To be a true success in the eyes of many faithful fans, Vegas 2 must offer a fitting conclusion to the cliffhanger storyline, revamped gameplay and the most fleshed out multiplayer mode the world has ever seen. Should I spend time leveling up my character in the multiplayer of Rainbow Six Vegas or should I bring the fight to the Locusts as Marcus Fenix in Gears of War? For most the longstanding answer was the neon colored world of Vegas rather than the destroyed beauty of the other Unreal Engine 3 powered gem.Įighteen months have gone by since the original Vegas and the world of geeks and nerds has been waiting with baited breath wondering whether or not Ubisoft Montreal would give them the sequel that they so desperately wanted.
Two of the system's finest titles to date hit the streets right before the holidays and players were beside themselves with how to budget their time in between the two. Poor optimization and other PC-specific bugs really drag this one down – which is a shame, because Rainbow Six used to be quite at home on PCs.November of 2006 was a great month for Xbox 360 gamers.
This is definitely the weakest iteration of Vegas 2 if you have a PS3 or 360, it’s easy to recommend those versions over this one, even if the controls aren’t quite as tight.
It’s much more satisfying picking off a human player rather than an AI terrorist who – unsurprisingly – can be pretty inconsistent.
These include all the standards, from team-based stuff to free for all deathmatches. Again, if you can get it running well, the game shines in its various online modes. Two things save this version of Vegas 2: the amount of content packed in (there’s quite a lot), and the multiplayer. So if you can get the game running smoothly, you’ll find squad commands and the usual moves easy to pull off. Using a mouse and keyboard setup always wins in these sorts of games, and it’s been implemented well here. Still, at least the controls are better than the console versions. This can get pretty annoying in firefights, when the frame rate takes a dive and decides to never resurface. Couple this with texture tearing and blatant discoloration, and you’re left with a buggy mess that really impacts on the gameplay. On a couple of machines that were certainly no slouches, we had to turn off a number of graphical features before we could get the game running at something even close to what you can see on the PS3 and 360 versions. Typically, this port from the consoles lies about its recommended system requirements and runs unacceptably slow on machines that shouldn’t break a sweat. Unfortunately, you may have trouble making the game work well at all. The single player campaign isn’t the best around, but is still worth playing through, when the game works as it’s supposed to.
Tactics may have taken a back seat in this side series, but you can still set squad commands and attempt to outmaneuver the enemy before invariably filling them with lead. While the plot is clichéd and forgettable, it does provide an excuse for plenty of entertaining set pieces, much in a similar way to something like Gears of War. Still, for what it is, Vegas 2 is still pretty fun when it’s on its best behaviour. In a sense, it really should be called Rainbow Six Vegas 1.5 – but I guess that doesn’t have the same ring to it. This means more Vegas locales to muck around in, more walls to climb up/down, more terrorists to shoot, and more hostages to rescue. Instead, it provides more of the same for those who didn’t get their fill from the first title. Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is a sequel that – as many suspected – doesn’t change the formula much, if at all.