Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 PC

It's like Rainbow Six: Vegas.

RS:V was one of those games that was a mainstream success (over 1.5 million sold) released on as many gaming platforms as possible and developed by one of the biggest companies out there, Ubisoft. It was one of the new school of Rainbow Six games that strayed away from its PC roots and dumbed down a lot of the key gameplay mechanics that made these types of tactical Special Ops shooters so fun. Apparently they're going towards an even more simplified direction in the future.

The thing is, I loved Raven Shield and the Athena Sword expansion. The box it came in was covered in a covert ops type of mask with eyes looking at you that were on the cover itself. What an awesome idea. We used to play that game for hours with a friend, doing co-op Terrorist Hunt missions.

The stories were never that complex (and they aren't nowadays either even though they try to be), it was more about planning your attack and then executing it. Setting points where the other team would stop and issuing GO-codes to them so you could rush rooms of enemies with carefully placed flash bangs from multiple directions. All of that's gone in Vegas. I hear it was simpler in Rainbow Six: Lockdown already but I never got to playing that one.

The thing about Vegas is that I always thought the idea sucked. I couldn't understand what was so cool in restricting the game to one repetitive theme. A Vegas level would've been OK but a whole game, no thanks. Sure Vegas and Vegas 2 both feature levels in the single player campaign that AREN'T in Vegas but they're obviously the minority. I never finished the first Vegas game though so I can't speak much for it but now that I've finished Vegas 2 I have a few things on my mind.

First of all, reviews have said that the graphics are fine, and specifically in a Finnish magazine that they're "up to date". This is a game running on Unreal Engine 3 and apart from the 3 leading heroes themselves, the single player campaign looks worse than the Haze demo. I smiled when I read this post on the Ubisoft forums because having used UE3's material editor, I feel exactly the same way with this guy, but Vegas 2's graphics can't just be fixed with some bump mapping. The kid who wrote this probably isn't a "pro" himself either but it doesn't make him wrong on the subject. I never thought the Haze demo looked bad though but apparently everyone else has a problem with the graphics in the game. Vegas 2 (the PC version) looks dull and stupid at times. At other times it looks passable but with rushed oversimplified textures. Some of the casino areas manage to look semi-OK. It seems this game just had to be developed simply because of the money there was to be made. I know the whole Vegas idea is tougher to do when nothing like it has really been done before and maybe it's just a personal matter but I don't care for it. Also, in between missions when you fly to a new destination on the chopper you see the towns/areas below you and they look absolutely terrible. Unreal Tournament 3 did it right, Call of Duty 4 did it right and GTAIV did it right when viewing from above from a chopper.

Second, the single player campaign tries to go for some kind of dramatic storyline but it simply fails. The levels are once again very linear compared to the older more hardcore Rainbow Six games where you had a level and could choose between different paths from where you wanted to approach. Comparing this to what the guys at Infinity Ward pulled off a while back, puts the two games in totally different leagues. Chasing Mr. Terrorist through a populated area (where you see no civilians, just hear them), taking care of a nuke on a train, and seeing the smoke of a biological bomb come through the door in a sports arena without actually seeing anyone around just aren't the types of scenes I'd consider well done. I know they're trying to cut back on required resources but there are already 3D models and animations for civilians in the game so why not have a few of them running away from the bomb and a few hands and legs show through cracks in the door when the smoke comes through to make it at least a bit more believable (although that would raise the age limit for the entire product, but there are other ways to make the scene seem less "cheap"). Maybe it was a rushed game. Actually, I'm quite positive it was rushed.

The single player campaign also gets quite annoying at times because with your team you're nearly unstoppable but during the few missions near the end (which comes quite fast once again) when you're alone the pace of the game changes too drastically. You really have to look out for everything because 1. now everyone's only shooting at you and 2. the levels are designed in a way that you're either next to some exploding barrels or you're in a room full of windows and bad guys surround you from every direction. The last fight and talk with the big baddie is more of a boring "let's get through with this already" scene than a dramatic climax.

Oh and it's OK if you don't want the player character to be able to jump but at least let him step over small Japanese style tables for crying out loud! Now you have to go around even those. The annoying "trick" of using a tipped over table in front of a staircase to block your passage is used here way too often as well. Just move the damn table and go up the stairs! Anyway, back to the issue of no jumping, it's easier to design tables into the levels that are low enough to be stepped over (some designer Ikea shit) instead of designing all the levels with all the furniture pushed to the sides because you don't want the player to get trapped in a sea of stools.

