ic-games Review - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 - Reviews, Previews and Interviews for PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii

ic-games Review - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 - Reviews, Previews and Interviews for PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii ic-games Review - Home - Review, Preview and Interview for PC, Xbox,Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2

Information
Reviewer: Liam Hunn
Developer: Ubi Soft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Reviewed: Xbox 360, PC, PS3
Genre: First Person
UK Release: 21st Mar 2008
Article Date: 31st Mar 2008
Difficulty: N/A
Retail Price: £49.99 X360/PS3
Price Comparison:
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Score Breakdown

Experience:
Gameplay:
Graphics:
Sound:
Overall Score: 78%

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Pros
Realistic sounds
Good story

Cons
Feels unfinished and rushed

Screenshots

1 of 7

Unfinished, untested, full of glitches and bugs, and really quite frustrating. Not words you would associate with a Tom Clancy/Ubisoft title. But step forward Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, as that is exactly what this game is.

Where to start? This game is good, don’t get me wrong, but there is so much in this game that has problems or is just plain wrong. The AI is quite frankly shocking. Your team mates are at times next to useless. They’ll either take cover and let you take all the bullets (unless you move them to somewhere so they are directly in the line of fire, then they’ll eventually get their fingers out and start shooting!), or somehow manage to get in the way, so the perfect shot you had no longer exists. Instead you now have your team mate’s back directly in site.

The enemy are also just as bad and inconsistent in the way they behave. At times the slightest noise will alert them and a fire fight will commence. Other times they’ll spot you from a mile away and you’ll need to take cover while you figure out where they are. And finally there is the “I’m going to walk straight towards you while you stand there and aim at me” guy. You know the ones, kind of like the ones out of Dr. Evils army in the Austin Powers films.

There were a few other “smaller” issues that I experienced during playing the game. The game at times seemed to have some frame rate issues, with it dramatically slowing down during hectic scenes with the screen full of explosions, gun fire and death and destruction. But even during times when there was nothing happening on screen, it seemed that for some reason things just slowed right down.

I mentioned that RS: 2 was glitchy at times as well. I’ve had guns sticking through walls with no one holding it and rotating 360 degrees. I’ve also had the enemy AI themselves sticking through walls and being able to shoot me. The environment has at times collapsed on itself. By that I mean you get broken images covering the screen, the environment changing colour, the usual stuff when objects haven’t been programmed too well in the game.
But to be fair to Ubisoft, despite all of the annoying parts to the game, they have produced a half decent game here. Again set in the high rolling city that is Las Vegas, terrorists are planning on bringing havoc into the desert. Once again it’s up the Rainbow team to stop that.

The game does have a good story. It’s my guess that more hours were spent thinking about the story and putting it together, than were spent on the whole of testing and quality control. Harsh you may be thinking, but that’s how good the story is and how shabby the quality of the “finished” game is.

Once again, the realism is quite good in this new Tom Clancy game. Although I have never held or fired a raging bull or any other gun in the game for that matter, they do sound how you would expect them to. The recoil on some guns is quite amazing as well. I have actually fired a gun at a range before, and I can say the recoil on guns is as severe as it appears in the game. It makes the need to be super accurate and controlled in your firing even more important.

As you progress through the game your rank increases. Now I’m pretty sure that on the original RS: Vegas, XP points were a part of the game. I know for sure they were in the multiplayer, but cannot safely say that these were a part of the single player. It’s been a long time since I’ve played the original. But, XP points are a big part of this instalment.

You now have 3 categories of combat where points are earned, in a system that Ubi has called the “ACES system”. The 3 categories are ‘Close Quarters’, ‘Assault’ and ‘Marksman’. Each category has certain ways you can earn XP points. For example a head shot will give you certain number of points, a kill from blind fire will give points, and these points are added up in their respective category. Once you reach a certain number of points in a category, you move onto the next level, unlocking new stuff on your way. There are a total of 20 levels in each category for you to complete. The good thing is, XP points earned from playing online are included in your offline total which helps the speed in which you are promoted.

Something else that was actually spotted by a friend of mine while playing, was the ability to use and store weapons that you haven’t yet unlocked. I’m still unsure as to whether this process works online in co-op mode, but it certainly seems to offline. If you kill an enemy that has a weapon you haven’t unlocked, which you then pick up and go to a re-supply station, it will be available for you. But be warned, it will only be available for you if you don’t change the gun. If you equip something else in its place it will become locked again, and you’ll need to kill someone that has it and take it from them for you to have it again.

I have to say, this has been a fairly hard game to review for me. The game itself is quite good. Graphically it does look good, it sounds good, has a very good story line and the choice of weapons, the ACES system and online play are all top notch work from Ubisoft. But the game still feels unfinished and rushed out. Somehow, they have made it feel like the game is no more than an expansion pack and that £40 or £50 is day light robbery. But, even with all the glitches and imperfections, this is still a top class game.

Hopefully Ubisoft will release a patch which will cure all of the problems the game has. It’s sad that the game does require a patch, it should have been released fully working and complete. However it does have problems, and this does bring its score down. If Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 didn’t have all of its problems, this would be a 90% game. No doubt!

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