Goodness, how videogames are changing. A few years ago, the 'plot' to a first-person shooter would involve a mad dictator and his army terrorising a fictitious realm. Either that, or demons rampaging out of a hellmouth. Or space aliens.

In Rainbow Six 3, however, you're protecting US oil interests against Venezuelan terrorists unhappy about their country supplying Uncle Sam with gas. On top of that, each mission is followed by a CNN-style report analysing the international ramifications of your actions. When did games designers start watching Panorama instead of Buffy? Don't worry though, as the plot to this near-future anti-terror romp unfolds, a madman with dangerous megalomaniac ambitions does eventually emerge. This is a videogame after all.

And beyond the real-world posturing, it's just a good old tactical stealth shooter, packed with nerve-jangling shoot-outs, slow-burning sniper-fests and drop-grenade-into-room-full-of-terrorists gore parties. You play Ding Chavez (clearly going under his porn name for security reasons), leader of Rainbow - a crack squad of operatives who go where no one else can, then kill everyone they meet. Apart from hostages of course, of which there are many, and you must protect them, even when they crouch in the middle of a battle zone and refuse to budge.

The missions that make up the single-player campaign mode will be very familiar to anyone who's notched up a bit of battlefield man management experience in the likes of SOCOM and Ubisoft's own The Sum Of All Fears. Truth be told, influences are clearly drawn from a number of squad-based shooters, as well as a few movies. The Alcatraz level, for example, is a homage to The Rock, while 'Old City' with its dusty back streets and swarms of enemies feels like Black Hawk Down. There's even a hint of Die Hard in the mission where you infiltrate a shiny office block over-run with terror troops.

More generally, there's clever use of cinematic techniques throughout the game. In 'Island Estate' you must rescue a kidnapped oil baron who's held hostage in his gorgeous Caribbean mansion. As you creep into the building, you notice a classical music CD has been left playing, and from then on, you're taking out enemies to the elegiac tones of Ave Maria - it's a great contrast and, notwithstanding the lack of doves flying around in slow motion, very John Woo.

Level construction is very much of the linear variety. There's usually only one way ahead, and doors to new areas are barred until you've completed your current objective. But we're fine with this. It means the story is always driving forward, and the tension remains as tight as your combat pants. Admittedly, there are exceptions. Several key set-pieces - the maze-like warehouse at the end of the shipyard level and the gripping multi-level finale to Alcatraz - feature various routes from one end of the location to the other, so there is a little room for tactical variety. And even during missions with strict A-B routes, your choice of equipment and the flexible system of squad commands tends to give you more than enough choice in how you cheat death and uphold the US of Aggghhh...

Of course, none of this chat about linearity matters when you're in there with your comrades, waiting outside a room, wondering if there's a bunch of gun-toting maniacs on the other side. RS3 does most things by the book, but it does them with polish, skill and attention to graphical detail. A factor missing in the flat look of Ubisoft's earlier Clancy-inspired squad shooters. Curtains flutter in the breeze, rubbish blows across deserted streets, sometimes you sneak round a corner to find sunlight streaming in through a shuttered window...

And then all hell breaks loose. Gunmen appear from behind cars, or fountains, or upturned tables, blasting at you, screaming at you. You've only got a few seconds. Do you clear the route with a grenade, snipe the key targets, run in, sub-machine guns blazing, or crap yourself, order your squad to engage and slump, sobbing gently in the corner of the room? See that's the thing - while other developers amateurishly section off gameplay (here's a stealth bit, now here's a shooting bit, now another stealth bit, etc), in RS2, it really is down to you.

If you want, you can go in packing more heat than a pyromaniac's barbecue and take out the enemy in a burst of armour-piercing lead. Your soldiers will back you (even if you haven't ordered them to do so, smart lads). But you can also pick off most of the targets with one sniper rifle from a concealed doorway. Not a bad idea considering your limited ability to absorb hot lead without showing the strain errs heavily on the realistic.

And in a game where tactics are guided so heavily by your arsenal, the designers haven't scrimped on raw materials. There are around forty authentic weapons to choose from, making it something of a GT for gun lovers. And you can only carry two at a time, adding another layer of variety. Completed Alcatraz with your trusty military-issue sniper rifle? Go back and try it with an AK-47 and a grenade launcher!

As with SOCOM II, your three comrades are a pretty intelligent bunch. They take up excellent covering positions, can be ordered to follow or halt with the touch of a button, and react logically under fire. There's also a decent range of more intricate orders available, most of which involve getting your squad to open doors and throw stuff in. It's basic stuff - you can't split them up and assign separate waypoints to each a la Conflict: Desert Storm, they're pretty much joined at the utility belt. However, you can give them an order then delay when they carry it out, enabling you to take up position at another door for a simultaneous dual-pronged attack. And if you hook up a USB mic/headset you can bellow "Tango, Chipolata! Secure Bingo Wings!" at your teammates instead of keying them in. Until the laughter from your better half starts chipping away at your esprit de corps.

The AI isn't always perfect. There was one moment on the Alcatraz level where two of our men tried to ascend a staircase at the same time and got wedged. We had to track all the way back and give them a nudge. It's also far too risky to send them all into the middle of a combat zone expecting them to take out every target in the vicinity. They get picked off quickly when fire is coming in from multiple directions, so you'll always need to scout ahead, or at least watch their backs, if you don't want them to soak up a bit of enemy fire. Again, this isn't really a fault. You're supposed to be the hero after all - and learning how and when to get the best out of your squad is a key part of the experience.

As for multiplayer action, you're spoilt for choice. For those lacking a broadband unit, there's a split-screen co-op mode, which enables you to finish the single-player campaigns with a mate. Key graphical compromises make this a highly playable and addictive extra. For online play, there are ten dedicated maps and a compelling variety of deathmatch options. The raw materials are certainly there for some great frag action - it just depends on whether Rainbow can tear a significant chunk of the stealth shooting community away from the more established SOCOM series.

As a single-player experience, though Rainbow Six 3 just shades it over SOCOM II. The campaign more has a better, tighter structure, and will challenge you for longer - especially at the hardest setting - and on top of that you get a custom mode which offers variations on the campaign missions.

As far as weak points go, a few more original ideas wouldn't have gone amiss. The mission concepts and objectives are beginning to look a little hackneyed. But realism, even Clancy's version of it, has its own limitations, and short of opening up the gate to hell and sending Ding in to secure Beelzebub's presidential palace, it's questionable whether a real special ops team would come across more variety in their day job.

Minor quibbles aside though, with Rainbow Six 3 Ubisoft has demonstrated that it knows its tactical, squad-based shooters better than most and is capable of cooking up a tense, strategic and thoroughly gripping experience. And if that's not what videogame war is for, then we don't know what is.

Graphics 80%
Lovely lighting, atmospheric locations.

Sound 80%
Both authentic and, at times, imaginative.

Gameplay 80%
Very familiar, but perfectly executed.

Lifespan 90%
Decent replay value, plus the online modes.

Overall 80%
All this squad-based shooting should be getting a bit tired, but Rainbow Six 3 works the formula brilliantly, and arguably outfights SOCOM.