Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Review
Return to the city of sin
by Chris Davis
reviewed on X360
Where the Grass is Green and the Girls are Pretty (cntd)
Vegas 2 fails to fix some of the graphical issues that simply don’t make sense. Does it make sense that I can throw a grenade at a leaf and have it bounce back at me? Does it make sense that a flash bang will blind a player who is wearing thermal goggles? Players will find that, ultimately, what graphical improvements that are made to the game are almost entirely focused on the character models and even it’s only minor tweaks. It is also worth noting that Vegas 2 has some of the most blatant advertising outside of the Burger King games that came out a while back. Seriously, is it necessary to have the logo for the MLG league posted everywhere and for an entire map to be devoted to Comcast?
The audio work done for the game is more par for the course than anything else, introducing almost nothing new and seemingly dropping in quality in comparison to the first game. Unfortunately it seems that a majority of the enemy dialogue has been recycle and very little of it is new – save for a few instances. Jung and Walters have come down with a case of laryngitis and barely whisper their lines this time around. The weapons and explosions sound just as good as they did before though and players with a surround sound system will certainly find themselves completely drawn into the experience.
A Little More Bite and a Little Less Bark
While the single player portion unfortunately leaves you with an unsatisfied feeling it’s as certain that the multiplayer portion of the game is the highlight experience. The game ships with eleven maps available to play on the disc, two more being available to download for free as bonus content. Vegas 2’s list of maps has quite the variety of locales to play on, including a few Vegas 1 maps, several classic maps from Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield in celebration of the series’ 10th anniversary, and half a dozen brand new ones. While it does satisfy the nostalgia of several veteran fans with the classic maps, the new maps don’t truly satisfy like they should. Several make spawn camping quite easy to do in the team-based modes.
The multiplayer is purposefully designed for replayability whether or on the couch with some buddies or played separately across the country. Ubisoft has incorporated a full online co-op mode for two players wanting to experience the single player campaign in its entirety, casting the second player as a user-created character named Knight. The co-op mode is a lot more satisfying, as the experience in Vegas 1 was extremely stripped down and ultimately only worthy of play for achievement hunters. Two new adversarial modes have been added to the game, the first one being an escort mode called Team Leader. This ships alongside with Demolition, a mode that plays exactly like a session of CounterStrike with one team attempting to plant and detonate a bomb and the other team defending the bomb sites. Vegas 2 also sees the return of the classic satellite capture mode Total Conquest as well as the return of the standard variety of death match modes. Of the two new modes, Demolition is by far the more entertaining given the tactical nature of Rainbow Six gameplay and is a welcome experience for fans of Call of Duty 4’s Search and Destroy mode.
Close Your Mouth and Open Up Your Heart And Baby Satisfy Me
As a devout follower of the Rainbow Six series and the Tom Clancy franchise overall Vegas 2 feels more like an expansion pack to the first game instead of something truly worthy of an individual product release. Most people won’t be as critical of this game as I am and readers should take note most of what has been touched on won’t become apparent to the average player. While the single player is a lackluster experience, the multiplayer is a very enjoyable experience once again. For those of you coming off of your Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 highs, Vegas 2 will definitely satisfy you and quite frankly it couldn’t have come at a better time. Don’t expect this one to leave your shelf for at least a few months.
8.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
