Lockdown vs Regiment

Both arrived today!!! So here's my effort at comparing the two.

Overview:

Lockdown:
Game Engine: Unreal Engine
Dedicated Server: Yes (no special card needed, no cd needed, full game install needed)
Singleplayer AI Backup: Yes
Multiplayer AI Backup: ?
Team Multiplayer: Yes
Map Editor: Yes, included
SP Game: 4/10
MP Game: 6/10
Training 3/10 (just a shooting range)
Realism: 7/10 (meh, the leaning and movement loses it for me. Weapons realism is maybe nearly as good as RvS)
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 7/10 (good but reports of an annoying clicking on a lot of PCs)
Playability: 4/10
Lasting Appeal: 8/10 (mod tools, map editor)
Addictiveness: ?/10
Controls: 7/10 (can be annoying switching weapons and giving orders)
Value: 6/10
Overall: ?/10

Regiment:
Game Engine: Unreal Engine
Dedicated Server: No (there appear to be parts of it in the system folder but unusable and undocumented)
Singleplayer AI Backup: Yes
Multiplayer AI Backup: Yes
Team Multiplayer: Sorta (well, there is, but not fixed teams - see review for details)
Map Editor: No (maybe later, it is Unreal engine so isnt that hard to make one!)
SP Game: 7/10
MP Game: ?/10 (not tried yet)
Training: 9/10 (just lost the one point for not being very clear on the scoring)
Realism: 9/10 (can be switched to "arcade" mode if you dont want it realistic)
Graphics: 7/10 (its a bit cartooney, but on the other hand it gives a clearer view)
Sound: 8/10 (nice sound effects in the training maps)
Playability: 9/10
Lasting Appeal: 5/10 (no map editor or mod tools yet)
Addictiveness: ?/10
Controls: 10/10 (its perfect, not too many buttons, can find the ones I want without any problems as its almost a RvS clone)
Value: 9/10 (a tenner cheaper than Lockdown!)
Overall: ?/10

Final Notes
(to do)

The Regiment
After an initial worry that I'd been sent the wrong version, when the splash screen announced the option to "Spiel Installieren" it turns out they just havent localised that bit - the next screen (assuming you can translate the German front-end) offers the language options.

Downloading the patch that's available already on day of release, I started the game...

Nice to see the obligatory nVidia logo on startup

Intro movie looks okay.. little fuzzy. Its basically the downloadable trailer

The first screen asks you to create a profile, so thats a good sign for anyone sharing a computer with others. Quick FcUK note here - the profile name doesnt allow an underscore, but it does allow a space which is displayed as an underscore... so just use FcUK(space)(letter)

Okay onto the main game menu, we've got singleplayer and multiplayer options, plus the ability to look at your high scores. I've turned resolution and graphics options up to full to test the game engine to the max, same with audio (hardware EAX).

I customised the controls to work better with my ZBoard Gaming Keyset (which really was just a case of remapping crouch from Ctrl to C), the controls look quite simple (no BF2 usage of the entire keyboard with no spare keys here!) and quite similar to RvS...

The default weapons keys are 1 - Primary, 2 - Sidearm, 3 - Knife, 4 - Shotgun, 5 - Grenades

And with that, its time to go to the Klling House...

The Killing House is the training mission, set at the SAS training facility in Hereford. You begin with four lessons in room clearance. Nice easy mission...

I couldnt progress to the second training mission, despite having completed the first one. I completed it three more times and still it wouldnt let me click on the next mission. Pretty damn major failing in the UI, what kind of monkeys did they beta test this with?

So digging out the manual it turns out you have to pass a mission with an A, B, or C grade - I was getting D's. Would be nice to see that on the screen somewhere and not have to read it in the small print of the pamphlet no bugger reads anyway! I still say its a UI failure as it didnt tell me anywhere on the screen that my score wasnt high enough to progress, just "Success" in the mission. They're also not very clear on *why* you get a low score - you just get a low score with "success" against every objective! Was I not accurate enough? Not fast enough? Ah, theres a "stats" tab - thats better, seems I was 100% accurate and took twice the time, so lets try again at speed, sacrificing accuracy. - much better, a B

Armed with that knowledge I swept through "Room Clearance 3" without any problems, just sweeping the targets as it says instead of aiming at them.

