Rainbow Six was never a realistic tactical game. The only reason you had to plan the missions in the pre-Vegas games was because the AI was so utterly non-existent it was the only way you could get your squad to do anything at all.

Even then you were better off leaving them out of it entirely as they followed the plan so unswervingly they would only react to enemy gunfire by falling over dead.

Basically, before Vegas, the games were pure shit. Vegas sacrificed a hell of a lot. But at least the end result was a decent enough corridor shooter. Which is about all Ubisoft are capable of.

The old Rainbow games pre-planning and how the mission were exectued were great. From the ability to change types of ammo, to setting the waypoints to tell your team where to go and to execute your plan, it was as tactical as it gets. The biggest flaw in the game was the graphics, but the overall game play was miles better than what the series turned into, which is another Call of Duty clone.

Oh yeah, unto itself it was definitely very well done and something I wish we could have seen a more competent developer preserve.

But you see, that's not at all tactical by itself. No, it really is not. As Field Marshall Helmuth Blah Blah Longassname once said "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy".

Unless that plan was devised in R6 in which case it will be followed to the death if need be.

You need to be able to adapt on the fly. Given that by planning the mission you're actually doing the closest thing to programming the AI the game will ever have, that's not possible. They won't deviate from the plan even when they're getting shot at from behind. They just carry on trundling forwards to their deaths.

There's nothing tactical about that.