Gaming Steve Review: Rainbow Six Vegas 2

Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Price: $59.99
Platform: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
Category: Third-Person Shooter
Rating: M for Mature
Release Date: March 18 2008 (US), March 20 2008 (Europe); PC Version: April 15, 2008

These days, everyone loves a good tactical shooting, taking down tangos in an overly planned manner. Games in the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon series' have advanced from being completely hardcore titles to become somewhat more accessible, letting players ease in with slicker controls and cover points, as well as giving them a bit more health and power. The introduction of cinematic cutscenes that take full advantage of the new generation of hardware has also helped the helped the genre, as well as the fact that the Tom Clancy brand has been thrusted upon gamers everywhere.

If you haven't played a recent Rainbow Six game, they are basically tactical FPS with a story. Rainbow Six "mixes it up" by giving you indirect control of two equally skilled NPCs fighting at your side. You can order them to move to a certain position, blow up doors and clear rooms, as well as making them cover you when you're trying a particular maneuver and they do their jobs pretty darn well.

Overall it's a nice change to command a small squad rather playing yet another "uber killing machine". However, unlike your standard FPS your character is quite vulnerable – even a few shots are more than enough to take you out – so you have to play carefully and artistically. Vegas 2 follows this same basic pattern, with a story that involves Las Vegas, funnily enough...

The single player game as a whole is fairly short, but it is a solid and enjoyable experience, and given the XP system (more on that later), it's quite replayable. The AI offers a decent challenge, and you always have to be aware of their positions, plotting a set course through a particular level to dispatch of the terrorists quickly and efficiently. The game is very satisfying if you digest it all at once, like a movie, as you race through the levels for no particular reason apart from testing your skills as a trained operative and master tactician.

The original Rainbow Six Vegas was good; it brought the age-old tactical shooter to a new generation, showing people the power of their new hardware, and became an Xbox Live favorite. It was fun, had a large story mode, and also featured some nice set-pieces. However, it was flawed by the randomly spawning AI, the lack of a coherent friend invite system in the online multiplayer, spotty team and enemy AI, and some rough graphical finishes. Well, I'm not happy to report that its sequel doesn't improve on much of these at all, and instead chooses to add different things.

Yes, the rough graphics are back, as is the invisible tripwire spawning AI, and the team and enemy NPCs are still fascinatingly glitchy. The ranked multiplayer now has friend slots, but after a game you are not returned to the lobby with all of your friends, but are literally thrown back to the main menu. Why Ubisoft Montreal can't get it right is beyond me, but perhaps looking at the release date can give us a clue. This game has arrived approximately 1 year and 4 months after the original appeared on the 360. Therefore, it's fair to say that Vegas 2 had a rushed development, with the developers just delivering the smallest amount they could get away with to make a quick profit, somewhat akin to GRAW2's rapid arrival last year.

However, this is Rainbow Six we are talking about, which revels in its punishing gameplay, multiplayer modes, and a maddeningly large collection of guns. Vegas 2 continues in the same stead as the other titles in the series and delivers a very solid experience despite its inability to evolve into something better. The novelty of ordering your team to different objectives and making them do all the hard work for you still hasn't worn off after all this time, and darting through levels, using fast ropes and rappel points still works delightfully well too.

The multiplayer side of the game has seen little change from the original Vegas, but there are one or two new modes and a few new maps which are pretty much copied from the single player mode. The game will keep you hooked just like its predecessor though, because the gameplay is fast, frantic, and tense, and winding up your friends with mad camo combos and customized characters is still fun. Terrorist Hunt still rules the roost though, which now can be played on your own with your own squad, and the online component finally has options such as respawning for weaker players.

Moving on to one of the better additions to the franchise, the character creation aspect has certainly changed. You can now carry a persistent character across all of the game modes and you can earn experience points for just about ... well anything really. You can earn XP from kills, when your team-mates kill someone, killing someone up close, through think cover, with an explosion, with harsh language... I'm actually surprised they didn't award XP for starting the game there are so many different ways to earn XP.

But the developers use good use of this system as you can use your XP in many ways. You can level up a few sub-classes (marksman, close quarters and assault skills) plus you can use XP to improve your character and unlock new items. The XP bar is always a part of the HUD, taking a prominent area at the bottom of the screen, and genuinely makes you think differently to how you interact with the game, forcing you to make more kills yourself if you want to level up and obtain new weapons and items. Plus it adds replay value (sort of).

In conclusion then, Vegas 2 is a very mixed bag. It is hard to review as a standalone release as in essence Vegas 2 is an expansion pack for the original game. It adds little from the original title and even takes away some elements. Most notably the story mode being smaller in general and co-op mode reduced to 2 players. But the few new features are excellent and suit the franchise amicably – even though Ubisoft Montreal should've hammered out some of the bugs in the code they (metaphorically) simply copied and pasted from the last game.

The end result is very conservative effort, feeding the fanbase of the past game and trying to appeal to many people at once. It does certainly improve on the predecessor and makes small shuffling steps in the right direction for the series as a whole, and it will definitely be a highly played title for a considerably long while.

This just doesn't look and feel like how a sequel should be, and if this trend continues with Ubisoft's Tom Clancy branded titles (and all signs say it will – GRAW2 being one of them), then we are in for an extremely boring and monotonous future, where mediocrity dominates.

PLUSES: Same old lovely Rainbow Six gameplay, the controls are refined further still, and the running addition is useful. Also, the increased importance of the XP system is refreshing, offering real player progression.

MINUSES: This is basically an expansion pack to the original game, and doesn't offer that many new useful additions. Furthermore, all of the old bugs and nuances from the last game are all still present and unfixed here.

FINAL VERDICT: 7.0 TRY IT!

Posted by Chris Holmes at 4:00 PM | Comments (2) | Posted to PC | PlayStation 3 | Review | Xbox |