Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Rogue Spear Mission Pack: Urban Operations, from Red Storm Entertainment, is a slick little addition to the intense combat program with many new elements that will keep game players on their toes.

Kurdish extremists have kidnapped the U.N. negotiator and his aide. Turkish police have managed to corner them in an open-air market. Your job is to go in, eliminate the terrorists and rescue both the negotiator and his aide. Obviously, in a situation like this, just shooting them all and letting God sort them out is not an option. Compounding the problem is that the market is crawling with locals. It’s up to you to decide which is a good guy, and which is bad.

Using the overhang of a seller’s stand, you weave through the market. The merchant is behind the counter eyeing you. Is there a gun under that stand? Is he what he seems, or the minute you move past him, will he try to shoot you in the back? There’s an entryway at the end of the plaza - what lies beyond it? Perhaps there’s a welcoming party with machine guns hoping to give you a lead surprise. Check the windows above the market! You have to watch your team’s back, and hope they are doing the same for you.

Urban Operations is built on the premise that not all situations requiring the elite Rainbow Six operations team take place in deserted venues, like museums or airplanes. Terrorism can happen in market places, or in the London Underground (the rail system), places that are crawling with bystanders and innocents. Just as you site down your HK21E3 light machine gun, you can expect a screaming man or woman to jump between you and your target. Or maybe one of your own team will move between you and the target. Command frowns on wasting your own men. It pays not to have too itchy a trigger finger.

For the uninitiated, Rogue Spear centers around an elite team of demolition, electronic, assault and sniper soldiers. The mission is always the same - take out the bad guys with extreme prejudice. The central character is Ding Chavez, a squad leader. That is your character. How well he shoots is up to you. All the other characters, male and female, have their own strengths and are controlled by the computer. The game’s artificial intelligence is amazing.

You begin with a mission briefing. It can be as detailed or cursory as you wish. From there you pick your team, then enter the planning phase. This is where the cerebral part of the game really shines. You can either accept the plan from central command, or make up your own. Should you decide on the latter course of action, you will detail what each member of the team will do, where they will go and how they will move through the mission. It’s a lot like chess. Once that is programmed in, unless killed, they will stick to orders.

When all is in place, you move into the mission. That’s where you have to be on your toes, reflexes on full alert, finger a hair away from the trigger. It can heat up in a hurry. And with touchy controls, 360-degree views, you can swing your gun right past a potential kill.

In addition to two mini campaigns, the mission pack also includes customizable missions and five new urban maps. You can put together some nifty scenarios. There are also four new weapons - three of the machine gun variety and one sniper rifle. There are eight new maps for multiplayer mode.

Three difficulty levels allow you to get your feet wet, or go for the glory. Of course, even at the most elementary level the game is hard, though your chances of success are improved.

If the program has a failing, it is in the graphic setup. Don’t allow Rogue Spear to pick your display. Go into the configure system and manually select your graphics card. Rogue Spear has a tendency to select an option that results in either booting you from the game, or giving you a black screen. Controls are not entirely intuitive. Working your way through training missions (which covers fire and movement, room clearing, hostage rescue, open training and terrorist hunt) is a great way to understand the controls.

Rogue Spear Mission Pack: Urban Operations is a tense thrill ride. The game couples solid graphics and sound into a format that, though dated, still stands strong in the shooter genre of action games.

The program is rated T for teen 13+ due to animated blood and gore, and animated violence. You must have Rainbow Six Rogue Spear to run this program.

Install: Medium - it’s long and unexciting, but not overly taxing on the system.

Gameplay: 8. Seamless action and settings give this program bite. The mission briefing scenes may be a bit stilted, but the missions themselves present panoramic settings that are strong.

Graphics: 7.5. Very well-rendered polygonal graphics in a three-dimensional setting. Don’t be afraid to manually configure your system - this program has a walk-through which will guide you and set the game up to play on your system.

Sound: 8.  Great sound effects and dynamic musical soundtrack. The radio chat and machine gun fire are somewhat subdued, but still add to the intensity of the program.

Difficulty: 9. By casting the game into the urban setting, the difficulty factor has been driven up.

Concept: 6. The drawback is that this is a sequel to a format that is not exactly new.

Overall: 7.5. This add-on is a solid addition to the Rainbow Six family of action games. It presents a challenge in several areas, and is action-packed.