Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas

"R6V is the best shooter I've ever played."

Let me start by saying that this is the first Rainbow Six game I've ever played. It happens to be the best shooting game I've ever played.

The story in the game is probably its weakest aspect. Basically, terrorists have worked their way up from Mexico and have taken over Las Vegas. It is your duty to stop them at all costs. I won't get into any more detail of the plot, because I don't like to give anything away.

Next, the graphics. This is a special part of the game. The entire city of Las Vegas is created in this game. For those that are familiar with Las Vegas, you can recognize such buildings as the Luxor and the MGM Grand. The character detail is amazing, as well. You can see the dents in your player's helmet, as well as the dirt on his face. You can even see your player's mouth move when you talk into your microphone online and offline. The environment in each level is fantastic. There are plenty of things you can destroy, such as doors, windows, slot machines, and much more. The guns have great detail on them too.

Speaking of guns, you have such a wide range of choices in this game. For single-player, you can choose two primary guns and a pistol. For multiplayer, you are allowed one primary gun and a pistol. The primary guns range from sub-machine guns to assault rifles, shotguns, machine guns, sniper rifles, and shields! You can customize each one of your guns by putting scopes, high-capacity mags, or lasers on them. You can also carry two extra "accessories." These "accessories" include, frag grenades, C4, smoke, flashbang, tear gas, gas masks, motion sensors, radar jammers, etc.

As you play through single-player, you can give orders to two other soldiers that are with you. These orders include opening doors (violently or stealthy), attacking enemies, or just holding their position. You can change their behavior to assault (fire on sight) or stealth (fire only when fired upon). You can basically use everything as cover. This is a great feature in the game. Not just on single-player, but especially in multiplayer. This is not your typical run-and-gun game. You must be tactical to win in this game. That's what makes this game so much different than the other shooters out there right now.

The best part of the game is the multiplayer. You can play attack and defend, sharpshooter (deathmatch w/ respawn), team sharpshooter, survival (deathmatch w/o respawn), team survival, retrieval, co-op story mode, and co-op terrorist hunt. Terrorist hunt is a game mode that puts you in a level with a certain number of terrorists and your only objective is to eliminate every one of them. As you play online, you will gain experience points with each match. As you accumulate more points, you get promoted to different classes (i.e. Captain to Major). With each promotion, you unlock different features, such as camouflage, armor, and guns. Don't worry though. The guns and armor that you unlock are really no better than the ones you are given at the beginning of the game.

Graphics- 10/10
Story-8/10
Replay Value- 10/10
Gameplay- 10/10

In reality, I would give this game a 9.5 or 9.6. Since I can't do that, I had to give it a 10. The only thing missing from this game is 4-person offline multiplayer and the guest-system online (like in Halo 2). A few minor glitches here and there also lower the quality of the game, but not by much.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 04/09/07