In Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Raven Shield there are terrorists to be... er... eliminated and hostages galore to be rescued. With many more terrorists out to get you than you have counter terrorists to defend, you'll be up against it - but the odds aren't entirely stacked against you: With detailed planning options and the latest in high tech gadgets in your arsenal, you might just make it out the other side.

First up, if you haven't read Rainbow Six or played the previous games in the series, don't freak out. While experience of them certainly will improve your enjoyment of this latest title, Raven Shield is certainly more than capable of standing alone. Complete with a detailed and impressive set of training levels you'll be taught how to move like a ghost and hit like a hammer, and how to choose when and what to do in specific situations.

Not just another "First Person Shooter", the Rainbow Six series has distinguished itself as "the thinking man's shooter". Yes, you play it from a first person perspective, and yes, you shoot guns - but that's it. If you try and "rambo" your way through this game, you'll be dead before you can say "Tango down!". You need to think your way through each situation, even before you (and your team) deploy.

Before you roll into the field, you are presented with an easy to manipulate and yet remarkably detailed (and powerful) interface, which allows you to plan your assault in great detail. Figure out where you will hit, where you want other teams to hit and set "go codes" to trigger your team members. Get advice and intel from a variety of sources or just load a pre-made plan and hope for the best. You wont spend much time here to start with, but once you have cut your teeth on the actual shooter part of the game, you'll start to think of ways in which the assault could have gone better - and you'll come back to this interface to make it happen. With full control over every aspect of each team's field actions, there's extreme power here - if you want to take it. If you don't, don't worry - the game ships with standard tactics for each team to use.

In addition to the standard movement options (as seen in previous Rainbow Six games, and many similar titles), you have a bunch of new moves at your disposal - and boy oh boy, do they add to the experience! For the first time, you have fluid control over peeking and door opening, in addition to being able to slide (noisily, but fast) down laddders. This enhanced level of control over how your characters interact with the environment cranks up the atmosphere and intensifies the experience more than can be described using words alone. Just know that you have an unparalleled level of control over what your CT team members get up to.

Graphically, this game is just gorgeous. Easily the best looking game in the series, it's also the best looking game in the genre. Thanks to the Unreal Warfare engine, everyday locations (such as houses and factories) all come to life with rich and complex detail. Your team mates are also incredibly detailed - you won't want these highly detailed characters to come to an untimely demise, you'll become that attached to them.

Implemented well for probably the first time, Raven Shield sports a rather fancy ragdoll effect - in a nutshell, a way of making the dead appear to actually exist in their environment. In all previous games, if you killed someone, they had a good chance of sticking straight out from a set of stairs or overhanging a balcony in a very unrealistic manner. Getting the player models to conform to their environments is a difficult task - but it's one that has been pulled off remarkably well here. It's not perfect, but it is very good and adds a lot of realism to the game.

The sounds (ambient and action related) are excellent - a real punchy and dramatic escalation when "it's all on", with tense apprehension the rest of the time. You'll find yourself straining for audio clues as to the enemy or a hostage's location and recoiling with your blood pumping when you find yourself in the thick of it. It cannot be overstated - this game sounds awesome.

It's not restricted to singleplayer gaming either. While cruising around, taking down terrorists in all sorts of exotic (and everyday) locations is all well and good, doing it either with or against your mates is amazing. It's like counterstrike (you know, that game all the kids are playing), but good. Crying out for cover fire as you come to the enemy's attention and desperately attempting to make that crate / car / building for protection is, well, unbelievably intense. You will remember each and every battle like you were really there, talk over a pint with the lads in hushed tones, for fear of "compromising" your secret anti-terrorist organisation. It's simply brilliant and must be experienced.