Leaving Las Vegas
Ubisoft's attempt at a pared-down strategy shooter with the PSP version of Rainbow Six Vegas is good, but not great.
Published: June 24, 2007
Though PS3 owners will have to wait just a few more days to experience the blend of first and third-person action that Xbox 360 owners have enjoyed for the better part of a year, PSP owners will actually get an early crack at it with the pint-sized version of Vegas. Rather than being a straight port, the PSP Vegas is actually something of a side story that features the two-man team of Brian Armstrong and Shawn Rivers playing assault and backup sniper positions, respectively.
Sent in to find and rescue the two member of Rainbow that were captured at the start of the console versions, the handheld version of the game starts off a little later on the timeline than the bigger-screen brothers, but by the end they more or less run in sync. On the one hand, this means you'll get to explore a slightly different tangent of the main storyline, but the downside is that a) the game is incredibly short, and b) it's not terribly interesting from a locales standpoint since PSP Vegas can't really intrude on what happened with the PS3/360 Vegas without messing with continuity.
Which is fine, really; the kind of experience that the consoles offer is a marked improvement over the PSP game, but that doesn't mean what's here doesn't work for the most part. The same switch from first to third person whenever you encounter cover is here, and to be honest, it works well. Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror showed you can do a cover-based shooter on the PSP and most of the common tasks like using the snake cam to peek under doors and aim from behind cover then pop out and take your shot are easy enough to do.
There is the issue of the PSP lacking a few buttons and an analog stick, so most of the common actions are actually context sensitive, meaning aiming down the sights and opening doors are on the same button, but after about 20 minutes or so, it clicks -- just so long as you get used to the game's slightly over-eagerness to snap you to cover as soon as you touch it.
With only a two-man squad, the strategy from the big brother version of the game doesn't really come into play in the same way here. You can still tag enemies while using the snake cam, so it works to at least track their simple patrol routes from behind doors, but there's no real way to coordinate a breach of a room from multiple angles. This effectively means that the game is far more run-and-gun (or maybe stop-'n-pop), and there are moments where you know instantly when a sniping portion of the game is coming up.
For an Unreal Engine-based PSP game, things actually scoot along fairly smoothly. Yeah, there are some framerate issues here and there (mainly due to a lot happening on the screen at once), but most of the game holds up well. The bigger issue is just that the level designs are incredibly boxy and bland. The slightly wonky AI on enemies means that you'll often see them run back and forth and pop from one stance to another, which just further highlights the fact that the enemies don't move all that well. They die quite nicely, though, even going so far as to keel over in a vaguely location-specific way.
Aurally the game is just as passable. The voice acting can be almost painful at times; the accents in the game are horribly forced and just like in the console version (you'll get our review and more harping on this in a few more days), some of the accents fail to stick or even change from moment to moment. The music in the game attempts to be a little dynamic, but for the most part it's just sort of there to fill space for your ears, and when it does drop out, you'll definitely notice it.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that the PSP version of Rainbow Six Vegas actually supports online Infrastructure play and even headsets. Though it pales in comparison to its big brother, actually jumping into a match wasn't half bad. Lag, however, crept in fairly regularly, though the game did seem to at least favor hits instead of just shooting at air when it happened. Modes like Terro Hunt that have you scooping back through a level to ice as many bad guys as quickly as possible attempt to offer some replay value, but for the most part they're just rehashing things.
Which, honestly, is the game's biggest problem: it's incredibly short. It's entirely possible that the cover-based gameplay in its stripped-down form on the PSP would have started to seriously sag under the weight of the rest of the game, but as a full-priced PSP game, you're getting maybe a half-dozen hours out of both the online and offline modes unless the former really piques your interest. If for some reason you've just gotta have more of that sweet, sweet Rainbow Six gameplay, you can jump in now, but be forewarned: it's not a very deep experience.
Sent in to find and rescue the two member of Rainbow that were captured at the start of the console versions, the handheld version of the game starts off a little later on the timeline than the bigger-screen brothers, but by the end they more or less run in sync. On the one hand, this means you'll get to explore a slightly different tangent of the main storyline, but the downside is that a) the game is incredibly short, and b) it's not terribly interesting from a locales standpoint since PSP Vegas can't really intrude on what happened with the PS3/360 Vegas without messing with continuity.
Which is fine, really; the kind of experience that the consoles offer is a marked improvement over the PSP game, but that doesn't mean what's here doesn't work for the most part. The same switch from first to third person whenever you encounter cover is here, and to be honest, it works well. Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror showed you can do a cover-based shooter on the PSP and most of the common tasks like using the snake cam to peek under doors and aim from behind cover then pop out and take your shot are easy enough to do.
There is the issue of the PSP lacking a few buttons and an analog stick, so most of the common actions are actually context sensitive, meaning aiming down the sights and opening doors are on the same button, but after about 20 minutes or so, it clicks -- just so long as you get used to the game's slightly over-eagerness to snap you to cover as soon as you touch it.
With only a two-man squad, the strategy from the big brother version of the game doesn't really come into play in the same way here. You can still tag enemies while using the snake cam, so it works to at least track their simple patrol routes from behind doors, but there's no real way to coordinate a breach of a room from multiple angles. This effectively means that the game is far more run-and-gun (or maybe stop-'n-pop), and there are moments where you know instantly when a sniping portion of the game is coming up.
For an Unreal Engine-based PSP game, things actually scoot along fairly smoothly. Yeah, there are some framerate issues here and there (mainly due to a lot happening on the screen at once), but most of the game holds up well. The bigger issue is just that the level designs are incredibly boxy and bland. The slightly wonky AI on enemies means that you'll often see them run back and forth and pop from one stance to another, which just further highlights the fact that the enemies don't move all that well. They die quite nicely, though, even going so far as to keel over in a vaguely location-specific way.
Aurally the game is just as passable. The voice acting can be almost painful at times; the accents in the game are horribly forced and just like in the console version (you'll get our review and more harping on this in a few more days), some of the accents fail to stick or even change from moment to moment. The music in the game attempts to be a little dynamic, but for the most part it's just sort of there to fill space for your ears, and when it does drop out, you'll definitely notice it.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that the PSP version of Rainbow Six Vegas actually supports online Infrastructure play and even headsets. Though it pales in comparison to its big brother, actually jumping into a match wasn't half bad. Lag, however, crept in fairly regularly, though the game did seem to at least favor hits instead of just shooting at air when it happened. Modes like Terro Hunt that have you scooping back through a level to ice as many bad guys as quickly as possible attempt to offer some replay value, but for the most part they're just rehashing things.
Which, honestly, is the game's biggest problem: it's incredibly short. It's entirely possible that the cover-based gameplay in its stripped-down form on the PSP would have started to seriously sag under the weight of the rest of the game, but as a full-priced PSP game, you're getting maybe a half-dozen hours out of both the online and offline modes unless the former really piques your interest. If for some reason you've just gotta have more of that sweet, sweet Rainbow Six gameplay, you can jump in now, but be forewarned: it's not a very deep experience.