Blog.Dhareza.Com

All the thrills and frills of the real Vegas, minus Celine Dion

For many, Las Vegas is synonymous with good shows, great food, and Celine Dion.  For others, Las Vegas will now be associated with hanging upside down with a Ranging Bull aimed at an oblivious terrorist while the rest of your team awaits your “open, frag and clear” command.

Vegas, baby.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas finds you and your team on the hunt for Irena Morales, a Mexican terrorist suspected of plotting a major assault on Las Vegas.  Commanding an army, and using over-the-top dialogue with a thick accent, Irena Morales comes very close to being a pretty cool Bond villain.  But that really doesn’t matter.

The main draw for Vegas isn’t the story, which is told via video feeds through the very swanky heads-up display.  It’s the combat; and there’s lots of combat.  And not the arcadey Doom-style combat from 2005’s Rainbow Six Lockdown; but a more sophisticated squad-based combat that merges Splinter Cell’s methodical gameplay with Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter’s ferocity (apparently, Ubisoft knows how to do combat).

There are over 30 weapons to choose from.  Shock-and-awe style gunplay this is not.  But the weapons selection featuring assault rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, machine guns, sniper rifles and pistols could make Arnold Schwarzenegger swoon with envy.  And if that weren’t enough, you may also carry a variety of grenades, C4 explosives, flashbangs and an assortment of gadgets that can tip the battle in your favor.

Like all Ubisoft titles that feature Tom Clancy’s venerable name, the attention to detail means all weapons are so accurate from appearance to performance that one could get away with saying “I’ve shot an AK-47 before.”  It may be a white lie, but if I ever get the chance to fire that particular assault rifle, I’m ready for that recoil as seen in this game.

Adding to the sense of realism is the inclusion of the best implementation of a cover system that I’ve ever seen. That’s right – it’s miles ahead of Gears of War’s cover system that sometimes caused accidental death rather than protection.  Holding down the left trigger not only causes you to hide behind anything from phone booths to tables, but you will switch to a third-person view.  Aiming the reticule on a terrorist’s face and popping out of cover for a quick shot is just one of the many things you can perform while behind cover.  Blind-firing at a charging bad guy is as satisfying to pull-off as it is embarrassing to be the one on the receiving end.  And waiting for an unsuspecting evil-doer to walk near your C4 explosive as you hold-back from giggling adds to the plethora of ways to eliminate your foes.

However, the inclusion of a regenerating health-system seriously extinguishes the sense of realism that I had praised earlier.  There are no health bars to indicate how much damage you can receive.  As you receive more damage from bullets (which will happen a lot) the screen turns darker until you can barely make anything out.  By then, chances are, you’re already dead.  If you are shot a few times, the regenerating health-system allows you to hide behind cover and catch your breathe to fight again.  I am personally torn with the health-system, only because it shatters the sense of realism the rest of the game achieves, but it also affords the player with faster gameplay which wouldn’t happen if you had to restart from a checkpoint all the time.

Rainbow Six: Vegas is one of the best shooters to come to any platform, period.  Multiplayer options further extend the lasting appeal to fragging your friends (and foes) online. The usage of the Unreal 3 Engine easily handles the intricate character detail, large levels and various special effects.  The combination of a surreal sense of realism with an arcade-style sense of being almost super-human will make all types of shooter-gamers happy.  And at the end of the day, isn’t that what Vegas is all about. That and Celine Dion.