Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield

Rainbow Six: Raven Shield is a first-person tactical shooter wherein the player takes on the role of the leader of a worldwide, anti-terrorist group, code-named Rainbow.

In 1945 two members of the fascist Ustaše movement of Croatia manage to leave the country just as it begins to crumble at the hands of the Allies, taking with them a large sum of Axis gold and spoils; disappearing entirely. In 2005 Rainbow is called in to intervene in a series of continuously exacerbating terrorist attacks on oil and financial interests carried out by neo-fascist organizations in Europe and South America. As the attacks progress they begin, more and more, to seem as if they may be inter-connected, an alarming possibility which causes Rainbow to investigate more deeply.

The game is segmented into a series of fifteen separate missions, each of which begins with a briefing and a news report concerning the outcome of the previously completed assignment. The player must prepare his men in advance by deciding how to organize them into teams and how they'll be outfitted, specifying everything from the type of body armor they will wear to the ammunition they will fire. Each member of Rainbow has different strengths and weaknesses which must be exploited depending on the nature of the mission. If during a mission any member happens to be killed they will be permanently removed from the roster and replaced with a less qualified stand-in. The option exists to load an alternate set of pre-defined arrangements for each individual mission, circumventing this stage of planning.

Each mission can be accompanied by a detailed map of infiltration, allowing the player to designate waypoints for each individual team, action points wherein they will pause in order to carry out a specific maneuver, and stopping points, which will cause them to stop until given a specific go-code. These plans will appear visibly within the game, and allow the player's AI team members to adequately navigate the level. The player isn't required to design these themselves, as pre-made plans exist for each level which can instead be altered by the player to fit their preferences.

During the action segment of each mission the player is placed at the head of one of the teams and leads it through its specifically assigned goals in conjunction with the other detachments, at any point being able either to switch between the men in his squad or between teams. The player may also give team members specific commands to be carried out, such as blowing open doors or holding position, allowing for a degree of micro-management. In an attempt to more closely mirror the actions of special operations teams, the action segment of each mission tends to be slowly paced and strongly emphasizes the dependence of the various teams on each other.

The game has four multiplayer game options, two of which are specifically designed to take advantage of Raven Shield's unique style of gameplay.