Rainbow Six Vegas 2

First a little background. The Rainbow Six games have always focused on realism, which is an admirable quality in a world near invincible shooter characters who seem to be so tooled up with gear that a small nuke couldn't stop them. The RB6 Vegas games changed that somewhat, and while you still take realistic damage (a single headshot WILL kill you) the annoying little health bar (see below) that was ever present at the bottom of the previous Rainbow games have been removed. While this may knock back the realism a little bit, it's an appreciated change as it increases survivability and the fun factor of the game. Instead your health now gradually recoups and the more you've been shot the harder it is to focus, so as your health 'regenerates' everything comes back into focus. Thus it is still desirable not to get shot but the gun-toting terrorists. Job done, nice one Ubi.


The RB6 Vegas games are set after the book by Tom Clancy (which is one hell of a read, even if i did take me a year + to finish the damn thing) where the team you knew have since retired to government etc positions or whatever. One of them now directs the team but I forget who. They're all probably in the background somewhere. What Vegas 2 is in essence is an expansion of the first game. The stories are interlocking and you very much get a nice perspective of what's going down with the other team while the one in Vegas 1 were getting shot up in casinos.


The game improves on a lot of areas where Vegas 1 was weak. For example, although Vegas 1 was a fun game and all, it had little replay value for me. Vegas 2 has introduced a new rank and Aces system which means as you play you'll rank up and gain new unlocks. You unlock new weapons to use with the ACEs system which awards points which go towards ranks for actions that fall under Marksmanship, CQB and Assault. Each has it's own unique set of weapons to unlock and the game is very careful not to let any of these weapons fall into your possession as the game progresses. I haven't seen head or tail of an AK-47 thus far and it's near the top of the Assault unlocks. It's this kind of system that made me go back after finishing the game on Easy, to try the harder difficulties (which award more experience/ACE points). On top of this the cover and squad control feels much smoother and they've also added voice controls for squad commands although I've yet to try them. It also adds a very high level of customisation to your character, when you first start playing you choose the appearance of the main protagonist and as you advance you can change you body armour to suit your play style whether you prefer to be a heavily armoured behemoth of a Special Forces Operative or perhaps a more agile lightly armoured fairy git. Whatever floats your boat I guess.

The game still uses the immensely popular Unreal 3 Engine and the graphics are relatively unchanged from the first game, although things look crisper and shinier than before. The game has relatively little in the way of 'options' when it comes to graphics control. You can change the resolution but that's about and the game chooses what's best for your machine which is alright but it sucks if you wanna play around and fine what's best for you. That said it's still very good for choosing the right options, on my meagre machine things only really tend to slow down in smokey/exploding/manymanyterrorist situations. It's amusing to flick on the Heat Vision and see what it would be like if the game was running at top FPS. The sound quality is excellent with the right kit, half way through playing the game I upgraded from crumbly on-board sound to a Sound Blaster 4 with 5.1 and the difference was somewhat sexual. There's nothing better than bouncing down a building and then flying through a window guns blazing to some unsuspecting freedom fighter reading the paper in glorious 5.1. The Multiplayer is the usual mix of Deathmatch and the like you'd expect in an FPS, but theres also a Terrorist Hunt gametype which you can do both On and Offline to let you play with your hard earned guns and cause lots of collateral damage in the process. To top that off you can play the game through in Co-Op with your mates and double team those evil renegades. Nothing like replacing the stable but somewhat stupid AI (Get the fuck out of the way so I can shoot those guys! Oh great now he's dead and you've stolen my kills!) to get the job done good and proper.

Overall the game feels good to play. It's not the greatest game ever and I'll likely grow tired of it eventually, but it'll certainly be longer than your average game. If your a fan of Rainbow Six games then certainly buy this, if your a fan of FPS games buy this, hell if you like shooting stuff buy this. It's fun for the whole (See: Most) family.