You must be briefed on the mission parameters, decide who will go on the mission, equip your shooters, and make a detailed plan of how you will handle the assault once your team is in place. You are presented with 16 missions that take you around the world killing tangos (bad guys). When the game starts, you are in a group of twenty highly skilled operatives of different nationalities (hence the name Rainbow). The result of this is that your wingmen essentially revert to being spare lives, though with 15 real-life guns as well as flashbangs and frag grenades, there should be enough toys to keep things interesting. So if you want to be a sniper, everyone's a sniper. For those who can't be arsed laying out a strategy, there are pre-set waypoints, teams are fixed, and all that's really required is to choose a weapon set for your team. Each mission still begins with a session at theīlackboard, but with a vastly reduced number of options. Where the game really departs from the R6 formula is in the depth of tactics and pre-mission planning required.

In between missions Jack does pop his head in to lend some words of wisdom, but as the game contains no likenesses or voices from the film we are spared the ignominy of taking advice from Ben Ass-fleck. Instead of playing the film's lead character Jack Ryan, you find yourself back in the snug confines of a covert ops ski mask leading a small counter-terrorist team through 11 globe-hopping single-player scenarios. What we're left with is a tactical FPS with only superficial similarities to the film, but with strong links to the Rainbow Six series. Only when the opportunity to tie it in with the film arose was the storyline adapted to fit. In fact, The Sum Of All Fears was originally going to be a totally separate Tom Clancy game, built on a tweaked Ghost Recon engine. However, before you start listing all the reasons games based on films are not to be trusted, take a deep breath, for this is no mere big-screen cash-in.

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