Rainbow Six Vegas offers a refeshing and action packed face lift to the traditional Rainbow Six series!
Rainbow Six separated itself from the described "mindless run and gun shooters" and made players slow down, think, plan and force players to perform with tactical precision - an experience and style of game play that changed shooters forever.
Rainbow Six Vegas continues to the strong legacy of Rainbow Six games and is a solid action packed game that is worthy of the Rainbow Six title and is definitely a game that needs to be in your collection.
Game Play:
Rainbow Six Vegas is a action packed game and is fast paced compared to previous titles. The game has a very polished Hollywood action movie feel to it and successfully immerses the player in to cut throat close quarter combat.
The first blatant difference is that you lead a small 2 man team and not the traditional sized team/s you did in previous Rainbow Six games. Despite the smaller size of team mates - they are far superior to your previous Six buddies.
You and your team will step foot right into the action hard and fast. There is no planing stage, you load up on gear and fast rope into a hot zone and take down tangos.
Despite this more action based style of game play there is still a very precise and tactical feel to this game.
You and your team will effortlessly clear rooms, snipe enemies from a far and breach rooms effectively and with style. Weapons feel and respond very accurately.
Despite a team based FPS, you will spend a lot of time ducking and peeking out of corners and from cover.
The cover system is very well down and adds a whole new element and style of game play to the previous slow and steady style of playing from previous Rainbow Six games.
Graphics:
The game uses the Unreal Engine and has great graphics but they are nothing revolutionary - and don't need to be.
The graphics in the game are well done with many subtle effects such as motion blur when you're spinning around trying to make sense of a chaotic combat situation.
Enemies and your buddies look very good and their movement is very fluid and convincing. Their gear and weapons are highly detailed as they wear a wide range tactical gear and combat gear.
Levels in the game are the real stars and show off the graphics engine perfectly.
Levels:
As mentioned above, the level are nothing short of fantastic.
The environments are unique, colourful, bright and interactive and do an excellent job of recreating real life locations in Vegas.
The experience of having a frantic fire fight on the Vegas Strip or inside a huge casino on the slot machine floor, as the machines spit out money once they are shot as you duck behind them for cover, is nothing short of breath taking.
Rainbow Six Vegas puts you in levels and environments that have not been done in FPS's and does it extremely well.
AI:
Enemy and buddy AI are very impressive.
Your team mates will follow your commands effortless and effectively - using a team command system that is simple and easy to use which reaps excellent results.
Your teammates watch your, and each others back - which is a extremely refreshing change from previous Rainbow Six games in which team mates blindly stared at the walls while blindly getting picked off one by one from an enemy to the rear.
Your buddies clear rooms, take cover and move out and follow you extremely well and I never thought of them as liabilities, but rather as assets, while I was playing.
Enemies are very aggressive, will run for cover, use cover, return fire and retreat very intelligently and realistically.
Communication amongst enemies is also very well done and further add to the realism.
Sound and Music:
The sound in the game is spot on. Characters from your team mates, enemies to hostages sound appropriate and the voice acting is very well done.
Weapons and firefights are extremely well done and convincing.
The music in the game is also very well done. It is very appropriate and fits the Rainbow Six genre as well as being a good militaristic action movie tracks.
Story - NO SPOILERS:
The story is also very good and is typical of Tom Clancy's recent stories that focus on Mexico being Mercia's new evil enemy.
The game has some surprises and twists and turns and makes for a good immersive and captivating action packed movie calibre story.
Conclusion:
Rainbow Six Vegas is extremely fun and satisfying. It is a game that is very well done in all areas all around that makes this game an instant classic on par with previous games like Rouge Spear and other Tom Clancy games like Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.
It is a very visible example of how a squad based first person shooter should be done and has set this style of game play on a standard of its own.
This game is extremely easy to recommend. If Rainbow Six Vegas is not in your game library you are doing yourself a huge injustice.
TANGO DOWN!!!