Rainbow Six 3 : Black Arrow

Rainbow Six 3 : Black Arrow brings us a whole load of new maps, some new game types a whole bunch of new XBox Live 3.0 features such as clans & voice messages, as well as improved AI.

Wrapped up in a package that is half the price of the original Rainbow Six 3 game, there's not much really that anyone could find to complain about.


Ok, maybe just a couple of small niggles:

1. The multiplayer maps are all so huge, that playing a multiplayer game with just a small group of say, four players, can be frustrating.

2. In multiplayer mode, sometimes bullets don't seem to have an discernable effect on your target. We haven't been able to discern whether this is a bug, or an attempt to balance up the multiplayer game so that it's not quite so easy to kill your opponent.

That said, they have given us some fantastic new maps, and new modes such as Retrieval (like capture the flag, but with a single toxic cannister that must be retrived to your own base).


Another mode charges you with the task of taking (and maintaining) control of a number of locations across the map and holding them, preventing an enemy takeover.

Add to this all the single player missions, terrorist hunt and deathmatch games and you start to see what a bundle of value Black Arrow represents.

The enemy AI has been improved too, with enemies no longer just standing around and waiting to be hit, they make improved use of cover and call for backup in tricky situations. However, they still manage to drop a grenade on themselves from time to time.


There's not much change in the weapons, as far as we can tell, apart from the addition of a deadly new sniper rifle which requires a more accurate shot but has the advantage of 100% damage, as apposed to the PSG-1's damage level of around 70%.

The aiming reticule of the weapons has been tightened up, requiring you to be more accurate while moving, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but increases the challenge to people who may be used to playing the game with the mouse on PC.

Black Arrow has extended the life of RS3 in a massive way, and looks set to dominate the XBox charts for some time.