Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2

Been waiting a while for this ever since I got my hands on the original. The original lacked a few things that we enjoy here at school, the most notable being a decent Co-op mode. Vegas 1’s Co-op mode was very much like a multi-player terrorist hunt, where you and your friends would go around area to area and shoot guys. Sounds decent, and it was, but Rainbow Six’s selling point for me was it’s planning and squad combat. Which, in multi-player terrorist hunts (Co-op story mode) it was non-existant, and there was no voice chat built-in therefore communicating with your squad members either means a 3rd party voice chat application or … typing. And there was no actual “story” in story-mode while doing Co-op either.

Vegas 2 has improved everything, having it’s own Gears of War-like Co-op where the 2nd player takes position as a squad mate and the primary player still has complete control over the other two teammates. The 2nd player can see and hear all the signals given, so can either go along with the other two squad-mates or talk via the built-in voice chat(!) and decide on a different course of action. The second player can also tag enemies for primary and secondary targeting by the NPC squad mates upon entering a room, which helps in making the second player feel much less useless. Only problem is that the new Co-op only supports two players. Non-story mode Co-op can do up to 4.

The visuals and weapons are great, creating a very authentic feel to the game. Ubisoft have generally done very well with all their Tom Clancy stuff since they obtained Red Storm and their attention to detail is quite amazing also. My roommate is very interested in guns (don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on him) and there’s rarely a gun fighting game where I don’t hear some kind of “omg they’re doing it wrong” or something of the sort. But from Ubisoft I’ve never heard any complaining (with him, that’s a good thing) and we both got addicted to this game overnight.

It’s unlocking system can be a little.. tedious.. Like MMORPG tedious. For me, who likes taking single silenced shots to kill people, filling up the marksman line to 15 in the first night was relatively simple. But filling up Assault and CQB is much tougher, considering what you need to do for these I’d be surprised if anyone filled up either of these before their marksman line. For assault, you need to either shoot people through something, or blow them up. You can also shoot turret gunners and shielded (with a tactical shield) enemies but those are rare in story mode and completely missing from Terrorist hunts altogether. And for CQB you either need to blind fire kill people, which is close to impossible unless they are 3-5 ft away, or kill them within 5 ft (close range kill) to get points. And since these goals are a lot more work than simply getting headshots and long-range kills, my Assault and CBQ levels are still around 400-500, while my marksman is in excess of 1400. After ever second level you unlock a new gun related to the line you unlocked it from.. Marksman leads to sniper and some assault rifles, Assault leads to some pistols, shotguns, light machine guns and assault rifles, and CQB gives you submachine guns and light machine guns. And every alternate second level, you get a few thousand experience points (depending on which level you just got, higher levels give you more XP) which are put towards your rank. Ranking up gives you new camo colours and clothes. It’s not a bad system, it makes me want to play it more but I wish it was more adaptive to your playstyle rather than just being static values for how you get points.

Character customization is really good too. It’s not as in-depth as say.. Mass Effect but there are still some wide varieties of characters one can make. You can unlock new clothes and camo colours as you Rank up in the game which colour your character and armor. Armor is optional, and doesn’t seem to make a big difference at all to your actual character. It may alter your movement and protection, but not enough to stop yourself from looking cool by not having a chest armor piece.

Graphics and audio are great. One minor bug (if you can even call it that) is that on most guns, the sound between a single shot and multiple shot are different. So when you switch to full-auto and fire a single shot, it sounds different than when you’d be in single shot mode. And would often let you believe you fired off 2 or 3 rounds in that burst, even if it was only one.

The AI seems pretty smart, they try to flank you if they can find a way but they yell out a bit too much. I mean, some of these terrorists are really skilled, so why wouldn’t they have radio’s or at least a hand signal system? It’s nice that Ubisoft has created such a great AI, that flanks us and works as a team against us… But they shouldn’t need to show us by having the terrorists yell out how devious and complex their plans are to us before they happen. They should just execute them then once they kill you say something like, “Wow, I didn’t think that plan would work.” or “Nice idea to flank them!”. The AI also doesn’t suffer from “It must have been the wind”-syndrome, which Splinter Cell games (at least up to Chaos Theory) had a big problem with. If you didn’t play the Splinter Cell games, most of the AI would dismiss any abnormality in the surrounding area verbally by saying “It must have been the wind” or “It must have been nothing.” despite their accomplice 5 ft away is hunched over in a non-responsive pile of dead. Once enemies hear something out of the ordinary, they come to investigate it and since most of the game takes place in the day or bright lighting, they usually see what made the disturbance rather easily. And usually try to revenge their non-responsive pile of dead accomplices instead of cursing at the wind.

I think that covers pretty much everything. The game is worth trying, I have only played it for the PC but I’m sure the 360 version is great also. If you enjoy FPS’s with squad based combat, like Star Wars: Republic Commando then you’ll just love this game!