Viva La Vegas
It's nearly a year late, but Rainbow Six Vegas has arrived and hooboy is it good stuff.
Published: July 19, 2007
It's beginning to become a common theme for PS3 owners; we wait months and months for an oft-delayed game to finally arrive and when it does, we get all of the extra stuff that was released at extra cost to the Xbox 360 crowd for free. Is the wait worth the free goodies? In some cases, one would probably say no and leave it at that, but consider this: Rainbow Six Vegas, released on the 360 back in late November of last year, as of less than a week ago, was the second most played game on Xbox Live.
Now part of that is because of the recently released map pack (the PS3 version already comes with it, no worries there), but what gives a game more than half a year old legs like that is the fact that the gameplay is ridiculously good -- and it only gets better when you play the game online, thanks to a slick experience point system and some light character customization, but we'll get to that in a second. For now, let's concentrate on the single-player experience.
It's possible that you might not have seen Vegas in action yet, and thus don't know that the game plays normally like a first-person shooter, but when you press and hold L1 next to cover the game snaps out seamlessly to a third-person perspective, allowing you to take stock of entrenched enemies and watch for flanking. It's a brilliant move and when combined with a smart cover system, the game pulls back from the more recent arcade interpretations to set right in the middle between the one-hit-you're-dead authenticity of the PC originals and the console-riffic run-and-gun last effort. As it turns out, this the perfect mix of realism (especially on the harder difficulty levels) and slightly arcadey action, and good gawd is it addictive.
But you are not a one-man army. The Rainbow Six squads are groups of expertly-trained spec ops soliders and they work in tandem to slip in and slip out with minimal presence. To this end, you're grouped with two other guys, and, surprisingly, they act like the trained vets that they are. While you're always in simple one-button command of your squad, they're more than capable of handling themselves, and in many cases they're more alert than you are. Half the fun of the game is in using the tactical map and the handy flags to target enemies and then track their positions, positioning your men to flank or otherwise get the drop on them.
While you can do line of sight orders, it's in the game's cooperative, stackable orders system that things really shine. Slip your fiber optic snake came under a door to call out up to two targets to hit, then have your men stack up near a door to get in position, then scoot around to another entrance and with a press of the up, left or right directions on the d-pad, you can all storm in together either silently or with a bang to dispense everyone in the room as quickly as possible. The level designs complement this beautifully, and in most cases it's the key to properly breaching and clearing a room with multiple hostiles while keeping any hostages safe. It only gets cooler when you coordinate an attack through windows and skylights at the same time.
But while Vegas' cover-based system works beautifully, the questionable checkpoint system can leave a good half hour of slow, methodical, tactical firefights rendered useless. Your men can be gunned down, but if you can get to them fast enough and pump 'em full of drugs, they'll pop back up good as new. In fact, if only one man goes down, you can order his partner to bring him back from the bring, but mysteriously, the game never lets your team do the same for you. If you die, the screen goes red and you get to watch a loading screen and experience the same fairly scripted fight all over again, sometimes multiple times as the game gets into the more infiltrated later sections.
Still, it's a minor gripe when put up against the undeniably intense and satisfying firefights, something that the online modes only serve to enhance. Rainbow Six Vegas is one of the strongest, most well-rounded online experiences on the PlayStation Network. Game modes range from the fairly standard post-Counter-Strike-era stuff like killing a VIP or capturing a flag, or just flat-out deathmatch, but the ability to play through the story with someone in co-op or team variants of standard stuff, even the more old-school you-die-and-you're-out-for-the-round play is here.
Now part of that is because of the recently released map pack (the PS3 version already comes with it, no worries there), but what gives a game more than half a year old legs like that is the fact that the gameplay is ridiculously good -- and it only gets better when you play the game online, thanks to a slick experience point system and some light character customization, but we'll get to that in a second. For now, let's concentrate on the single-player experience.
It's possible that you might not have seen Vegas in action yet, and thus don't know that the game plays normally like a first-person shooter, but when you press and hold L1 next to cover the game snaps out seamlessly to a third-person perspective, allowing you to take stock of entrenched enemies and watch for flanking. It's a brilliant move and when combined with a smart cover system, the game pulls back from the more recent arcade interpretations to set right in the middle between the one-hit-you're-dead authenticity of the PC originals and the console-riffic run-and-gun last effort. As it turns out, this the perfect mix of realism (especially on the harder difficulty levels) and slightly arcadey action, and good gawd is it addictive.
But you are not a one-man army. The Rainbow Six squads are groups of expertly-trained spec ops soliders and they work in tandem to slip in and slip out with minimal presence. To this end, you're grouped with two other guys, and, surprisingly, they act like the trained vets that they are. While you're always in simple one-button command of your squad, they're more than capable of handling themselves, and in many cases they're more alert than you are. Half the fun of the game is in using the tactical map and the handy flags to target enemies and then track their positions, positioning your men to flank or otherwise get the drop on them.
While you can do line of sight orders, it's in the game's cooperative, stackable orders system that things really shine. Slip your fiber optic snake came under a door to call out up to two targets to hit, then have your men stack up near a door to get in position, then scoot around to another entrance and with a press of the up, left or right directions on the d-pad, you can all storm in together either silently or with a bang to dispense everyone in the room as quickly as possible. The level designs complement this beautifully, and in most cases it's the key to properly breaching and clearing a room with multiple hostiles while keeping any hostages safe. It only gets cooler when you coordinate an attack through windows and skylights at the same time.
But while Vegas' cover-based system works beautifully, the questionable checkpoint system can leave a good half hour of slow, methodical, tactical firefights rendered useless. Your men can be gunned down, but if you can get to them fast enough and pump 'em full of drugs, they'll pop back up good as new. In fact, if only one man goes down, you can order his partner to bring him back from the bring, but mysteriously, the game never lets your team do the same for you. If you die, the screen goes red and you get to watch a loading screen and experience the same fairly scripted fight all over again, sometimes multiple times as the game gets into the more infiltrated later sections.
Still, it's a minor gripe when put up against the undeniably intense and satisfying firefights, something that the online modes only serve to enhance. Rainbow Six Vegas is one of the strongest, most well-rounded online experiences on the PlayStation Network. Game modes range from the fairly standard post-Counter-Strike-era stuff like killing a VIP or capturing a flag, or just flat-out deathmatch, but the ability to play through the story with someone in co-op or team variants of standard stuff, even the more old-school you-die-and-you're-out-for-the-round play is here.
