Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas (Xbox 360)

So you want to play with friends?

The single player story can be nailed in a couple of days and you can play a solo Terrorist Hunt that allows you to use any of the MP maps to hunt down specific numbers of terrorists, the placement of which is totally random and provides a huge amount of fun as well.

You can team up on one console with a friend and play split-screen in both Terrorist Hunt and Story modes. The actual story (but not the arrival cut-scenes and so on) is kind of cut from the coop play which is a bit confusing, but it’s yet another way to play the game with a friend on one console. It’s a pity you couldn’t have up to 4 players on one console, but you can play coop with up to 4 players if you system-link up the 360’s.

There’s also no way to save in the coop story, so if you die, you’ve got to go right back to the start again (unless you have respawns on). This really sorts out the men from the boys if you’re playing without respawns. It’s nice to see that the game puts your character in the seat of the chopper and so on during the approach cut-scenes (which are usually by helicopter) (yes it does put the custom character in from Xbox Live, we’ll get to that in a moment though)

So you have some robust MP options for one console that add significantly to the replay value of the game.

So you want to play with the world?

Xbox Live is where R6: Vegas shines. You’ll hear a lot of complaints that the game graphics aren’t up to par compared to the single player, and they’re not. But who really cares when you’re surrounded by a smoke grenade, you’ve got 15 other players trying to kill you and there’s gunfire blasting holes in the walls all around you?

There’s the usual player and ranked options, setups for various games and the usual deathmatch, team deathmatch, ctf style game-modes. The maps for MP are great and each one has superb strengths and weaknesses, our favourite being Dante’s Casino, Calypso Casino and the Border Town for playing coop Terrorist Hunts on.

You can set up games with a variety of options and parameters; you can’t stay on the same server for more than one game in a ranked match though which was a bit irksome to say the least. But the game is fun with a capital F in MP and that’s what matters, be it fragging strangers or battling alongside your friends.

You can play a coop story mission with up to 3 buddies as well over Live and that is really fun, once again the game replaces the Vegas characters with your own Custom Xbox Live character.

Yes, Custom Xbox Live character. PEC is the byword (persistent elite creation) that the Ubi team have coined for this. You can use the custom character option to outfit your character with a variety of weapons, equipment and even armour. Every aspect of the character can be set up to how you like it and if you have a Live Vision Camera you can map your face onto a custom head for that extra mile.

You’ll also unlock content to use over Live as you rank up from playing online, coop and other matches. Each one award you experience which eventually allows you to go to the next rank.

Does it look good?

I will go so far as to say that Vegas in single player is an excellent looking game, it’s truly a joy to watch in action as well as play. The eye-candy quotient is right up there with other next-gen games. It only suffers in split-screen and online MP where the graphics have been cut down to preserve frame rate and other features. As I quoted before, you don’t really care though because the MP is that intense, you have to be extremely anal about graphics to stop and point out a cut-down texture in the middle of a ranked sharpshooter match.

Please do though, because that’ll give us playing the game time to perform some creative 7.62 brain surgery with a sniper rifle.

The light effects and the particle effects in Vegas really bring the gun battles alive. You haven’t seen anything until you’ve thrown a few frags and blown the heck out of a simulated Vegas Casino, watched coins come flying out of the slot machines and bullet holes pockmark the walls as the terrorists return fire.

Does it sound good?

In the audio fields, voice and music – the sound designers of Vegas have done a fine job. The voice work is consistent and well performed; the music is thrilling and a gripping addition to the background of battle. The gun shots and the spot effects (especially bullet ricochets) are excellent and superbly implemented. There were a couple of flaws on the Calypso Casino map that we found where the sound for the helicopter dropped out or wasn’t there at the start.

There are some nice auditory touches as well when you get caught by a frag or a flash, the whine of the sound as it distorts in your ears is particularly good at setting your teeth on edge. The same can happen if you’re too close to a detonated c4 charge.

One of the highlights of the game however is the backtalk from the terrorists to the team, as well as each other. Whilst being 18+ in places it really does give more life to the game and you don’t expect these guys to say, ”Oh pardon me you seem to have shot me in the chest, you blighter” when you fill them full of lead.

A small note to mention is that there is a proximity sound feature to the game, if you’re close enough to the enemy you can talk to them and even overhear them. This comes in useful if you’re playing recon and you overhear the enemy talking about their secret plans to assault your defences via the rappel on the north side of the church.