Rainbow Six Vegas (Xbox360)

I have been to Las Vegas on one occasion and it was such an experience that I will never forget it as long as I walk this earth. The lights, the money, the strange people; it all adds up to an environment unlike any other place on earth. So it would only be normal for the setting that is Las Vegas to show up in videogames all over the world. The town has made some small guest appearances in past games but it has yet to be the sole location for a game. Well scratch that off your list, as the people behind the infamous Rainbow Six series are taking on Las Vegas in full force. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas is the most recent edition of the Rainbow Six series that has lead a long life starting off on the PC some ten years ago. The fine folks over at Ubisoft decided it was time to revisit the famous series and add some new features as well. These new features, along with the classic Rainbow Six single-player add up to one hell of a game. I haven’t even mentioned the multiplayer yet and I am already raving about how awesome this game is! Read on to find out why this game stacks up to even the best of best games out there on the Xbox 360, and why gamers will look to Rainbow Six Vegas as the standard for realistic first-person shooters in the next-generation of videogames.

The first thing you need to do before booting up your copy of R6 Vegas is to forget ever first-person shooter you have played in the past, including Halo. Unless you have played a Rainbow Six title before then you need to understand that Vegas falls into the category of realistic shooter, meaning one to two shots and your dead, simple as that. For some gamers this may be a turnoff but to many others (me included) it is what makes this game so fun, the suspense of dying at any moment makes you play in a totally different style than ever before. Once you start up the single-player campaign mode (in two different levels of difficulty) you will begin your mission as a Rainbow Six operative (the Rainbow’s are an elite group of anti-terrorist soldiers). Funny thing is the developers decided to start you off not in Las Vegas, but in the slums of Mexico. This choice may seem weird at first but it was smart because it gets you used to the controls and acts as a training level without seeming anything like one.
I don’t want to go too much into the storyline as it will spoil it for many people playing the game for the first time but I will say that you travel from Mexico to Las Vegas, to the Nevada Dam, to a secret Research Lab. The majority of the game takes place in Las Vegas and consists of either street or casino levels. Some of the casinos are amazingly lavish with expensive gold and diamond chandeliers, while others are still being constructed. My personal favorite level was the wannabe stratosphere (all of the casinos are replicas of real ones but with fake names) that towers high above the terror ridden Las Vegas strip. The game includes a decently long campaign mode that will take you 10-15 hours on “normal” mode and a good 20+ hours on “realistic” difficulty. The cool thing about the campaign mode was after beating it once I wanted to instantly go back in and play it again on the “realistic” setting.
The controls in Rainbow Six Vegas are your basic first-person shooter controls with a little next-generation spice thrown in for good measure. You control the movement of your character with the left analog stick and look around with the right one, one trigger fires and another moves you to cover. Speaking of the cover system, this is something all new that has never been part of a Rainbow Six game before now. Using the left trigger you can quickly move to cover (think Gears of War) and either hide to reload/heal or peak out to snipe off the terrorists. Perfecting the cover system is, like in Gears of War, key to survival in the Rainbow Six universe. While it is not as important as it is in Gears it will make completing the game much easier. The four face buttons do things like reload, toss grenades, open doors, etc.
If you want to get fancy you can, for the first time in a R6 game, repel or “fast rope” over the sides of buildings and through windows. This tactic can become very effective for busting in on some unsuspecting terrorists as you hang upside down from the side of a casino. Using the d-pad you can control your teammates and order them to do things such as open doors, clear rooms, and move to a certain position. One of the coolest features of this is to direct your teammates to a closed door, then use your snake camera to scope out the bad guys, press select on each of them to mark them for target, then send your guys in (either shooting or tossing grenades) to take them out in the order you choose them to die. There are many other small quirks such as a massive amount of sub-machine guns, assault rifles, gadgets, explosives, and other tools at your disposal to kill off the multitude of terrorists inserted throughout the game. Basically the controls for Rainbow Six Vegas do exactly what they need to and improve on any version of the series before this one. The loading screens are tossed out and are replaced with helicopter rides where you receive your mission briefing.

Once you complete the single player campaign a couple of times you are ready to jump online with Rainbow Six Vegas’ massive multiplayer portion. Before shooting one bullet online you need to go buy a Vision camera for the Xbox 360 from Microsoft. Using this camera and the face scanning software built into R6 Vegas you can literally put yourself into the action, well your head at least. Being one of the only games to use the Vision camera, Vegas did it right the first time. The virtual me actually resembled me and people that have met me in person recognized me when we were playing together. You take a photo from the front then one from the side and the software creates a virtual soldier out of the photos. The best online character I saw was one created around Jack Bauer’s mug, done with photos off the internet and a balloon for shape.
OK this is just a gimmick but a cool one at that. Now that you have your soldier created it is time to jump online and R6 Vegas has plenty of modes to keep you busy. Included are multiple solo and team based matches with around ten multiplayer maps. There is also a co-op story mode and a very addicting/difficult co-op terrorist hunt mode. The campaign is not up to snuff with the online co-op of Gears of War but it does stand on its own two feet as one of the better ones found out there. First introduced in the classic GRAW this game also features the same level system that advances your character from private to general using a points system. These points are obtained by: winning matches, beating co-op levels, and getting kills during online play. Vegas has also included the ability for clan play without changing your Xbox Live gamertag, because you can easily add your clans initials to the beginning of your gamertag right in the multiplayer menu. There are also online rankings, achievements, and other gimmicks to keep you playing online for months to come. Rainbow Six Vegas has one of the most expansive and all-including multiplayer modes that we have seen in a long while. This mode is what puts this game above Gears of War gameplay wise in my mind, something I never thought I would say so soon after the game’s release.
Graphically Rainbow Six Vegas is a mixed bag of great and just decent stuff. The character models and guns are a treat to look at but some of the face recreations are just plain ugly. Explosions and fire will remind you every time that this is a next-gen title and belongs on our beloved Xbox 360. The level design will make you forget these small mishaps very quickly as each one of the casinos is unique. Animations, such as rappelling or hanging upside down on a building look really good and don’t really get as repetitive as I would have thought. Draw distance in a town like Las Vegas is important and the game got it right; seeing the Bellagio fountains as you rappel down the side of a casino from miles away is something you need to see to believe. I might as well compare it to Gears of War and can take care of it really quickly; it doesn’t match up in terms of graphics. The textures look nowhere near as polished or detailed and the same amount of work was not put into the look of Vegas as it was in the gameplay department. That being said Rainbow Six Vegas still looks fairly good and if it wasn’t for Gears of War it would probably be the best looking game on the system. Everything also scales down a bit for online play that is understandable to keep out the lag. The audio portion of Vegas is a little bit better and reminds me of GRAW a lot. All of the sound effects and music are in place and it really hits a home run when using a 5.1 surround sound system.
Rainbow Six Vegas has been one of the best experiences I have had on my Xbox 360 in a long time and I feel that I will keep playing this game for some time to come. The single player campaign consists of old features and new features that add up to one hell of a time. Using the Vision Camera adds an element that has not been found in many games today and is definitely something that I have been looking forward to. Some good graphics and a complete sound system round out the beautiful title. There is only one game that is overall better out there right now and that is Gears of War. This game comes really close in many ways to surpassing that greatness and to some gamers surely will over time. If you have not figured it out by now I am currently obsessed with this game and can only give you one recommendation concerning Rainbow Six Vegas; go buy it now.