you left your team behind you, they will be dead, one right after the other. Time for a quick load.

Oh, and you know how Team Rainbow has the best and most state of the art equipment like night vision, and what the manual calls "special vision", well it don't say but I assume that the bad guys have this too, because I could be clearing a dark cave, I have night vision on so can see a small head in the far distance, too far to engage, and sure enough, "Here they come" and a volley of fire comes at you. "You crazy tango guys how did you know I was coming in from that tunnel, how can you see me in total darkness from such a far distance?" Why, I'll tell you why because the AI programming in this game borders asinine.

Oh, I get it now. I just checked the credits, because I wanted to call out the AI programmer by name, but there isn't one listed. We'll have to fault the Producer and the Lead Developer. Might as well call out the 25 testers, "What, you guys didn't see a problem with the AI in beta?"

When looking at the screenshots, notice how the team stacks, what they're facing and where they're going. You will see what I mean. If you want more proof, stop by the Screenshot and Video Gallery Forum and check out the three video clips I posted there.

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