In 2007, an unidentified group of terrorists attack a number of high-profile targets, beginning with the G8 summit in Switzerland and continuing with a Venezuelan oil refinery in the Caribbean. Their demands are obviously targeted at disrupting the oil trade between the United States and Venezuela. Enter veteran international anti-terrorism unit Team Rainbow, who must stop the terrorists and discover who is behind the attacks.

Rainbow Six 3 is an entry in the long-running series designed especially for consoles. It does away with the heavy strategy and planning elements the series was known for on the PC and offers an experience more focused on the first-person action. The game features 14 single-player levels (15 in the PS2 and GameCube versions). In each, the player controls Domingo 'Ding' Chavez, who leads a team of three other Rainbow operatives. Goals in each mission include taking out terrorists, defusing bombs and protecting hostages. Ding's squad mates will act on their own in supporting the mission, but they can also be given specific orders through a context-sensitive menu: holding position, advancing, clearing a room or defusing a bomb. It's also possible to give delayed orders which are only carried out once a special signal is given. The Xbox version features voice recognition: team orders can be given through a headset.

Before each mission, each squad member must be equipped with a primary and secondary weapon plus further equipment. More than two dozen realistic firearms are available, and there are also different types of grenades (hand-thrown or fired through a launcher), charges and mines, as well as a gas mask. Thermal and night vision are always available and don't require special equipment.

Despite the action focus, the game still opts for a certain amount of realism: there is no running or jumping, more than a few hits are fatal and there is no way to regain lost health.

Besides the single player campaign, there is also the custom mission mode, which allows the player to hunt terrorists on unlocked maps from the campaign.

The multiplayer modes include:

• Cooperative campaign mode
• Cooperative custom mission mode
• Sharpshooter mode: a timed deathmatch with respawning, the player with the most kills wins.
• Survival mode: no respawns, the last player standing wins.
• Team Survival mode: no respawns, the last team standing wins.

Multiplayer features vary between platforms: The GameCube doesn't have the competitive modes, PS2 only supports six players online instead of the Xbox' sixteen, and both coop modes are only available via split screen on PS2 and GameCube.