"Rainbow takes a gamble, rolls a 6."

Game Introduction: Rainbow Six joins the next-gen consoles with the release of R6:Vegas. Gone is the PC-extensive slow-pacing teamwork design, now its more of a fast-paced FPS.

Pros:
- A pretty good FPS
- Using your teammates correctly can be fun
- Terrorist Mode is really fun
- Multiplayer Character Customization is great

Cons:
- The story isn't special
- The main character Gabe Logan isn't exactly a great protagonist
- Teamwork commands are very basic
- SP is meh
- Loading screens are very annoying
- Multiplayer features are very basic and may not work correctly
- The end of Terrorist Mode is very annoying
- The game has some things that should've been fixed
- MP is dead

Story: (6/10)
Vegas starts off with you as the Gabe Logan, in charge of a 3 man squad of Rainbow's. A search of a known terrorist in Mexico leads to much bigger terrorist activity in Las Vegas. The game tries to make you like Gordon Freeman from Half-Life and while the attempt is noteworthy, it doesn't work that well. Your teammates also don't have much character in them and thus, the game isn't very engaging as a story.

Graphics: (8/10)
The graphics look nice with the bright shining lights of the Vegas Nightlife. The interiors of casinos actually look like real casinos and there's in-game ads. One annoyance I had was Gabe Logan's eyes, they looked so weird that I thought they were lazy making them.

Controls: (7/10)
For the most part the controls are mostly the same as other FPS shooters but there's some slight differences that need to get used to. One thing that really hurts is that there's no run button. Why Ubi never thought of this I don't know, but I don't expect a counter-terrorist team to move as slow as Rainbow does in this game. Accidentally having thrown a grenade towards your feet would most likely have you screwed. While there are some teamwork commands, they aren't as great as they could've been. I wish you could use the map as another way to send your teammates somewhere as you can only do so from your viewpoint. Your soldiers can for the most part only really shoot and do story-driven commands, they can't throw grenades unless stacked up towards a door which is really lame. Also once one of your teammates is down, you can only command your other teammate to heal him and nothing else, why you can't continue to move your teammate from getting out of danger is odd. Covering is a great feature like in Gears of War but there's some things that bug me. When coming up over the top, your character comes up from the opposite shoulder of where you're looking at. So if my character's head and viewpoint is more to his right side, he'll come up on the left side. The problem with this is that sometimes you aren't able to aim at an opponent because you are supposed to turn on your other shoulder. Another thing is that stacking up against a door or corner and either opening a door or turning a corner never feels smooth. It feels like there's a slight delay.

Gameplay: (7/10)
As a FPS and tactical shooter it can be fun at times but with a story that's not particularly special and characters that you'll not remember, the single player campaign is another of the generic shooters everyone's seen. Terrorist Mode offline isn't really fun especially when you are by yourself against tens of terrorists. With multiplayer, there's many game types and playing Terrorist Mode online can be fun with real players. One huge problem is who made this service. Ubisoft is not really known for its great MP interfaces nor its glitchy system. There's many things I can complain about but I'll just list a couple: afk hosts, can't join no ping servers, long load times, looking up match settings during a game often has me kicked from the game entirely, the game while loading can randomly kick you off the game entirely, no mic support, joining an already started story game has you spectate until your other teammates are all dead (having respawn means you aren't going to play until the stage is over), lag is sometimes unbearable and finally, looking for the last terrorist in Terrorist Mode is the worst part in the game. I've once watched 2 of my teammates spend over 8 minutes to look for him, only to time out and lose. Another person mentioned they never found the last terrorist in one of his games. The game has an odd way of saving during SP, after loading you'll have to take a few steps until it finally does it, why it couldn't autosave while loading, I don't know. I only knew from the hard way when I once loaded from my last checkpoint only to have to replay the last 15 minutes.

Music: (6/10)
The music to this game is alright but it gets really annoying because it keeps looping, There's not that many songs. Gun sounds sound real and character voices are alright. Hearing things off the miniscreen from other characters was a bad feature to have as its more of a nuisance.

Lasting Appeal: (5/10)
I'm going to be really biased, I bought the game during the last stages of this game's life and while I may have not been there when the game came out, I know it wasn't a popular one, especially compared to its XBOX 360 and PS3 counterparts. The SP mode is more of a one-and-done gameplay element and its lasting appeal is towards MP. The problem is that this game is basically dead, there's not that many people playing this anymore. I'd estimate less than 20 on Story Mode and less than 50 on Terrorist Mode during peak hours. Good luck finding people playing another gameplay mode.

Hit, Miss or Try: Hit for the Rainbow Six fans. For everyone else, try it but this game is dead.

Final Say: Rainbow Six:Vegas is a nice attempt from Ubisoft to modernize its game series for the FPS crowd. Unlike the next-gen consoles however, the game's shortcomings and lame multiplayer support reveal how unsuccessfully it is compared to the other many PC shooters. I timed how long it takes to get to the Main Menu and my stopwatch has over a minute. A minute to finally load up a rotating picture of Las Vegas. If you thought that was annoying, wait until the game kicks you and if you decide to play again, you'd have to go through this again plus the MP loading.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/28/08

Game Release: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas (US, 12/12/06)