By the fourth exercise I realised you dont have to shout "clear" on every target, just at the end of each room <!-- s:oops: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_redface.gif" alt="" title="Embarassed" /><!-- s:oops: -->

Then its onto the target range, beginning with gun familiarisation, where you learn to use the MP5 (which isn't a new audio file format). And then more training missions, which are pretty useful in learning the game's physics more than anything else - you get used to how fast the weapons work, how much recoil to expect, and also expectations such as how fast the game expects a player to be able to react.

I love this game and im still in the training missions!!!

Multiplayer options are up to 4 players in co-op or an interesting "Sabre Squad" mode where you can have up to 20 players divided into SAS/Terrorist teams, where the SAS have better equipment but theres more players in the terrorist team - you score on terrorist kills then every terrorist who killed an SAS guy switches places with them.. so its not geared towards clan vs clan play but is good for a group of people who dont mind switching around and fragging one another. Theres no dedicated server Server can be set to arcade or realistic mode. Double-tapping kills in this game.

The graphics are just a little cartooney and not the near photo-realistic stuff of BF2 but gameplay more than makes up for it. SP games consist of you and 3 AI players, while the MP co-op missions are the exact same missions but with other players taking the place of the AI (it makes up the numbers with AI if theres less than four of you so its perfect for when theres only two or three of us online wanting to play!).

Played the first SP mission, took 7m30s todo what it said I should take under 2 minutes to do, hehe. Only compaint about the AI backup is that they kept getting in front of me when I was shooting!

After 3 retries I forced myself to put the game down to try Lockdown.

And at this point I had to force myself to put the game down

Rainbow Six: Lockdown

FIrst thing you notice opening the Lockdown package is not one but two key codes. One printed on the DVD (ick!) and one for online play on a seperate card.

Then the damn thing wants you to reboot your computer due to the Starforce protection system being installed. Already The Regiment is ahead on points due to not putting any protection stuff in your face at all (it doesnt even want a cd key...)

Rebooting...*sigh*

Reading the manual while it reboots, it seems the following multiplayer games are available:
Team Adversarial (our usual game )
Rivalry (team vs team to complete objectives instead of kills)
Retrieval (team vs team - bring flags back to base)
Free for All (every man for himself, deathmatch style)
Co-op Mission (go through the SP missions with friends online instead of AI)
Terrorist Hunt (co-op, clear terrorists out of a level)

So after rebooting, Starforce wants the key. Yes, the key printed on the bloody DVD... which is in the fcuking drive! *sigh* idiots....

Oh by the way, installing to just run dedicated server does *not* need a key, so thats something at least.

Now maybe I can play the game? I'm telling you, the PS/2 version didnt need all this crap...

Controls are a little tricky - I was busy remapping a lot of them. Unfortunately, theres no way of changing the way weapons are selected - one key toggles primary/secondary and another toggles between the other items you have, so dont expect to be able to use 1-2-3-4-5-6 to pick individual items Theres also too many buttons (IMHO)

It does have built-in VOIP, but I'm disregarding that for our purposes as we already have decent voice comms.

Theres a nice weapons selection, which is a major advantage over Regiment (which gives you a fixed SAS kit with an MP5). The graphics look better. The game feels worse.

For some reason theres an FPS counter on by default... cant find any easy way to turn it off either.

Graphics are *very* nice, I'm seeing reflections in puddles at my feet.

Gameplay is nowhere near fluid enough. I hate the non-leaning leaning, the running is too fast, the walking is too slow. Make a speed inbetween for walk and turn walk into "cautious advance" and it'd make a big difference.

No custom armpatches (obviously none in regiment either but I miss this from RvS)

Custom character is pretty good though. You can't customise everything but you can pick hairstyle, uniform, headgear, pouch layout, and you can pick from predefined armpatches.

Okay, big plus on multiplayer now ive had the chance to try it, the quick-fire multiplayer game feels a lot better even though its got the same physics, theres something extra about facing people instead of AI and the maps are a lot more like the RvS MP ones. Downside is that it doesnt seem to understand the same match/round concept - theres still a match consisting of X rounds but no way I can find to keep the same map all match and switch next match, it switches every round instead...

Character classes just seem to mess it up, need to keep em turned off

which is better i dont intend to buy both.... if no online play then i aint getting the regiment

About to start Lockdown - comparisons coming soon!