Rainbow Six Vegas 2 takes you back to Sin City to finish the fight you left off in the first Rainbow Six Vegas. launches almost exactly where the first Rainbow Six Vegas story began. This time around, you control the elite Rainbow Six member, Bishop. A skilled operator, he/she has been called out of academy teaching and back into active service. Bishop commands a two man team and the story takes place parallel to the first Rainbow Six. Eventually, the two stories combine at the last level and you finish what was left from the first game.
As Bishop, you can play as either a male or female character. This all depends upon your choices at the start of the game. But a warning, if you didn't play the first Rainbow Six Vegas, you will be lost. You'll know that you are running & gunning down terrorists, but you won't know why. In my experience, I still had trouble following the story, simply because sound effects drowned out the dialogue of the characters telling the story. The story is disappointing in that it tells you more of what you already knew (terrorists in Las Vegas, blowing stuff up & killing civilians) and only leaves it to the final level to actually progress into new story.
8/10 - Unless you played the first, you will be lost. But killing terrorists never requires a story.
Design:
The game design has hardly changed from the first game. The same general strategy of surveying rooms, tagging terrorists, breaching doors and shooting bad guys is all the same.
RSV2 features more options to each situation. Almost every scenario has at least two doors or windows to allow a player some degree of freedom. The addition of the ability to fire through objects such as wood and light metals means that even behind cover, you are never safe. Nothing groundbreaking there (CoD4), but the system applies only half the time. You'll have a tough time firing through material to kill terrorists, but they'll always have an easy time firing through your cover (and sometimes around corners as well).
7/10 - RSV2 delivers the same experience as the first, but lacks significant innovation expected in a sequel.
Gameplay: RSV2 relies upon the same combination of tactics of its predecessor, but the bridge between single player & multiplayer has finally been bridged through Elite Persistent Creation. All of your experience is pooled together into a single profile for both your online & offline combat. Anything unlocked in single player will be immediately available for Xbox Live deployment and vice versa.
A new addition to
RSV2 is the Advanced Combat Enhancement and Specialization (A.C.E.S.) system. A.C.E.S. is a reward system which breaks down into three categories: Assault, Marksmen & Close Quarters Combat. You get points in each of the 3 categories for killing opponents in different ways. Marksmen points are given for long range kills & tough shots, assault points for explosions & killing through cover, and close quarters combat for blind fire & close range kills. As you progress through a particular category, you will unlock new weapons to use. Marksmen points eventually culminates in the L96 Arctic Warfare sniper rifle, for example.
With 20 levels in each category, the ACES system unlocks both new weapons and experience for your character to use throughout gameplay. Although twenty levels in three categories seems daunting, you gain points rather quickly in single player which can give you the upper hand in multiplayer games with better weapons. Often, the best weapons are locked by so you are required to play the campaign mode in order to unlock them for multiplayer use.
Multiplayer combat remains nearly unchanged from the first title. New maps bring different tactics, but all the same online carnage. Death match, team leader, bomb and terrorist hunt are all old friends to veteran players. A notable drawback of the online aspect is the lack of 4 player coop: a maximum of two players in coop campaign are permitted. Although the value of
RSV2 is clearly in the multiplayer aspect, not single player campaign.
8/10 - Much of Rainbow Six's gameplay is identical to the original. ACES poses a small challenge, but does not persist long enough to be of any value.
Graphics & Sound:
Graphically, this is the same Rainbow Six Vegas. You'll notice subtle difference as the game no longer has the glitz of Vegas, but rather the old run down part of town. Some surfaces will be noticeably blank & textured, while others will take 15 seconds to load. Not all of the levels are cleanly designed & some have visible flaws.
The sound effects of
RSV2 are just as impressive as the first game. Flash bangs will ring through your speakers and you'll be just as annoyed as through you really were flashed. Much of the sound you will hear is identical to the first game. Weapon sounds, terrorist one liners, and even some of the music are all carried over from the first Vegas game. Don't worry about the dialogue, you won't be able to hear it over the constant drowning sound of helicopter blades, firefights or basic game sound effects.
6/10 - Too much content from the first title. Identical credits, similar menu screens, same terrorist voices.
Overall:
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 gives you more of what the first game already had. The entire game probably could have been released as a giant 800MB expansion to the first game. But the first game was great, and RSV2 tries to fix some of the mistakes, add re-playability and bridge single player & multiplayer. RSV2 is a true sequel, it plays identically to the first, ends the story arc & provides the multiplayer experience you'd expect from RSV. It is clear that this project was rushed, unpolished & didn't have enough additions to truly separate itself from its predecessor's shadow.
Despite these shortcomings, Rainbow Six Vegas 2 continues in the long line of Rainbow Six games and (like its predecessor) is one of the finest tactical shooters on the market. Single player will leave you wanting more, but online action will continue for years to come.
The Verdict:
Average Score: 7.25
Overall Score: 8.5