So my friends and I were huge fans of the original Rainbow Six: Vegas. A game that had possibly the best multiplayer available for the xbox 360. We would get online almost every night for some attack and defend or terrorist hunt. I say this because I want people to understand we are fans of the game. So with great anticipation we all went out to buy the new Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. Hit the jump for the full review.
Lets start with the story mode. Both single player and co-op are semi improved. Your AI teammates can now be told to throw flash bangs, smoke, or do thermal scans. Thermal scans replace your old tried and true mini-map. The co-op is vastly improved in terms of your friends jumping in and out and the cut scenes are viewable by the 2nd player. In the first the story scenes were all deleted in co-op mode. However the co-op is now only 2 player, whereas it was 4 player before. Also when you are killed you just die and have to wait to respawn (much like halo). I preferred the old way where you had to run into the line of fire to bring your squadmate back to life.
Now lets talk about graphics. They are a very very marginal improvement over the original Rainbow Six: Vegas. The texture work is a bit nicer, with things looking dirtier in general. The animations are decent, except for player animations. Player animations look ridiculous as the upper body moves almost independently from the lower body. You’ll see the torso and up swivel and rotate with no change in the position of the legs. In single player mode when you start a mission you usually chopper in. If you look out the window in these scenes the frame rate drops to about 15 - 20 frames per second. There are also a ridiculous amount of cover glitches where you can’t aim out of cover on certain walls. I’ve also seen instances where enemies gun barrels were just past a wall and they could shoot you, but you couldn’t shoot them. It’s still satisfying to see an enemy go flying from a grenade explosion though. The particle work on dust clouds is also a lot better than the first vegas.
Multiplayer…. where to begin. The original game had fantastic multiplayer. A huge number of modes for all tastes. The new game essentially breaks the fun modes. Case in point, attack and defend. Anyone who played Vegas played attack and defend on calypso casino at least a few times. Well calypso is gone… (although i’m sure they’re working on a redux of calypso to be sold in a map pack) fine. However attack and defend now has a respawn limit, the max is 3 respawns. No big deal you say? Consider that it’s a game mode where the defending team is required to camp a specific area, and the attacking team has to run in and rescue hostages or grab intel or something. This slants the game in favor of the defenders way too much. In any strategy game it’s suicide to assault a fortified position. Your casualties will almost always be higher than the casualties of the fortified defenders. This was the single most idiotic change in the game. Team deathmatch. Static respawns???? Didn’t this go out of style a long time ago? Call of Duty 4 showed the right way to do team deathmatch respawns. Always spawn near your teammates. Static respawns just let the opponents spawn camp you. The one saving grace is team leader which is at least decent.
ACES and PEC are both marginally improved. ACES lets you earn experience in a specific style of combat. If you get a lot of long range shots you gain marskmen points, if you throw a lot of grenades you get assault points. While it’s fun to unlock new weapons in the game it generally favors a much more aggressive playstyle than the rainbow series is known for. Rainbow is a tactical shooter, why is there no benefit for the guy watching your six? He might go through the game getting the least kills, but has possibly the most important job. ACES forces people to trek on ahead in search of kills instead of methodically planning an assault, which again, IS WHAT RAINBOW IS KNOWN FOR. I do like that PEC and ACES experience is gained throughout all game modes, but honestly you could grind the first 2 acts in single player and unlock everything.
My final verdict? Go play the original Rainbow Six: Vegas and save your money. They made what was good bad and made what was bad worse. This game was obviously rushed out the door to make a quick buck. Shame on you Ubisoft, you’re turning into the old EA.
Posted on March 21st, 2008 by phaedrus
Filed under: videogames
I agree with you 100%. I do not know what they were thinking when they completely changed the online play; which was the only reason why people purchased the game. I am so disappointed man. Online matches are 5 to 9 minutes long, 2-3 respawns, you can’t see who is hosting ranked matches anymore, so it makes it really hard to play with your friends, and the list goes on.
The bottom line is this game is no longer what it once was. The trade-in value of Rainbow six vegas 2 has gone down, because of the high return rate stores are getting. Everyone I know is returning this game.
I will wait a bit longer to see if they download a patch or update to fix these online issues, until then it will be pointless to even play this game.
I agree on most of your points, but since I did not play the first R6 I suppose my gripes aren’t so bad. I do, however, think the game was rushed and can’t quite understand the zealousness of players of the first game. I mean that machine gun sound glitch just seems like somebody on that Ubisoft testing team needs to be shot. Did he play w/o sound or something? I mean the very first T-Hunt or even MP game I play, i hear it’s annoying staccato. The game just feels like unpolished work sometimes. I’m almost offended at having a limited # of spawns. I remember the good old beach map on RtCW, which was attack/defend the beach front (was it Normandy?), could take up to a beautiful 30 minutes with relentless suicides attacks from the beach storming team. But it just made actually achieving the objective that much better… Long live infinite respawns and nigh nearly impossible maps.
Anyways, I do have to say tho, the T-Hunt mode is fun. I’ll have to finish that up before hanging this game up. In the meantime, I’ll pray for an update too.