Free's Review: Rainbow Six Vegas 2

Sacrificing my lunch break to bring you the good word on the latest chapter of the game that brought us all together. What can I say? It's the same game we all know and love. If you played the first Vegas and were looking for a radically different experience, you'll be disappointed. But if you liked the first Vegas and the RB6 franchise in general, there are just enough additions to make this worth the dough. My experience so far has consisted of some co-op story mode with Tenlin last night, one multiplayer match and a quick look at all the multiplayer maps this morning.

First up is character creation. If you played Vegas 1, the game gives you veteran status and you get some bonus clothing and extra experience points, but you have to create your character again from scratch. We of course busted out the Vision Cam and put our genitals, I mean faces, on our characters. The quality of the face mapping seems to be improved.

As you know, Tenlin loves RB6 and it was pure joy playing co-op with her last night. Essentially, it's the same experience as the single player campaign, only one of the NPCs is replaced by your friend. So you're still a team of four, but only one friend can join. As the host, I still had to control the remaining two NPCs and you need them to get through the missions -- only they can disarm bombs, etc. Having two humans and two NPCs it's really easy to clear out a room. We started on normal difficulty, but hard is probably more appropriate for co-op.

One nice addition to the story campaign is you now have the ability to carry two rifles as well as a pistol and two grenade types. For example, I chose an assault rifle and a sniper rifle and they both came in handy. Note: this is only an option in the story mode, not multiplayer. Another nice addition is the sprint feature. You can now hold left bumper to sprint for a short period of time. This is nice, though I wish you didn't get "tired" so fast. Still, it helps for dodging enemy fire and simply getting around quicker. They also added the A.C.E.S. thing where you get experience points for various types of kills – long distance, headshot, shooting through cover, close quarters, etc. This personalizes your character a little more and unlocks new weapons, outfits, etc.

Multiplayer seems to be about the same as before -- essentially deathmatch, territories, VIP, capture flag, etc. I jumped into one LIVE match last night and it was a bit laggy. Hard to say if it was an isolated experience or par for the game. My quick walk-through of the maps this morning revealed that a few of the better maps from Vegas 1 are in this game too. They might have been tweaked slightly but it's hard to say. There are a few new smaller ones, which I was hoping for, but none as small as the Hanger level from RB6: Black Arrow -- a clan favorite for sure. I think the hugeness of the maps in Vegas 1 was a turnoff for most of us. There were a lot of games where we never could find the enemy team. It's hard to say if the experience will be the same with Vegas 2, but the maps are still pretty big and have lot's of doors, ladders, rappel points, etc.

Terrorist Hunt returns as well so we can get together as one large team and battle the computer. This is always a blast. I look forward to playing it with you guys again.

Final verdict: Same as I said in the beginning. If you love Rainbow Six, buy it. They added some nice features and didn't change what drew us to the game in the first place. Not a huge remake though, more like another chapter. I still haven't had enough time with COD4 multiplayer to compare it with that, but they seem to be pretty similar. COD4 certainly has the edge in graphics and framerate.

Finally, if the code I sent you over LIVE doesn't work to unlock the extra map, try this:
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/03/18/comcast-offers-exclusive-rainbow-six-vegas-2-map/

Other Reviews: Kotaku & Joystiq

This post is dedicated to Sharkie's box. May you come home safe, sound ... and soon.