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A franchise as popular and prolific as Rainbow Six is still prone to missteps along the way. Ubisoft's last outing with Tom Clancy's international anti-terror squad, Lockdown, angered long-time fans with its run-and-gun gameplay. Following up the terribly disappointing title with anything less than the best Rainbow Six title ever just wouldn't cut it for true fans.
The war on terror hits U.S. soil in Rainbow Six Vegas, making this the only shooter this fall not set in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by aliens. Sadly, the first next-gen Rainbow Six has the misfortune of following Gears of War. Despite using the Unreal engine and being the best looking Rainbow Six game yet, it's doomed to live in the shadow of Epic's multi-million selling blockbuster.
Despite what the title might make you think, Rainbow Six Vegas begins just across the border in Mexico. While it makes for a nice tutorial… the first half hour plays out like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter-redux. Even odder is the heavy emphasis on run-and-gun (and even a long Rambo-esque stretch) gameplay. No where else in the game does the action feel like it does in the tutorial.
If anything playing a shooter without a cover system now feels alien. Being able to hustle into and out of cover at the tap of a button allows you to move through the outdoor segments with the same speed and excitement as the room-to-room sections. We've finally gotten out of the office buildings!
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Once you and your team hit Las Vegas the gameplay slows and beings to resemble the old Rainbow Six titles. The classic room-to-room clearing action has been improved with the inclusion of Splinter Cell's snake cam. With it you can order your two teammates to take down occupants in a certain order. In practice, this speeds up the game, and makes single-player feel more like the online co-op of past games.
While commanding fewer people than in past titles the team in Vegas is far better at keeping themselves alive. If they should fall you can revive them with a shot of adrenaline. Annoyingly they won't come to your rescue should you fall in a firefight. This might be because they're so one dimensional as characters (generic trigger-happy dude and computer hacker dude…) that, even after ten hours of fighting alongside them, I couldn't tell you their names.
If your teammates are paper thin then the story is a clunky mess of missions tied together by a female voice droning out on-the-fly updates. It's hard to make a player feel like a part of something that's happening elsewhere, but it's disappointing none the less after seeing Splinter Cell make big strides in storytelling this year. Players who tackle the game in online co-op will completely lost as this mode omits all story elements.
Two new elements both radically change the game for the better and hammer the last nail in the “snails pace” Rainbow Six gameplay legacy. First up is the change from a one-hit-you're-dead model to a recharging health system. Though it's nowhere near as forgiving as Halo's and it lacks the onscreen indicator found in Gears of War. While this makes the game play at a faster pace than in the past; in practice it reduces how often you have to stare at a reload screen.
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