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

Can it outthink me?

AI in these kinds of games is very important and Vegas doesn’t shirk there, it provides some of the most active and clever AI yet to grace a shooter. These AI terrorists will use cover and team based tactics, but they’ll also take advantage of interactive objects and these don’t just include ladders, they’ll use rappel points and fast ropes just as well as the player – and they know how to flank you.

We lost count of how many times we died in Kill House against the terrorists until we figured out they were using the fast ropes and the rappel points. At one point on Calypso Casino we caught one smashing a window and climbing out to try and flank the second player.

I was actually on the rope at the time about to breach into the room; this terrorist didn’t make it up the rope as the silenced 9mm sent him packing.

It’s not just the terrorists that have spot on AI, your team isn’t dumb (as in previous R6 outings) they will follow orders and usually prove most effective at taking down tangos. If they do go down you can often bring them up with a heal command, or even order them to heal each other. They make short work of room clearance if the correct tactical option is used and will soon let you know if they don’t think it’s a good idea.

Your team will use ladders, fast ropes, rappel points and follow the set commands based on their engagement mode. They’ll inform you when set to infiltrate, if they spot a tango but will only engage if fired upon.

What kind of animations are there?

In a word, there are a lot of animations in Vegas, the game is packed to the brim with them and they’re done perfectly. One of the best things we’ve seen so far is if you’re playing with a custom character (not one with your own face) over Live and you have a headset, the lips are synched to move with your voice, now that’s somewhat of a cool feature and adds to the atmosphere of the game.

The animations for the weapon reloads, changing equipment and switching vision modes are done flawlessly along with every other animation in the game. It would take a whole page just to detail them; our very favourite so far has to be when the whole team breaches into a window.

Boom? It has physics right?

The explosions and destruction of certain environmental features in Vegas are excellent, there is a good level of physical interaction with the environment but there could have been more. Whilst wooden doors shatter and metal doors buckle, we’d have liked to see a lot more in the way of destruction for the actual interior environments themselves.

It takes away from the atmosphere a little when you shoot a glass fish tank and its bullet-proof. Or when you throw a grenade at the car in the middle of the Calypso MP map and it sits there with hardly a scratch on it. Walls need to crack and things need to shatter far more in an intense gun battle – so apart from the excellent rag-doll and explosive physics the game needs far more in terms of destructive interactions.

Is it worth it?

The final summary down here is what you’re really looking for right, chances are that you’ve skipped the review and you’re already reading down here to see what the pros and cons are?

Vegas is a good game, it’s certainly the best console iteration of the Rainbow series to date and it sets a bench mark for tactical cover that even Gears of War failed to do. This is (pay attention Gears fanboys – ME included) how cover should have been done in the game. The control system is tight and the AI is top notch, you can blast the story apart in a couple of days of good play and it’s not particularly great storytelling.

It rapidly dips into the go there, blow these guys up, rescue these people and save the day scenario. But frankly, when you’re having as much fun as this you don’t care. The same can be said again about the cut-down MP graphics for split and online play, you don’t really pay attention to those things when there are smoke grenades, c4 and frags as well as 15 other players attempting to outflank you and out shoot you at every turn.

The bottom line is Vegas is packed with playability and replay value, the un-lockable content from the Live game allows you to build your own character and online identity. The story-lite coop campaign lets you relive with friends the glorious battles and nerve wracking rescues of the single player, experiment with tactics and equipment as well as see yourself in the game.

It is a title that deserves to be on any hardcore or casual shooter enthusiast’s shelf and the game is heaps of fun to boot. It is one that is worthy of the score it’s been given and would have gained a higher score if there were such things as, 4 player split screen play ala GRAW as well as allowing a buddy to play with you over live from the same console.

You can’t use more than one custom character offline and there’s no way to edit that character, so you have to have Xbox Live to get the full game. Otherwise you’re stuck with the default models that the game offers (which are all very good and showcase the way the PEC works beautifully) – it’s nice to see there’s a mix of male and female characters beyond the core Vegas story ones.

I have a feeling that the next game in the series will take to heart all the comments levelled at this one. Regardless of what many may think, Rainbow Six Vegas is a cracking game and tonnes of fun, it will keep you occupied for quite a while and may even eventually knock Call of Duty 3 and Gears of War off the top Xbox Live playlists.