Best In Genre
The first Rainbow Six Vegas is an excellent tactical shooter with an excellent formula that easily proved to be a good base to build a sequel on. The sequel came back and took pretty much everything and improved it mostly by tweaking. These tweaks proved to be just what the franchise needed but it’s the big stuff that really made this game worthwhile.
I honestly wasn’t expecting much. I knew to expect a great game because I had spent countless hours playing terrorist hunt in the first one. I loved it. Sure, it was hard and all, but the tacticality of it all proved true to my style. Before, I thought GRAW was the premier tactical shooter but boy was I wrong! Rainbow Six Vegas is just a more solid game with a better style. Yeah, the plot was dry and farfetched to the extreme but I only played the campaign once… the rest was terrorist hunt.
The second takes what might have been wanted in the first and gives it to you.
You know longer play as Logan Keller, instead you play as a man (or woman) named Bishop whose look you can customize. The customization goes from facial appearance, which can be based on your own using the Xbox Live vision camera. You can choose what sort of camouflage Bishop wears and then what kind of armor. At first, the selection is small but more can be unlocked. The same goes for the game’s vast array of weapons. These weapons can be customized with various attachments, making Rainbow Six Vegas 2 playable in limitless ways.
Quite a few of the weapons don’t feel radically different from one another. Sure, assault rifles feel like assault rifles but they’re all very similar. At the same time, each has its own “feel”. Even though they might not be very different, you’ll find yourself having one favorite. And that’s the thing about it, there’s not really a best gun. It’s all about your own style. Speaking of style, I mentioned earlier that there are quite a few attachments and each represents a different style of play. It can be guaranteed that you’ll not encounter anybody exactly like you.
To unlock things, a ranking system has been implemented. You could draw comparisons to Call of Duty 4, but Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is actually pretty different. Instead of challenges, you have three individual ranks to go through: marksman, CQB, and assault. Leveling up in these unlocks guns or adds EXP to your total. Your total reflects armor and camo, plus your rank. The real catcher here is that this system is not limited to multiplayer. You can level up in single-player and terrorist hunt, too.
The AI has been improved, but that’s a positive and a negative. The enemy was more passive in the first game, but now they’re more aggressive. Terrorist hunt is a lot harder because the enemy is playing Rainbow hunt. You had better be prepared to take on groups of enemies at a time, instead of sneaking through the map and taking them one at a time, as in the first.
The plot is literally the same as the first one, except told from a different perspective and adds light to the first game. You play before, during, and after the events of Rainbow Six Vegas. You get to understand what the villain is a villain and then you get to know how Vegas came under siege. The story is actually great and has a bit more depth.
The sound is great. The guns sound awesome, not like the dinky things in Call of Duty 4. Surprisingly, every gun sounds different but not radically so. It’s realistic that way. The downside of the sound is the voice acting. The PC from the first game is back, but it’s pretty obvious that voice actor isn’t. In Vegas, he had a deep southern accent… now he doesn’t. And then his helicopter advisor is in for a cameo, but she sounds like her nose is being plugged. It’s kind of annoying, but you’ll get over it.
There’s a new difficulty setting. Casual difficulty is there just in case you just wanna have fun, but most tactical shooter fans will stick to normal or realistic.
Not many improvements are made at the core. The new stuff is great, but the core shooting could have used a tweak or two. For instance, why not bring in an aiming system like GRAW? This is a game that could have used another few months in development to be perfected, but it’s still great. You will not find a better tactical shooter out there.
All in all, this isn’t a true five-star game but then again… there’s not a good enough game like it for me to compare it to. Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is the best… for now. It gets five stars just for being excellent and for not really having competition.
