Rainbow Six once again hits the XBOX with Lockdown, a game that hopes to change the face of XBOX Live. Rainbow Six: Lockdown is the follow up to last years hit Rainbow Six: Black Arrow and continues the story of Ding Chavez and his Team Rainbow operatives. This year Red Storm decided to go the extra mile and totally revamp Rainbow Six's online play. They've also tweaked the AI and delivered a new, intense single player game mode. And this time it's personal because terrorists have kidnapped a member of Team Rainbow.

Lockdown's single player mode hasn't really changed that much since Black Arrow, but the few improvements made are noticeable. The biggest and best improvement to single player is the AI. Enemies will now use better tactics in various situations. What that means to you, the player, is that slower movement and paying more attention to surroundings is the best course of action. Enemies will now, more than ever, toss grenades at you. They will try to flank you unnoticed, pop out of corners to surprise you, and even call for backup. They will also react much faster than any other Rainbow Six game so far. Another addition to single player is the option to change your teammates' load outs before a mission. Speaking of teammates, now the number of Team Rainbow operatives at your disposal has expanded. No longer will missions be the same three other guys from the older games. There are also new weapons and tools to use and unlock as well as Red Storm finally adding the longtime favorite heartbeat sensor to the game. The heartbeat sensor was a highly used tool in the PC versions of Rainbow Six and it's good to finally see it on the console games. Rainbow Six: Lockdown also gains some new squad tactical moves like the shotgun door breach.

Rainbow Six: Lockdown's biggest appeal will be the XBOX Live gameplay as it has been with previous installments of the series. Red Storm has maintained all of the game types we've come to love like Team Survival, Retrieval, Team Sharpshooter, and Total Conquest. The big change is the Persistent Elite Creation mode (P.E.C. for short) where everything you do during your XBOX Live matches is logged and attached to your character profile and gamertag. With P.E.C. you will create your own Rainbow Six character and use points or money gained in online matches to alter skills or unlock new weapons or equipment. Your character will be created as one of the four new soldier classes introduced into Rainbow Six: Lockdown. Soldier classes are Commando, Spec Ops, Engineer, and Combat Medic each with their own unique arsenal and skills. Character customization has a very wide range and there should be many unique looking soldiers running about the Live servers. I believe 50,000 unique creations is what was originally promised.

The audio and visual of Lockdown are not much different from the previous games, but even a little improvement is better than none. Lockdown's graphics are basically as good as Black Arrow's graphics, though things do seem to look better in some areas. That's not to say that any of the Rainbow Six games on XBOX ever looked bad because they don't. And those ragdoll physics we've come to love remain the same as always. The audio is slightly improved as the enemies talk more as do your own teammates. Hearing your teammates talk about something other than the mission at hand is actually something that the game needed. There are also a few environmental sounds that were added for the purpose of more realism.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown continues the tradition of bringing us the best tactical squad-based shooter on the market. Lockdown's minimal improvements to the single player game are significant enough to warrant a purchase for diehard fans of anything Rainbow Six. Where the try gold lies in Lockdown is in the XBOX Live multiplayer mode. Taking the concepts of persistent characters and adding them to Rainbow Six gameplay was probably one of the best moves Red Storm and Ubisoft could make. So many other games have gone that route and it would've been a shame for a game with the realism of Rainbow Six to not add something that enhances the realism even further. Now gamers can create soldiers that will learn and improve as they experience more combat. Whether it be single player or multiplayer, Rainbow Six: Lockdown is a winner. In a poker game of tactical squad shooters Lockdown would have a Royal Flush.