Storming Sin City Feels Like Deja Vu in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2

Before I truly throw myself down for this review, you've got to understand something. When I first bought my (now cherished) Xbox 360 I had just one game: Rainbow Six: Vegas. There were plenty of games I could have fawned over and missed class for, but they had to wait. The lavish environments of Las Vegas combined with the stealth precision that Tom Clancy games were known for made me drool.

The first Vegas game introduced us to an edgier side of Tom Clancy. The stakes were raised and the locales and characters were fleshed out more than any other titles that came before in the series. Tacking on a well-developed multiplayer component that to this day continues to be popular was something I don't think anyone was ready for.

As you can probably surmise, I fell in love with it.

Something about the gung-ho attitude of Vegas’s compact stealth team felt more patriotic than playing as the (sometimes dim-witted) Americans from Call of Duty 4 while retaining a superhero-esque quality you’d find while playing as Sam Fisher. To put it briefly, Vegas’s atmosphere made me feel like I could be a superhero all while retaining realistic qualities, kind of like a Batman Begins in video game form.

So, Ubisoft didn’t really need to tweak their formula much in order to keep the quality of their work high and fortunately for us, much tweaking didn’t occur at all. Just enough improvements have been implemented to make this a bit more than an expansion pack though I’m not sure I’d pay $60 for it all.

The visuals for Vegas 1 weren’t exactly a high point for design in games. While Gears of War was astounding people left and right with the level of detail paid within each level, R6V focused more on creating a clean and crisp environment for the player to roam around in. My only concern with Vegas 2 is that it looks way too much like its predecessor. Little to no improvement has been made to the draw-rate and some textures just appear to come off bland and uninteresting. I could settle for graphics that “middle of the road” during the 360’s launch, but we’re a good 2-3 years in now. I expect to see graphics akin to Dark Sector and the like. As far as the visuals are concerned, they dropped the ball.

Regarding nearly ever other aspect of the game however, things seem fantastic. The controls are as slick as they’ve ever been. Nothing too hard to figure out. The mapping works out fine. If you’ve been playing too much Army of Two or COD4 (and if you’re like me…you play them a lot) you may have to take an extra 10-15 minutes readjusting because throwing a grenade is different for each scheme. That’s not to say the controls are bad, they’re just a classic “Clancy” type that is different than the more action, “run n’ gun”, oriented titles out there.

Vegas 2 meets games the newer FPS games halfway with its controls though. The addition of a (not necessarily needed) sprint feature sort of feels out of place in a Clancy game but it’s nice that Ubisoft is keeping up with the times. Nothing new has really been implemented with the sound either; they could have just cloned all the effects and cheesy music from the first Vegas and made the soundtrack for this game. Though it works well for most every instance, I feel like Ubisoft just got lazy and decided that being risky was not their cup o’ tea. Again, not exactly a bad thing, but I can tell when a developer doesn’t have the balls to shake things up.

Where Vegas 2 shines is the multiplayer. Just like the last game, people will be enamored with the online modes like Terrorist Hunt and Team Sharpshooter (aptly renamed ‘Team Deathmatch’). You can take three friends into Terrorist Hunt with you and frag with up to 16 people online. The diamond in the rough that many people don’t notice are the amazing boards Ubisoft has designed. If ANY of the aspects of this game ate up all the developmental time, it is the online mode. Every map looks and feels perfect. There’s a balance for all games modes that is unmatched by any of FPS out there. Every locale has strengths and weaknesses, different for each team, and there are multiple points of entry for every vantage point, EVERYWHERE, in multiplayer. Kudos, Ubisoft.

Whereas Multiplayer is the selling point (it would seem), Single-Player isn’t really all that different than the previous outing. Big surprise right? It is satisfying to frag and clear (with or without a friend in co-op mode) but it’s really just a mash of everything we’ve seen before in the first game. While most of our questions from the first game’s cliffhanger ending are indeed answered, I didn’t feel compelled to finish the game. I sold out and almost went straight to multiplayer. I didn’t buy the game for its single-player campaign though, and I’m not sure anyone else did either.

When it comes down to it, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 is a very well made, if not a very safely developed game. While nothing huge has changed from its little brother, not enough may have changed to truly impact people to play it long-term. If you want a strong multiplayer experience that won’t ever really die (until the next Clancy game is released) than you should pick this up. If you’re looking for a thoroughly satisfying single-player adventure, rent it, but look elsewhere immediately.

As for the Limited Edition, I always make sure I get the collector’s/limited/special versions of whatever I buy. For $10 I got a nice DVD with some behind the scenes videos, a few multiplayer tutorials and tips, and some other “nice” tidbits. I’m not sure if it warrants and extra $10, especially since the game is sort of light on new content, but it’s nice to have.