Rogue Spear to be released 22th September
If you liked Rainbow Six, it's clear you're going to like its sequel, Rogue Spear. But what may not be clear is how much you'll like it. After playing through a four-mission beta,
I've found it hard to go back to Rainbow Six. Rogue Spear not only fleshes out the game system of that preeminent 3D squad game, but adds elements that are hard to live without once you've lived with them. For instance, Rogue Spear allows you to peek around corners. Not since Looking Glass's venerable System Shock has this been so important. Walk up to a corner, hold down the "peek" button, and then strafe to one side to lean out. Peeking around corners became second nature while playing Rogue Spear. You can shoot while peeking, but more importantly, most of your body is protected from anyone on the other side who's waiting to return fire.
Also significant is the ability to call up the mini-maps for all four teams during a mission. This is a useful way to keep track of everyone's progress between "Go" codes. It also adds tension when your teammates come under fire…and you see their dots wink out as they're killed. A comprehensive status screen now keeps you posted on how well each team member is doing. And after all the traffic jams in Rainbow Six, your squad in Rogue Spear seems extra careful not to get in your way when you're maneuvering through tight areas.
When a mission is over, you can run a cinematic replay, watch the action from different angles to check what went wrong and right, and save it for later perusal. This feature used to be common in flight sims, and it's invaluable in a game with this much tactical detail. When planning a mission, you can now order teams to frag or flashbang a room, allowing for finer control of how your groups perform. Flashbangs will now leave a realistic but terribly annoying ring in your ears if you stand too close.
In multiplayer games, you can use jammers to confuse heartbeat sensors and false heartbeat pucks to serve as decoys. Rainbow Six is one of the great unsung heroes of first-person shooter engines. It did an admirable job of re-creating detailed real-world settings. Although the graphics in Rogue Spear look essentially the same as Rainbow Six, it has sharper textures and some fancy new effects, all set in vivid new locations.

Among the four missions in the beta, the Kosovo map was the most impressive. Set in streets, winding alleys, and bombed-out buildings, it's a tense urban crawl with plenty of opportunities for sniping and ambushes.
A mission in a dockyard warehouse is centered around an open courtyard where you have to punch your way through patrols to stop a waiting escape car.
The hardest mission is found in Prague's Opera House, where a cluster of hostages is held on the stage of this vast, ornate building. At the first sign of gunfire, the terrorists start executing their victims, so this mission requires perfect stealth and crackerjack timing among your teams.
The final mission in the beta was set in the cramped bunkers of a Siberian outpost manned by well-armed troops.
Rogue Spear has even more replay value than Rainbow Six. Once you've completed a mission, you can play a Terrorist Hunt on that map. Your teams have to clear the map of randomly placed terrorists.
Even more exciting are the Lone Wolf scenarios on unlocked maps. Here, you have to cross the map alone to reach an extraction point. Creeping through the rainy alleys on the Kosovo map, using the heartbeat sensor to avoid soldiers, is a whole new game. The new features, toys, and missions are certainly welcome additions in Rogue Spear. But, personally, I'd buy it just to play the Lone Wolf.