After the fiasco that was Rainbow 6: Lockdown I feared that my beloved Rainbow 6 franchise had succumbed to the fate of mainstreamness, where everything has to be a boring, fast paced Quake clone, rather than the wonderful squad based sneakiness that was the thing that made the original R6 games stand out from the crowd. I hated Lockdown with a passion and because of that hatred I was reluctant to purchase Vegas and give it a try, especially since it was originally released for the Xbox 360. After seeing the demo whoever I decided to risk it, and I'm very, very glad that I did. It looks like Ubisoft Montreal (Developers of the excellent Splinter Cell series) have redeemed Rainbow 6. They're back baby!

Updater

Vegas automatically checks for update patches every time you run the game and prompts you to download/install them. More software needs to do this, it makes life much much easier.

Premise

Vegas starts out oddly enough in Mexico. Maybe there was some spare artwork left over from Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter or something, I don't know. While on a mission there your Rainbow team is ambushed and left for dead while your two squad mates are captured by a terrorist named Irena. After escaping you set out to rescue them but are transferred to Los Vegas, Nevada after terrorists begin a massive assault on the city.

Gameplay

If you've played any of the previous Rainbow games you'll have an idea of what to expect. Vegas is a semi-realistic first (and third person) squad based shooter. You're in charge of a three man counter-terrorist squad and will be hunting and clearing terrorists through various locales in Vegas ranging from the streets to casinos, construction sites and even a massive dam level. Single player missions will range from hostage rescue and disarm the bomb to straight up terrorist hunt/kill jobs. You can also play single player on the multiplayer maps (ten in total at launch) against a set number of enemies in the terrorist hunt mode. You can't have A.I. backup in terrorist hunt this time around so it's more like the classic "lone wolf" game from the previous Rainbow games.

There are many significant differences between Vegas and all of the previous Rainbow games. For instance, this is the first Rainbow 6 game I've played that actually has a control layout that make sense. For instance "R" reloads, rather than "Z". It was nice not to have to remap all my keys. The controls took a little getting used to, especially the taking cover bit and switching weapons/accessories with the hud was a little strange but I found my way around them after only a few minutes and after that found them to be very instinctive. Vegas feels like a combination of Counter Strike, Rainbow 6: Ravenshield and Splinter Cell with some new twists thrown into the control scheme. The game is front to back action, at faster pace than the previous games. Rather than being able to lean left and right you hit your right mouse button when you're close to a wall, a box or other cover and you'll take cover against/behind whatever that object is. Your WASD keys will then walk you back and forth against that item, and when you're near an edge you just keep pressing that way to come around that corner and lean out, or over it. If you hit your fire button without moving in the direction of the edge of your cover you'll stick your gun around the corner and "blind fire" which is occasionally useful if there's a large number of enemies nearby and you don't want to risk getting your head blown off. It's rather amusing to see someone blind firing with a bolt action sniper rifle.

Also different from the previous R6 games is that you and your teammates must all survive the mission and you can only control Logan, the Rainbow team leader directly. You can command your squad mates around fairly well, but there's no way to take control of them. If someone is critically wounded you get a warning and must get close to them and heal them, or order an A.I. player to do it. If you allow one of your buddies to stay wounded for long enough, or he's killed instantly (ex. standing on a grenade) it's game over and you go back to your previous save point. Same deal if you die. Like Call of Duty 2 however, you don't have a health meter. As you get injured your screen will get harder and harder to see and you must get to cover for a few seconds or you'll most likely die. Sit without getting injured for a few seconds and you're back in the game with full health. This is a good thing because you tend to run into more enemies than you did in the former Rainbow 6 games, and they come at you in waves on many of the missions, especially while your computer expert is hacking something, or your demolitions expert is trying to disarm something that goes "bang!". Controlling your teammates is a snap, more on this below.

Tactical movement plays a huge part in Vegas. He who moves to quickly generally ends up deal as you probably won't see the terrorist right around the corner who's just waiting to end your life. Your weapon crosshairs will spread out more and more the faster you're moving, decreasing your accuracy and will disappear completely if you're running making it virtually impossible to hit anything except at point blank range. Most of the time I moved crouched, checking each corner before I went around, and checking every door with the "snake cam" to see what was behind it before barging in and dying horribly.

Another interesting new twist to the game is rappel lines. There's hard points/ropes scattered around many of the maps that will allow you to climb up the side of a building, or rappel down. Having your team rappel down the side of a building and simultaneously break through the windows to take out the terrorists you've marked as targets is an amazing gaming moment.

The in game map is quite easy to use, and overlays on your HUD when you hit the TAB key. It shows the floor plan around you with all significant landmarks (ex. ladders, doors, rappel points.) as well as terrorists you've spotted, civilians and teammates. Your next way point is on your hud with arrows if it's above or below you. Most of the story and mission briefings are provided to you by picture in picture video on your HUD by your handler, and she also pipes you frequent media feeds that give you a feel for what's going on around the city as your missions progress. The story is extremely well done and really draws you in.

