Rainbow Six Vegas achieves great success by embracing its tactical roots

User Rating: 8.9 | Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas PC
The Rainbow Six series has achieved massive popularity with its mix of in depth tactical planning and intense fighting, though recently the latter has been forgone in favor of pure action. Its last entry, Lockdown, met with harsh criticism due to a number of developmental issues, and lack of any strategic value for shooting. The latest entry, Vegas, not only overcomes the problems of its action-based predecessors, but also achieves unbridled success by embracing the fundamentals that made the series so popular to begin with.

Rainbow Six Vegas, as the title may suggest, takes place in Vegas, and has you combating terrorists with delusions of grandeur. The plot is mediocre and poorly delivered, but is a sufficient platform to have you running between locales shooting bad guys in what can only be described as their face. Thankfully the story is not the hook for this game. In Vegas, the action is king and rules all with an iron fist of MP5’s and flash bangs. The spark that was missing in the previous installment has found a home in Vegas, and will instantly hook you from start to finish. Though the action will be instantly familiar to fans of tactical action games, the hook here is that you can take cover behind slot machines, cars, plywood, or whatever is between you and those dastardly foes. Taking cover is incredibly easy, and with a click of the right mouse button you’ll be dodging around like a true counter-terrorist. From cover, you can move out and aim, which leaves you vulnerable, or you can fire blindly around the corner, making you less accurate and racking up quite a substantial bill for destruction of property, but this function adds an amazing amount of intensity to a fight when you can’t lean out and have to shoot at bad guys down the hall. In addition, Vegas has adopted a simplified health system that allows you to recover from being shot after a few seconds, and allows you to keep up with the punishing difficulty of the game. What’s important to note, however, is that while the game is very difficult, it is never cheap. The AI for the terrorists is amazing, as they’ll react to you in different ways depending on your tactics and the situation. The same goes for your teammates, whom are just as smart and even better shots. While you can simply play the game as the point man, you’ll also have a number of teammate commands at your disposal, such as an order to clear a room ahead of you, or throw in a grenade, and so forth. The system is handled perfectly, and your team is almost able to complete missions without your input.

The game also features a number of instances where you must perform commando stunts to continue to the bad guys, namely fast roping. The fast roping is a thrill as it may require you to dangle upside down in order to get a cleaner shot at a tango before bursting through the window to clear a room. Though you don’t necessarily have to utilize fast roping in the game due to level design, it just adds another dimension to the gameplay to give you the best possible experience. The downside of creating multi-entry levels is that the checkpoint system doesn’t keep up, and there will be instances where you may be at the end of a level, but when you die you have to start over at the beginning, which can be incredibly frustrating. In addition to the standard multiplayer fare, Coop is included; allowing you to tackle the single player with some buddies taking over for your AI controlled teammates. This works really well and is a blast, but the map will recycle, forcing you to change it manually. It’s an annoyance, but doesn’t ruin the experience by any stretch of the imagination. As far as Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and CTF go, this game utilizes the tactical aspects quite well, forcing you to take cover rather than running in with guns blazing. Your multiplayer character is persistent, rewarding your continued play by unlocking different items that, while desirable, don’t unbalance gameplay. It’s a nice incentive to continue playing, and there are plenty of items to unlock. From a technical standpoint, Rainbow Six Vegas is one hell of an amazing game. Graphically top notch, this game has some amazing visuals that put this title head and heals over other new releases. In particular, scenes where your teams are being transported onto the roof of a building are a treat, allowing you a great sight of Las Vegas in turmoil. Screenshots simply don’t do it justice. In addition, the sound is fantastic, with gunshots, screams, and general fanfare rendered superbly. While a standard set of realistic sounding guns would have been sufficient, Red Storm pulled out all the stops to deliver a terrific sounding game. This comes at a very steep price though, as the game will chug on all but the high end PC’s. If you aren’t up to date on the hardware, you should consider upgrading, otherwise you won’t get the terrific graphics that this game was build to showcase. Few blemishes aside, Rainbow Six Vegas is a fantastic shooter, rocketing the series back up to the top. While it may have spurned the tactical planning stages of its predecessors, that should in no way deter fans of the original titles. As far as counter-terrorism shooters go, Vegas is king.