Raven Shield patch fun

The Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield team has finally released the recently delayed, re-delayed and then delayed again 1.41 patch for our favourite stealth-o-thon. You'd think with so much to-ing and fro-ing that the patch was actually something special, but upon viewing the list of changes it contains a mere handful of fixes - much like all the other Raven Shield patches to date - and a couple of new features for fans of server browsing software. We know you're out there.

Top of the list and taking the position of Main Feature™ is PunkBuster anti-cheat software support. The actual PunkBuster installation is separate from the patch itself, though. Elsewhere players can get themselves support for (nyurgh) GameSpy Arcade, fixes for the odd spot of dodgy translation in the Italian, German, Spanish and French versions, a toggle which allows players to switch the slight firing animation lag which was introduced with the 1.0 patch on or off, a fix for the bug which prevented players from playing unlocked maps in Custom Game mode, and a small memory leak has been patched up.

There's a nice list of mirrors already available on the Raven Shield site which you may like to take advantage of, and it has links for each patch flavour - 1.4 to 1.41 is 4MB, 1.0 to 1.41 is 17MB while the standalone server weighs in at a loveably chunky 150MB. Each, with the exception of the server because... well, it's a server, is available in UK and US variations.

In vaguely related news, I've been tenderly nuzzling the Xbox Ghost Recon expansion Island Thunder lately, so you can expect a review of that quite soon - in the absence of much Clancy action since my glowing PC Raven Shield review, I've been itching to get my balaclava back on for a little terrorist-hunting sojourn. Alpha, GO! Ahem.