There are frequent save points in the game, but no way to save manually. It's pretty obvious this is a console port. I would have liked the ability to save as I frequently ended up dying many, many times trying to clear the same room or just after I finally managed to do it. You can always restore to your last save point and you can return to any level you've unlocked to replay it although this deletes your save point so if you're part way through a higher level you'll have to do it from the start of that scene again.


Single Players Weapons/Equipment

Unlike the previous R6 games which tended to give you a wide variety of gadgets to play with, in single player games you're limited to various types of grenades, (flash bang, incendiary and fragmentation) breaching charges and C4 booby traps are about it other than sights for your weapons. As usual you've got a huge variety of weapons to choose from with six submachine guns, nine assault rifles, four sniper rifles, four shotguns and four light machine guns. Pistols have unlimited ammunition, so you're never without something to shoot back with. You can equip yourself with two main arms, one side arm and have two slots open for grenades/gadgets. You can not have two of the same type of gadget equipped. (Ex. You can't have both gadget slots filled with frag grenades but you can take three frag grenades and three flash bangs.)

Weapons can all be customized in one way or another to suit your play style and preferences. Handguns can take high capacity magazines or laser sights, submachine guns can have laser sights and various scopes, sniper rifles can have three types of scopes (6x, 12x or a 6x/12x variable), and light machine guns can have a recoil suppressing stock. Most of the weapons can be suppressed (silenced) while playing the game, a sound suppressor isn't something you have to select during the equipping phase of the mission.

Unfortunately in the single player you can't change your teammates gear just your own, but a wonderful addition to the game is the ability to pick up the weapons and ammunition of fallen foes. I'm so, SO glad they finally added that. I get so annoyed when I'm playing a game and I run out of ammo and for some reason I can't snag the rifle that's lying at my feet. You'll also find rearming/equipping points scattered throughout the game so it pays to explore. These boxes will not only top up your ammunition and grenades, you can use them to change your gear out if you've picked a combination that isn't working for you. Gear can also be switched out when you're in the team's helicopter getting transported to different locations.

You can also replace one of your main arms with a riot shield that is used with your pistol and will absorb most weapons fire. It also slows you down and it's incredibly cheap in terrorist hunt if you can find a nice corner to hide in and just shoot all the Ts in the head when they come after you as you camp out with your shield. The weapons are all realistic and feature incredibly detailed models and reload animations.

One of the handiest gadgets in the game is the snakecam. It's always with you and can be put under any door to take a quick look into the next room. It's quite useful to check out what you're getting into and you can use it to tag up to two targets for your teammates to engage.

Multiplayer Weapons/Equipment

In multiplayer games your options for toys change a little bit. You can only have one long arm and a pistol rather than two and one. Your gadget slots now only hold two grenades rather than the single players three, but you have new items in your arsenal including a GPS unit (reveals enemies on the map for short time), radar jammer, tear gas grenades and two gas masks. The server can also set limitations on the types of equipment that can be used. (More on this in the multiplayer section.)

A.I./Squad mates

I was surprised how easy it was to command your squad mates in Vegas. Basically you just mouse over where you want them to go and hit the space bar and they advance there engaging the enemy as they go, and taking cover when they reach their destination. If you're going to do an entry, or want them to use an item such as a rappel point you just mouse over it and hit space. A little context menu pops up when they're in position depending on what they're at. For instance if your team is at one door to a room you can hit "v" for them to breach the door and clear, "n" for them to open the door and clear and "n" to throw a grenade in the room and clear. Once they're done their assigned task they take cover and wait for more orders. Telling them to follow you or hold up is a matter of tapping the alt key. Unfortunately they often take the shortest route to a door, and at times I've ordered them to move to a door and rather than going around the room with the terrorists in it, they opened the door in front of me and strolled through the room to the opposite door and set up on the wrong side of it.

Overall I'm not sure about the A.I. in Vegas. Sometimes they seem quite smart, sometimes they seem to be about as sharp as a bag of wet liver. I've had enemies tossing frag and flash bang grenades at me, flanking and seemingly covering each other a bit and advancing on my position, and at other times I've had them run right at me when I'm lining them up, or standing on a grenade I've just tossed at them. They'll also sometimes just sit there while you shoot them in the feet, take cover behind things that are far smaller than their bodies, or leave their heads sticking out to get shot off. If you're out of an enemy's detection range you can often just shoot them multiple times and they won't react or even look around to see where you are. Your own team is the same. They generally cover your back pretty well when you've got them on weapons free and follow, but I've sometimes had them walk right past enemies who are out in the open and get shot in the back. I usually leave my teammates in a good position if I don't have them following me and let them provide me with cover fire.

It's also rather entertaining that the terrorists seem to have "zones" they operate in. You can often go suppressors off and light up everyone in a room, pitch explosives all over the place and generally create a rucass that would be heard two counties over, and yet when you walk up to the next door the terrorists in there have no idea what just happened right next door to them. Very odd. They also panic the instant you sneak that same door open. Somehow they hear a door opening but were unable to hear you dump several hundred rounds from an assault rifle on the other side of the door. Talk about selective hearing.

