Year: 1998
Type: Gamerip
Composer(s): Bill Brown
Number of tracks: 5

★★★★★

Rainblown

This is the music review of
Mission Pack: Eagle Watch (1999).

Many kids today will probably not even know that there was a time before Siege for the Rainbow Six series. As a squad leader, you tried to order your team around as cleverly as possible in missions to neutralize the AI terrorists. Unsurprisingly, the title father Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, which offered us low-polygon, but all the more exciting missions back in 1998, was the first to do so - at least that's what I assume. How good was the gameplay? I have no idea. I only ever played the much more action-oriented seventh part, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 from 2008.

While I still enjoy listening to the excellent soundtrack of the successor today, there's nothing for me in the gamerip for the first game. There are two reasons for this. One important one: its not because of the composition by Bill Brown. The soundtrack itself is actually quite cool: typical military action, a little Commandos, a little Crysis, somehow dramatic and driving.

No, the two criticisms I have are the number of tracks and their length. With just five tracks and an average length of 40 seconds, there's nothing here for music fans. Well, at the time it was probably not a requirement to create an epoch-making opus magnum for a tactics simulation. And since it's a gamerip, it's really only a just punishment for my curiosity. Nevertheless, I would have liked a little more fodder, because both the Intro and Outro are convincing and even bring back memories of the fantastic Company of Heroes.

No.	Title	Artist(s)	Ratings
01	Intro	Bill Brown	4
02	Mission Select	Bill Brown	3
03	Mission Fail	Bill Brown	2
04	Mission Success	Bill Brown	3
05	Credits	Bill Brown	4

Year: 1999
Type: Gamerip
Composer(s): Bill Brown
Number of tracks: 10

★★★★★

Mission Pack: Eagle Watch

I wished for more fodder, I got more fodder. The gamerip for the Mission Pack: Eagle Watch for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six offers twice as many tracks and an average duration of one minute per track! However, this marginal improvement is once again not enough to make it an artistic masterpiece for Bill Brown.

Even though the use of the piano adds some variation, the songs, some of which lack titles, cannot match the quality of the highlights of the main game for the most part. Although there is a pleasant tension in Planning Last or Sneaky Hit First which will probably make nostalgics think back to sweaty missions, the songs are unfortunately just not long enough for me. It's just like that with a gamerip: sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you get fractions - like an average marriage.

No.	Title	Artist(s)	Ratings
01	Planning First	Bill Brown	3
02	Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Eagle Watch 1	Bill Brown	3
03	Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Eagle Watch 2	Bill Brown	3
04	Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Eagle Watch 3	Bill Brown	3
05	Planning Last	Bill Brown	4
06	Sneaky Hit First	Bill Brown	4
07	Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Eagle Watch 4	Bill Brown	4
08	Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Eagle Watch 5	Bill Brown	3
09	Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Eagle Watch 6	Bill Brown	4
10	Sneaky Hit Last	Bill Brown	4