Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2

(untitled review)

November 2006 saw two of the greatest 360 titles. Gears of War and Rainbow Six: Vegas. Less than two years on we see a sequel to Vegas. Not much has changed.

To start with the good Vegas 2 lets you create your own character which can evolve on and offline in an RPG style fashion. You gain XP for killing enemies but you also earn ACES for thinking tactically. For example headshots get marksman points, killing close gets CQB and using grenades gets Assault. ACES unlock different weapons in those categories and XP allows you to advance in rank and earn equipment. No matter how you play you will end up playing many rounds of terrorist hunt and story if you want to go all the way. Or do you? No. You can take the fight online where ACES are doubled and XP is bountiful if you can score enough kills.

There are two new online modes. One is Team Leader where one person is elected as a VIP and has to get to an extraction point. This is on both teams and the objective is to kill the Team Leader to win. The other is more or less ripped from Counter-Strike. One team plants a bomb and the other must disarm it. Of course online has all standard modes such as death match.

One main gripe people have is that very little has changed. The game still runs on the old U3 engine and standards have increased since 2006. You still have to wait for graphics to settle, sometimes the sound glitches and there's a frame rate drop during explosions. I know we weren't expecting a whole new game but a few tweaks would have been nice.

On a brighter note the two team mates you control can actually think and shoot. They can clear a room in seconds. But there's always a flip side. Sometimes they do walk right into danger and get you killed as you have to risk your life saving them. Thankfully the terrorist AI isn’t much better. Most times you die it will be due to numbers not the guy's intelligence. Throw a grenade at the man's feet to see what I mean.

Overall however, fans of the first will ant to pick this up as all the things that went unexplained in the first game are explained in this one and there's a satisfying end mission. MP will last ages with offline and online co op. Even your friend can level up the side kick character known as Knight. Plus with all the online options this game isn't going away anytime soon.