Introduction
Raven Shield is the third installment of the Rainbow Six series coming to the Macintosh and the first to be based on the Unreal Tournament 2003 engine, instead of a Quake engine. Installation was, as we're used to, easy and straightforward. The game seems to have no major bugs, at least I have not encountered any.

Gameplay
Raven Shield is one of the really tactical tactical shooters. Gameplay can be separated into two parts: planning and execution. The strategic planning phase is completely player controllable. You can set up and deploy your team(s) as you like, setting waypoints and defining actions for each location. As detailed and realistic the planning phase is, it's also complicated and complex and will be too much for the casual gamer or the lover of straight forward shooting action. To make up for that, the developers have also included pre-loaded plans for each mission, which are fairly adequate to complete each mission. However, sometimes setting up your own plan may turn out to be more sensible.

The action part of the game is quite tactical too, requiring a lot of feeling and sensitive approach. The high degree of realism in the game will show, when a single hit to your head can kill you, or you can no longer run after falling down a ladder, for example.

Raven Shield is for tacticians and fans of realism, not for fast paced action fans. You'll also have to pay attention that your teammates (which are partly computer controlled, partly commanded by the player) don't get shot, or you will have too few teammembers in the later missions.

The missions/maps are varied and well done. The plot is rather flat, not to say stupid, but that is a purely subjective opinion. You may find it compelling and realistic, I did not.

Multiplayer
Raven Shield can also be played in various multiplayer modes online or in a LAN. There are quite a few servers online and you'll always find someone to play with or against. However it doesn't offer anything new that America's Army or some other tactical shooter wouldn't already offer.

Technical Aspects
As I said before, RS:RS is based on the UT2k3 engine. This makes it the first game in the RS series to have really impressive graphics, similar if not better than the ones found in America's Army. The downside of the great graphics is the performance. It's the most taxing game I have played on my system yet. It was well playable on my machine, but performance was definitely not great. Trying it on the iBook G4 800MHz, I had to give in after a short time of trying to trick some more performance out of the game. Unplayable. Which is strange, since UT2k3 itself is while slow, still playable on that notebook.

Conclusion:
Raven Shield is definitely one of the best realistic tactical shooters on the market today. If you're into special forces simulations and want to take your time planning complex missions, this game is for you. If you're looking for quick action, you should probably look elsewhere first. Also, if you're lagging behind hardware development a bit, you might want to consider upgrading to a faster computer first. Playing at 15FPS and less is not fun.

Pros:
• Great graphics
• High degree of realism
• Manual or preloaded mission planning
• Stable
• Based on UT2k3 engine

Cons:
• Weak plot
• Poor performance

More information about Raven Shield online at http://www.aspyr.com/games.php/mac/raven/
-Bensch

Post Your Review/Ratings of Mac Raven Shield:
Halo is one of the games listed in the game review database here. You can post your review/ratings based on performance with your system. (include comments on detail/shader settings, resolution used, etc. in reports since they can dramatically affect performance. Also some think running Halo at the native LCD panel resolution performs best.)