The A.I., at least for the PC should be a little smarter in my opinion but you'll often run into them in groups which gives them an advantage. That being said, they're smart enough and spread out through the levels to give you a challenge.


Graphics/Maps/Sound and Music

Since Vegas is powered by the Unreal engine I expected lots of eye candy and I certainly wasn't disappointed as the game features the most detailed and realistic maps I've played through. It's breathtaking, despite that darned full screen glow effect that seems to be on every game out there these days, and that I find makes it hard to spot enemies. I wish there was an option to turn it off. Character and weapon models and animation are incredibly detailed as well. Great looking environments, explosions, smoke and effects combine for a stunning visual experience. The environments are semi destructable, with breakable glass, foliage that can be shot, movable objects and things like doors that can be blown off their hinges. Smoke grenades look great as well. Thank heavens for themal vision! I liked the fact that you'll pull your weapon muzzle back when you're up against something, and it's sort of neat that if you shoot out out a window you can use the muzzle of your weapon to finish clearing the glass out. It's the little touches that really make a game engrossing.

Check out the screenshots, but be warned that they don't do the game true justice. Strangely, Vegas doesn't support normal LCD resolutions such as 1280x1024. There are third party patches out there to fix this, but it seems like an odd omission. You can download one of the LCD resolution patches here.

The music and sound effects in Vegas are very well done and realistic. Nothing gets your heart pumping like hearing bullets ricocheting off walls around you then suddenly getting deafened by a grenade exploding near you. Make sure to listen to enemy chatter when you're sneaking up on them. It adds to the story and it's quite often amusing, with my personal favorite being "I dunno man.. I've got a bad feeling like I'm not going to live past the next few minutes." just as I was lining said glum terrorist up in my rifle sights.


Multiplayer

There's a nice variety of games to be played in Vegas multiplayer:

Co-operative: The best game type in my opinion, which I've always loved in Serious Sam and the Rainbow 6 games. You can play through the story with up to four players, or play terrorist hunt on one of the ten multiplayer maps that shipped with the game. Hopefully we see more maps soon from either Ubisoft or the community.

Sharpshooter: Anyone else would just call it deathmatch. This can be played solo or with teams. Players will respawn when killed, the player or team with the highest number of kills at the end of the round wins.

Attack and defend: Two teams have to defend or attack an objective.

Retrieval: Two teams try to locate and capture canisters and return them to their base.

Survival: Deathmatch with no respawns. The last man standing wins, or in the case of team survival, the team the wipes out the opposition wins.

The in game browser is super fast and lets you play a quick match of your game type choice, or you can browse based on filters that you set up such as game type, language and minimum/maximum number of players. I found it annoying you can't sort servers by ping. In fact, you can't see the ping at all.

The multiplayer adds a few nice touches to make it easier to keep track of your buddies, including a really useful minimap/radar and large green icons over you teammate's heads. Really cuts down on the friendly fire instances.

You can completely customize the appearance of your character in Vegas multiplayer. In fact, the amount of customization you can do is rather ridiculous. You can modify every piece of armor (ex. Legs, feet, head, shoulders, arms, legs) from a wide range of gear, then pick what sort of camouflage you want on each item, or create a custom camo job. It'll be very handy for multiplayer matches to have team colors, even with your buddies having a large green icon over their head.


Bugs/Bad Stuff

As mentioned above, the A.I. enemies and your teammates could be smarter at times.

The system requirements for the game are quite high, especially when it comes to video cards. There's going to be huge numbers of gamers out there that are going to have to upgrade their rigs to play Vegas. On the other hand if this is going to indicative of other games coming out in the new year, it's probably time to get yourself a new system regardless.

Some corners, especially those with pillars can't be leaned around, you get stuck on them. This is one of the times that it would be handy to have the old school lean option.

I hate not being able to save anywhere I want. Save points suck.

A.I. enemies will often track you/shoot at you through walls. This is something I've noticed in other Rainbow games as well, the original Ghost Recon in particular was bad for this. They can't hit you but it's a little disconcerting to hear shooting on the other side of a wall you're sneaking along. They'll also sometimes just know where you are for no discernable reason.

Every time I tried to commandeer a mounted machine gun I'd get stuck on it and be unable to exit it... Hitting space as the tooltip suggests does nothing. This especially annoyed me when one of my teammates yells at me to get on the machine gun during a firefight. Good suggestion asshat. You just cost me seven or so minutes of gameplay, as I had to reload my last save point. Not sure how this didn't get caught in testing as I've talked to a number of other players with the same problem.

Conclusion

With all the swearing, blood and violence, Vegas definitely earns it's 'M' rating, and it's not a game for the kids. For the older among you I recommend it highly. It's gritty, gorgeous, gripping and fast paced. As mentioned earlier in this review, after Lockdown I was worried that my precious Rainbow 6 franchise was going straight down the toilet, but Vegas has given me my faith back. Viva Los Vegas!

I've made a few videos to show you some of the nifty things you can in the single player, click to view.

Room clear w. hostages

Rapel and clear