And third, Vegas 2 doesn't really offer enough new features to justify itself as anything more than an expansion.

Other than those points though, I think there are a lot of things that have been done right in the game. It's just that those features come mostly from the first Vegas game.

The cover mechanic is excellent. It only bugs out in a few minor places where your character refuses to take cover because the door's hinges are in the way or something else equally trivial blocks your path. The cover mechanic recognizes doorways and lets you look past the door itself onto the other side of the wall sort of making a 180 turn. It's hard to explain, but all of it feels very natural and that's exactly how any feature in a game should be. The player has to feel like "of course that's how you do it" instead of "damn, why can't I do this or that?". Even in multiplayer games you see your friends looking past corners so that the direction where they're looking in is shown by smoothly animating the character to look into that specific direction. There's a lot of professional programming in this game but it still has problems in the traditional problem areas like AI, which is odd at times. Your fellow team members might not follow you sometimes or they don't shoot at the terrorists.

The roleplay elements are good. You gain experience and the fact that they've split the bonuses you get into 3 different fighting techniques creates variety and makes the player try out different things. Kill through cover, CQC, Kill using grenade, etc. Unlocking weapons isn't that great because you'd really want to try out everything in the beginning and see which suits you best but keeping armour and visual upgrades locked is a good idea. The higher level you are the more you'll be noticed in your unique looking gear. It's like an MMO where everyone wants to look different!

Multiplayer is the same great fun. We've been playing Terrorist Hunt again and even the single player missions (or should I say campaign at this point) can be played as co-op which I highly praise since I think almost every game should have co-op. I'm sick and tired of deathmatch and I never saw the need to "beat" my friends in any game. Anonymous people sure :) A really cool feature about the multiplayer was that we noticed our mouths on the characters moved when we talked into our microphones. It's not exactly lip-synced but definitely adds immersion and is easy to add. It was odd though that voice communication in its entirety only came in after we patched the game.

Some things I would've liked from the multiplayer game would've been the possibility to go prone. The levels in the single player campaign were designed so they didn't need it but in multiplayer it would add a lot more tactical freedom and some areas would be a lot better if you could really hit the dirt. Speaking of viewing things from close to the ground, why was the snake camera removed from the Terrorist Hunt mode? It would've been great to set targets your friends could see through the door too. Also, planning ahead your missions like in Athena Sword and the games before that would've been great. At least let the players draw with the mouse on the map so that you could tell your team-mates where to go and how you plan to attack. Voice communication works too but it could be so much clearer with a drawing.

Using the rapel feature is also very weird in multiplayer because you become extremely vulnerable. There's no way you can get to cover fast enough and with only a pistol you can't really defend yourself either. The risk vs. reward ratio isn't balanced enough because the places you can use the rope at aren't worth it. They should lead to important sniper positions that cover a lot of the level and only have 1 exit, the rope.

The enemy spawns were a bit interesting in the Terrorist Hunt mode too. They don't all spawn at once. That really sucks if you want to throw a grenade through a window in the building on the other side of the street. Sometimes nobody dies so you accept that there was nobody inside but then when you go through the door you get shot. It would've been better to focus on the range that the enemies aggro you from than having them all come rushing at you, because now there's a mod that does spawn all the enemies at once and when you shoot at one and he calls friends, you get the entire level after you. Also, if you start out in a room with 2 exits, A and B, and you run out through A and come to the other side of B you will, in some levels, see an enemy standing there. However, if you exit through B there will never be an enemy at that spot possibly because he would kill you too easily. We tried this many times with a friend of mine and the enemy always spawned when we used exit A, but never when using exit B. So there's some kind of "smart spawn system" at play here which makes things even more simple in the long run.

Overall the game is quite nice. The single player missions right from the first level are quite underwhelming graphically with their simple textures and boring environments. Some of the luxury apartments later on in the single player campaign are OK and makes me wish I could live there but then you look down the balcony at the terrible and simplistic "town" below and realize "oh yeah, this is a game". Immersion is lost. The multiplayer levels look a lot better though and there are some nice remakes of old maps. All in all it's a good game but seems to focus too heavily on cashing in on some more Rainbow Six action when there's nothing really new to offer and it feels rushed.

Ghost Recon should've stayed as the arcade Clancy game whilst Rainbow Six could've kept the hardcore fans busy. Splinter Cell had it's spot as the Thief/MGS/sneak around game. But apparently there are more casual console owners than hardcore gamers nowadays.