Rainbow Six Vegas – PS3
Tom Clancy’s highly acclaimed series has finally made its way to the PS3 with Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Vegas. In Vegas you’ll take up the role of Logan Keller, the leader of Rainbow’s elite 3 man counter terror squad. After a mission in Mexico goes horrifically bad, terrorists attack the city that never sleeps, besieging Las Vegas, with their cliché plan on killing millions. The story itself is fairly decent and leaves the game on a cliff hanger that will guarantee a sequel.
Vegas aims to be a realistic shooter, and as such run and gun tactics will fail immediately. Strategy plays a pivotal role in the game. Players must find a way to use their advanced trained and armed team to defeat terrorists boasting far superior numbers. A key part of this is using the readily available cover, anything solid from slot machines to SUV’s can be used as a buffer between you and the enemy. From here you can carefully pick off enemies or when under heavy fire ‘blind fire’ to suppress the enemy. When using cover the game transitions from first person to third person perspective, giving a cinematic like feel to these phases.
Your team is comprised of two other elite counter-terrorism operatives. The A.I used to make up these companions is fantastic, no more getting stuck behind doors or lost in buildings. Controlling them is simple and effective, just point and click. The controls are fairly standard for an FPS, and are generally easy to pick up. Six-Axis is also supported, used for controlling the snake camera that is slid underneath doors to scope out the enemy.
The A.I of the enemy is just as effective as your team-mates, and this can lead to Vegas presenting a real challenge at times. On standard difficulty Vegas is moderately-challenging, but move on to realistic and a whole new game is presented. Tactics become even more crucial here as one wrong move and it’s all over. Health is measured not by the standard health bar. Instead as you lose health, your vision becomes blurry and your motion staggered. Saving happens at checkpoints throughout the levels, generally before a crucial battle.
The massive amount of multi-player content in Vegas really sets it apart from other games. Co-Op is fantastic, where up to four players can take on the campaign together. If the urge to destroy your comrades is more up your alley, then Vegas presents a real treat. A multitude of game play modes ranging from capture the flag style battles to intense realistic fights. The content is fantastic too featuring everything found on the Xbox 360 and all of its downloadable extras.
The graphics are quite frankly, superb and an immense amount of detail is found in all aspects of the game. Photo-realistic environments and player models bring a whole new level of realism to the game. The sound is authentic with fantastic sound effects and solid voice acting. The only criticism that can be made of the sound is that the music doesn’t truly capture the atmosphere of Las Vegas, but this is a minor setback.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas is truly an excellent game that will appeal to most gamers, featuring technically amazing graphics, an exciting albeit predictable campaign and endless replay value online.
