Everyone who knows me is aware I was put on this earth solely to play Rainbow Six 3; this was the game that opened my eyes to a whole new level of gaming.  I went from dabbling around on video games to becoming an obsessed weirdo girl who never left her room.  Rainbow Six 3 stole so much of my time that I recall my mother phoning me from Kansas asking if I was on drugs because my sister mentioned to her that I hadn’t left the house in months.  Yeah I admit I was little antisocial, but how could I not be with a game that was so much fun? I would totally lose track of time when I was playing it.

Fortunately for my health, Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow came out and I found myself actually walking away from the controller to do stuff like… EAT.  Black Arrow is Rainbow Six 3 minus the major glitches.  You’re probably thinking ‘perfection’, right?  Well, not for me.  After playing more than 1000 hours on Rainbow Six 3, you get thrown off by any change that happens to the game. My whole attitude is if it ain’t broken then don’t fix it.  So you can imagine my opinion about Lockdown when I heard it ran on an entirely new engine.

I got to play Lockdown for three hours a day for three days straight at E3.  At first glance, the game seemed to be a completely different format than any previous Rainbow.  My first reaction was, ‘Whoa, whoa! Wait a minute, what is this crap?’ (That was me being biased and not accepting any kind of change to ‘my game.’) Then after playing it for a couple of hours, I realized Ubisoft could be on to something here… Ubi managed to incorporate everyone’s favorite features from all games and package it nicely in Lockdown.

Here’s a quick briefing to the changes I saw:

Character classes - Commando, Engineer, Medic, Spec Ops.

Leveling up system - When winning you earn points that can buy anything from equipment to clothing.  You can also add points to accuracy, reload time, and health.  Meaning the more games you win the more skilled you become.

Point system on retrieval - 1 point for every kill and 10 pts for a retrieval. The points are added up and the team with the highest tally wins the round.

New weapons:

Command – Heavy Armor, Ballistic Shield.  Engineer - Proximity mines, security keycard, Mobile Gun Turret.  Medic - Nerve gas, medic kit, field clinic.  Spec Ops - Knife, PDA, Sensory Jammer, Heat Sensor

Female characters! Woot!

New graphics engine.

Seriously, it’s been a few weeks since E3 and I haven’t stopped thinking about this game. Everyone knows that the leveling up systems is what makes a game so addicting… well, I was an addict before this new feature so I can’t even grasp what my life will be like when this game comes out.  Just having stats made me want to play through out the day and be the best.  So now having combined stats and skill point all while leveling up, that’s just insane to me! Honestly, this is going to be one sick game!