Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas

"And then there was Vegas..."

Rainbow Six: Vegas is the continuation of a long standing series created by UbiSoft with the help of Tom Clancey and has in previous games been a rather realistic SWAT squad-based FP or TP Shooter. In this game however you will be facing down far more unrealistic hoards of terrorists with unbelievably powerful military-class weapons and armor in a frantic shoot'em up that falls a little short of expectations if you liked the previous Rainbow Six games. Now let's get a little more fine in detail about the Battle in Vegas.

Story: 7/10
The story is nothing to write home about in this edition of Rainbow Six but then you do not usually need a great story for a shooter. What you have is a rather serious group of terrorists that are attacking Vegas in an attempt to break US morale. They believe that by destroying famous Vegas landmarks they can bring the American military to its knees and force them to submit to their demands. Of course, this is largely just a diversion for their real goal (after all who cares THAT much about Vegas anyway?) but if I tell you about that then I will spoil the few good twists the story line has to offer. The one major flaw behind this whole affair is that you are being sent in as a 3 man squad against terrorists numbering in the hundreds with heavy body armor and .50 Caliber suppression machineguns…Now I know a thing or two about tactics and our Government would NEVER send some 3 man advanced SWAT team to handle a situation that blatantly calls for serious multi-team military intervention.

Graphics: 9/10
If you are a graphics junky who buys any game that boasts HD whether it is junk or not then by all means buy this game immediately without thinking! The game is rather well done graphically speaking, the guns look very realistic, the character models move and react in a very visceral and believable way, and the landscape can be a bit mesmerizing at times with the lights and glamour of Vegas. The graphics are so good you can generally tell what your opponent is shooting you with by looking at him and you can even watch him reload giving you the prime time to strike. I do have to knock one little point off though because the aerial views from the chopper sometimes lack the beauty and intensity one has come to expect and you can visibly see graphics load onto the polygons of objects sometimes which should be a historical problem by now.

Sound: 10/10
If on the other hand your crack of choice is good sound quality then you already own this game and my review is not worth looking at. This game's sound quality is AMAZING, you can hear the deafening bang of your big guns, the ear splitting ringing caused by the flash bangs, the sounds of slot machines all around in the casinos, enemies talking, foot steps, choppers, guns being reloaded, shot guns being cocked…It is ALL here in beautiful detail unlike anything I have heard in any other game. If Dare Devil played this game he would Pwn all over us noobs thanks to the incredibly detailed environmental and character generated sounds. Oh and the music is not too bad either.

Game Play: 5/10
This is where things get very mixed. Let's start with some of the good points of the game play in this game. Squad control for your two friends in the game is rather simple and fairly intuitive. You can have them breach doors, frag rooms, sneak up to good positions, scout out locations, and draw fire while you hide in a good look-out position. You can designate targets for them inside a room using the snake cam (like the optic device you used under doors in Splinter Cell) before making an entrance, which can be really useful. Your squad mates will generally kill the enemy rather well without much help from you. It is easy to take cover and find good positions to assault your enemy. There is a fair variety of guns and they seem to handle with good realism for the most part affording you a bit of strategy as to what to bring to the party. You can also add new guns to your list by grabbing enemy weapons in the game. No more thinking “Man I wish I had what HE was killing me with.” because you can go grab it for yourself. You can also customize your weapons with various upgrades like scopes, laser sights, extra large magazines, and shock absorbing stocks. You have a fair bit of freedom when it comes to selecting your route to take the enemy by and can easily use a number of neat new toys like a rappel line and zip line to get around.

Now it is time to explore the not so good and downright bad sides of this game. While you are supposed to be sneaky and go for headshots with your men there are a number of circumstances in which sneaking up on a heavily embunkered enemy is impossible no matter how hard you try. While you can heal your hit teammates indefinitely they cannot heal you if you take a hit. This means you have to let them do all the work for you for a large portion of the game or risk being shot and losing the mission. I do not like the idea of playing a RTS in FPS mode thank you very much. Your enemy is on the phone with the psychic friends network and some of the best of their troops trained with Yuri from Command & Conquer. Why do I say this? Not only will your enemy seemingly predict your peak around a corner so well at times that they will have a bullet waiting for your face when you stick it out before you even know they are there but they will also shoot you from unbelievable angles. For instance, I once snuck up on someone with silencer on, team holding back, and he took a shot infront of him, and that bullet hit my head and killed me instantly. He never even LOOKED at me. Speaking of their psychic abilities your enemies will also teleport. Instead of every enemy being wherever they are as in previous games now they spawn onto location when you reach certain spots or objectives. This effectively renders the Sniper Rifle absolutely useless for the VAST majority of the game because you cannot snipe what is not there until you are standing on them. This also makes it a lot harder to sneak up on enemies. The enemy will often use blind fire to kill you but you will find that your blind fire could not hit the broad side of a barn from the inside. You will also find that because the Desert Eagle and Raging Bull fire faster than any Shotgun, aside from the Auto Shotgun the enemies use, and have more killing power and range that you will never find a use for a Shotgun in this game. Oh, and by the way, these guys wear +10 body armor and helmets made of adamantium, folks! You will find to your horror that even light machine guns spraying .50 cal rounds or your dreaded .45 cal pistol will not always put these guys down in one hit but their BeeBee gun will take you right out the first shot. I have even put a slug from the .45 into an enemy's head and seen him survive it. To say the least that is entirely unrealistic as .50 & .45 cal rounds will cut through nearly any armor even some tanks and the force depleted on your body when hitting kevlar is so strong it makes a gross milkshake out of your internal organs.

All told the good things this game's gameplay has to offer do not outweigh the bad things and the departure from the realistic style of play you got from previous Rainbow Six games.

Rent or Buy?
If you intend to play this game on-line then I suggest it for a buy but do take at least one rent to really see for yourself whether you can hack its downsides. If you intend to just play this as a solo-game or co-op offline then I suggest just renting it. You will get through it fairly well without having to rent it for that long.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/09/07