In the same way Ubisoft “fixed” Splinter Cell with Chaos Theory and Ghost Recon with Advanced Warfighter, the Rainbow Six series has been reborn in a more accessible, and ultimately far superior version in Rainbow Six: Vegas. It looks fantastic, plays amazingly well, and is filled with features and modes that will keep you playing for weeks to come. Rainbow Six: Vegas is a great game that is highly recommended.
Quick Hits
- Title: Rainbow Six: Vegas
- Platform: Xbox 360
- Publisher: Ubisoft
- Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
- ESRB: “M” for Mature
- Genre: First-Person-Shooter
- Pros: Great gameplay; solid single and multiplayer modes; nice graphics; co-op
- Cons: Still very difficult and slowly paced like the old R6 games
Modes
Rainbow Six: Vegas, has a wide selection of single and multiplayer modes. The story mode starts you off in a training mission set in Mexico, but then you are whisked off to the Las Vegas strip to fight it out with terrorists that have attacked the casinos. The story can also be played in co-op, both in splitscreen or on Xbox Live. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that co-op is the best thing to ever happen to videogames. There is nothing like playing through a story with a buddy, and actually having to use tactics and be smart about how you play. Vegas does a great job with co-op, and it really is the recommended way to play. Other modes include the Terrorist Hunt, which randomly places terrorists in a level and you have to go take them all out. This can also be played in co-op.
And, of course, there is a full selection of multiplayer modes. Up to 16 players can battle on Xbox Live in different objective and deathmatch team-based games. It also features the Persistant Elite Creation mode where you level up and earn new items as you play online. You create a truly custom character based on how you play, which is pretty darn cool. You can personalize it even more by using the Xbox Vision Camera to map your face into the game.
Gameplay
Ubisoft
The glue that holds all of these modes together is the gameplay. In single-player, you are part of a three-man team and you can order your teammates to do a variety of actions with the press of a button. You can position them on the battlefield, change their tactics, or do things like blast through a door and clear the next room. It is all very easy and surprisingly intuitive. Your teammates are smart and do a good job of taking cover and not just standing around and getting shot. Compared to the braindead AI in Gears of War, your Rainbow Six: Vegas team are a bunch of brain surgeons. None of this would make a difference if your own soldier wasn’t up to snuff, and that is where R6 Vegas really shines. By holding the left trigger, you attach yourself to the nearest cover and the game switches to a third-person view. This allows you to peek around corners or over ledges so you can try and fight your enemies from relative safety. And you’ll wind to try and use cover as much as you can because Vegas is a very difficult game. The enemy AI is very, very good, and you can only take a couple of hits before you are dead and you have to restart from the last checkpoint. This creates a very slowly paced game, but it is fun and interesting at the same time because the shooting is so pure and so good, and your teammates are so smart and so easy to order around. You stop looking at the game as just another FPS and start analyzing each situation from a tactical perspective, which gives Vegas a different feel that is very fun.
Graphics and Sound
Graphically, Rainbow Six: Vegas is a fantastic looking game. You start off in Mexico, and the game looks pretty much identical to Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, but then you move on to Las Vegas and it truly is a sight to behold. The brightly lit, flashy, neon city of sin looks absolutely amazing. The character models also look very nice and are covered in little details.
The sound is also very well done in R6: Vegas. Gunfire and explosions during combat sound great, and everything sounds just like it should. There is quite a bit of voice work, and hearing your teammates call out their status throughout a battle, as well as hearing the enemies do the same, is pretty darn cool.
Bottom Line
Ubisoft
Overall, Rainbow Six: Vegas is an amazing game that opens up the series to a broader audience. Now, it is still bloody difficult and slowly paced, so it definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but fans of GRAW or Gears of War will be able to jump right in and have a great time even if you weren’t a big fan of Rainbow Six in the past. It just has a different feel to it, and being able to press up to cover really makes a big difference. It looks great, sounds great, plays great, and offers a ton of modes including an excellent co-op mode. What more could you want? Rainbow Six: Vegas is a fantastic Xbox 360 game that is highly recommended.
