Rainbow Six Vegas 2 brings more of what people love about the Rainbow Six series, with more rigid character progression.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is the sequel to Rainbow Six Vegas, the introduction of the Rainbow Six series onto now current gen gaming. It is a tactical shooter with the game play backings of realism, and although it has a lot more action than most stealth focused games, it still manages to strike a fairly good balance between combat and stealth game play, all of which is done from the same perspective.
You are placed in the role of Bishop, a team leader for one of the squads of Rainbow. The game starts off with events before the first game that allows the player to see the escalation of the terrorist attack, as well from a different team’s view point. This type of story telling of course raises the issue of if you would need to play the first game to understand the story. While it isn’t completely needed, playing the first game would greatly enhance the ability to know what is happening in the game, and for the most part the game is so clustered together and put together a way that almost consists of you getting into a firefight immediately without any real small sessions of the characters strategizing, or discussing events that took place. In the end it would help leaps and bounds to play the first game if only for it’s story if you’re looking for Vegas 2 in that regard, however with that aside, the game has numerous improvements, and additions over it’s predecessor.
As you start the game off those who have played the first game will immediately notice that the character creation screen, previously only accessed directly through the multiplayer menus, displays right after the intro logos, while the facial customization is fairly limited in terms of default face selection, it does have a passable amount of variety. Armor and clothing customization is also included and displayed on your character, which has a in-game effect, as wearing heavier armor will offer more protection, whereas wearing light armor would allow you to move faster while not being as protected as the heavy armor provides. This of course brings up the issue of “How much protection would heavy armor provide?” it’s actually a sizable amount, while still staying in line with the super fragile feel of the game. While you won’t be able to soak up bullets ever, and taking a bullet to the head will always result in death, the protection improvement is definitely noticeable as you get into combat, and on the other hand, mobility is also noticeable when you need it especially to rush a enemy’s position, or to quickly get into cover, however on both ends even the most dramatic maximization and minimization for one stat for the other won’t make a huge difference in game play, it is a very slight feature in all but appearance wise where someone who has a lot of protection looks very armored, where as someone without it would look less bulky. The armor options still also give off the look of a militarized special ops unit even when going out of your way to try to outfit your character to look as wild as possible.
Thankfully all of the customization with your character isn’t waylaid to the side during single player as many games do, your character completely carries over to the story mode of the game. Another new improvement to the game is the A.C.E.S. system, standing for Advanced Combat Enhancement Specialization, basically it is a way to further improve your character. You gain experience points for simply shooting someone which leads to you leveling up, however you also gain additional points in other aspects depending on how you kill enemies, for example if you kill a enemy with a grenade, you would get 2 points in assault, where as killing someone at a long distance would give you points in marksmanship. The way the system is included in single player, and multiplayer makes it a very good incentive to play the game a lot more than one round through the story mode, besides for progression reasons, it also handles how the game unlocks weapons, and additional clothing, and armor pieces for your character, as you further improve your rating in one of the system’ categories, it’ll give you rewards from additional experience to a brand new rifle.
After you finish the campaign, there quite a few other game play modes to keep your attention for awhile, starting with the returning Terrorist Hunt mode that let’s you take on the smart AI by yourself or with a few friends. While the AI can be cheap at times, sometimes spawning enemies in convenient locations that would allow them to flank you easily, Terrorist Hunt remains a fun and challenging mode. Finally there’s the competitive multiplayer component which for the most part remains the same, with new maps. All of these modes share the same character that you create when you first start the game up, in fact the only thing that doesn’t carry over is your weapon load out which lets players select different weapons for different occasions.
The game play itself is almost identical to what one would have come to expect from the Rainbow Six series, it’s a mixture of a tactical shooter with a lot of realism, in short you won’t be soaking up bullets without dying for very long. The movement is also a lot more weighted than most shooters giving it a further realistic feel, and finally the graphics and sound are brilliant. As gunfire rings through the Las Vegas strip you can see fantastic spectacles of light that are more than muzzle flashes, the buildings and the environmental lightning is very pleasing to look at, and the character models are realistic looking, and look much smoother than the first game.
All in all, Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is a improvement over the first game in every way except story, where it provides a very interesting concept, but it lacks the presentation to follow through, as well as having little to none “previously on” semblance to catch players up who either don’t want to, or haven’t played the first game. The game is definitely not for everyone, if you approach it like a fast paced shooter like say (Unreal Tournament or the more recent Call of Duty series), the game doesn’t pull any punches having the AI teach you why that’s a bad idea right off the bat; although if you can get used to the way Rainbow Six handles the shooter genre, it can be a very rewarding, and at the very least, a unique feel to the genre, making this game stand out amongst the crowd.
Concept Implementation - Great
-As with all Rainbow Six games, Vegas 2 provides a very satisfying realistic feel to the FPS genre that is done well.
Gameplay - Great
-All of the game’s mechanics gather together to make you feel like a special forces soldier.
Presentation - Average
-There is a severe lack of story line coherency in the game mainly because it goes off the idea that the player has played the first game, however this is not rectified in every a small way that would allow someone who hasn’t played the first game to ease in. There are also a few technical gimmicks that are extremely noticeable.
Graphics - Good
-While not much of an improvement over the first time, the variety of new art assets the game adds makes up for that, and in general the game still is a good looking game, particularly in the effects of combat.
Sound/Music - Great
-The sound goes a long way in Rainbow Six games, and Vegas 2 isn’t any exception; the music is also an improvement over the first one, while it doesn’t exactly add any groundbreaking scores, it does add a memorable theme.
Singularity Score : Single Player - 2, Multiplayer - 3
Overall Score - 22/25 Great
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