Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas

The Good
Being a fan of the first 2 Rainbow Six games, i decided to pick this one up after hearing rave reviews. Although i preferred the old tactical & realistic gameplay present in the first two, i was pretty impressed with the direction Vegas headed on to.

Gone are the pre-mission planning & character selections. You play one character and are accompanied by 2 teammates, i find this much easier than the four team controlling. All these changes make the game more accessible, and enables a wider audience to enjoy it. Whether this is good or bad depends on your personal taste.

In Vegas you play just one character called "Logan" and can command 2 other teammates. The best part about this game is the teammates A.I, in fact you feel very disabled without them. The enemy A.I is not too dumb either, expect flashbangs and frags to be thrown at you, not to mention the enemy plays very defensive.

Coming to the visuals, the game uses the Unreal 3 engine. The overall visuals are very impressive although it could have been better. The modeling is superb especially when your talking cover and get a close up view of the character you play, same can go for the level design although it has its flaws.

The gameplay is basically similar to F.E.A.R and Gears of War although Vegas allows room for some tactical planning. Before entering rooms you can use the snake cam to view the situation on the other side, then mark which terrorist you want to eliminate first. You can even ask your teammates to make an entry and eliminate any possible threat. Equipments can be changed by accessing equipment boxes present sparsely in most levels or when you head back into the chopper, you can also pick up the enemies weapons. Even though i was a fan of the old realistic gameplay, i quite enjoyed the gunfight oriented gameplay they have implemented in this.

The Bad
First thing is the story, again this depends on personal taste but I've never liked any of the Tom Clancy stories. Basically some terrorist group led by Irena uses a Las Vegas Bomb thread as a decoy to launch a missile from Nevada which is targeted at Las Vegas.

While Rainbow Six was known for its extreme realism, this game seems to stray away from it. I can heal my teammates gun wounds by injecting him...seriously. The game gets pretty repetitive, mainly due to the linear game play. Some parts are even frustrating, for example your teammate is accessing a computer and at that time your assaulted by millions of terrorist. In fact once scene reminded me of Wack the Mole but instead of a hammer u got a gun and your wacking tangos. I found the texturing to be quite below average on certain objects in the environment and the level design can be pretty bland.

On a smaller note the helicopter lady's voice is quite disturbing.

The Bottom Line
If your looking for an extremely realistic tactical experience your looking at the wrong game. Although it lacks a great story the game play makes up for it. I certainly enjoyed it and if you enjoy completely insane gunfights your surely going to love Rainbow Six Vegas.