Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Impressions (PS3)

[CHR.Overload]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Vegas.

One of mine favorite shooter genres is Tactical gameplay. While some games offer it to certain extent and are not one hundred percent real, every time when I, as a player am able to execute certain parts of real life maneuver - it makes me smile inside.

I have truthfully enjoyed Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1,2. All of Splinter Cell franchise, Most Socom games and of course my favorite First Person Shooter - Rainbow Six Vegas. While the PlayStation 3 version of first Vegas was a straight port, it definitely felt and looked that way.

Lighting was quite bad, reflection was over-dark in environments, textures were not on par with Xbox 360 version and there were frame-rates issues time to time. Regardless, I had wonderful time with Vegas simply because of one thing. Tactical gameplay. Out of all the shooters that I mentioned earlier the amount of control you have in Rainbow Six is what made is such a great game.

With that said, I can reassure anyone who enjoyed the first game, Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is an improvement in all aspects.

Lets get the first thing out of the way. The PlayStation 3 version is excellent and big improvement over first one. The graphics are better, lighting and shadowing is well done and textures look phenomenal, especially on yourself and your squad members. The graphics are not mind-blowing or anything, but they are polished and good. The frames per second are also stable. I have had barely a few hick-ups here and there during the campaign, but it's never noticeable enough to make any impact on the game experience.

I also had a chance to take a good few missions on X360 version, which pretty much plays the same and looks the same. I did noticed more blur in 360 version and a bit sharper textures on PS3. Other then that, they are identical and play very well.

This is a great news and largely thanks to a separate PS3 team that worked on RSV2 from scratch resulting in a solid game. I wished the first Vegas was done the same way but that's beside the point.

RSV2 offers more of the same. You start with a completely new team. You will visit Vegas but compare to the first game you will take your battles outside of the casino most of the time. Which is good, as it offers more environment to work with. The cover system definitely feels more smoother, fluid and responsive. You will issue the same cover order, breach doors and so forth.

Everything that you enjoyed in first Vegas, makes its appearance in second game. This is not a bad thing, I personally love Vegas gameplay and to be able to play it again is more then enjoyable, especially when you bump the difficulty to Realistic. New to the genre is experience points. Regardless if you play offline, online, co-op or terrorist hunt, you will continue to gather more experience and once you reach appropriate rank, new body armour, weapons are unlocked. If you played Call of Duty 4, you will be right at home with the system.

However, Rainbow takes it a step further in customization department. As you chose your body armor for example, you have options to have different appearances to it. From camouflage, paint and armor type that will effect your mobility. Would you rather have heavy duty body suit that will take little bit more damage, or lightweight equipment that will raise your mobility but will lower your bullets penetration.

There are lots of choices in here, and more became available as you gain new ranks. You can be sure that when you jump in online action, no man or a woman will look alike if they used the customizations options. You can create your own unique soldier.

The story isn't extremely long. I play Tactical games like Vegas in slow pace and it's only appropriate to say that I wasted 11 hours to finish the single player, while my friend took significantly less because his play-style relied more on action while I enjoyed creeping around the cover walls and order my team around to execute text book entries. I rarely fire a gun, unless I have to to provide cover or trying to take out few bad guys in silent mode.

This time around you can create female and male characters, respectively named Queen and Bishop. I was able to get my face into the game as well using the PlayStation 3 Eye camera. It takes about 20 minutes to upload the photo and you need to take front and side snapshot. It looks very good if you position yourself properly. You won't have blink animation or lips movement, but otherwise it works like a charm.

The single player co-op has been cut down to two man instead of four. When my friend joined he was a second teammate. Unfortunately he was left alone and it feels a little "dull" for him as he didn't had any team to work with, nor can he take control of at least one of my squad members. You can still four man terrorist hunt just like before.

Online is pretty good. There seems to be a little trouble joining in but after about 2-3 minutes I was able to jump in. It would be nice if you could see the ping before you join but the experience is good. I had quite a pleasure storming down on poor souls who are trying to pull out run and gun tactic forgetting this isn't your shooter to do such things. You have to take cover, work with your team and stay in groups. Communications is the key.

New guns, new customizations, experience points, solid story line, excellent multiplayer and more of Vegas Tactical gameplay. If you enjoyed first Rainbow Six Vegas, the sequel adds more of what you liked with some new features added to the game that will make you play this game for many hours to come, alone, co-op or online.

If you like Tactical First Person Shooter gameplay, there simply isn't anything better out there. Vegas 2 delivers excellent gameplay, lots of customizations options and solid online play along side good single player story that wraps things up.

Highly recommended buy for all fans of shooters.

[xk::v (G®immjaw)]

Im actually a bit of a Rainbow Six fan!!!
Played the previous ones on console.. mojai paisilam...

[xk Raziel]

umm did he write the review himself...

[solid snake]

no i think. btw akono kheli nai. but the thing is raingbow six vegas is the most stylish , awsome , tactical shooter i have played in my life.so cant wait to lay my hands on to it.

[xk::v (G®immjaw)]

ami ektu free hoile.. solid ekdin invite koiro amake tomar bashai..

[cRush]

vegal 2 is like vegas 1.5 . the improvements arent enough to justify 60$. Ubisoft is going sloppy like ea. I hope Far Cry 2 will be good.