Rainbow Six Vegas
PC Review
Introduction:
Well another year, another new Rainbow Six game. Last year we were treated to one of the worst tactical shooters ever made. Rainbow Six Lockdown for the PC almost unanimously got terrible reviews, and negative opinions internet wide. UbiSoft really shot themselves in the foot with that release. Will the new version, Rainbow Six Vegas, be another debacle, or will it redeem the otherwise fantastic series.
I wasn’t really that interested in the game after the bad taste with Lockdown, but I've played the Xbox 360 version of Vegas, and love it. If the PC version is just as good, then we may have a winner I think. That of course is the million dollar question.
System requirements:
First off I must tell you that a Shader 3.0 enabled video card is a must with Vegas, and it will not work on anything less, period. This is a major strike again the game already, considering most gamers I’ve talked to don’t have a Shader Model 3.0 enabled card yet, it’s relatively new on only the latest video cards.
The game manual states the minimum requirement for the game is a 3 GHz Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 3000 processor, with recommended requirement of a 3.5 Pentium 4 or a AMD Athlon 3500, 1 gig of RAM, 128 MB video RAM Graphic Card (again DirectX 9.0c compliant, Shader 3.0 enabled video card, DirectX 9.0c sound card, 7 gigs of hard drive space, and a DVD-ROM.
As you can see the requirements are pretty high for this game, and as usual, the “recommended” is really the standard.
I ran the game with everything on high and at 1024x768x32@75 on my system. I averaged around 30 to 50 frames per section. The only problems I ever had with my settings and frame rate is after starting a new mission, once spawned in and before any action I would get a second long pause in game. I then never had another issue till the next load up. The pauses always happened at a fresh mission load long before enemy contact so I was OK with it.
The game:
Rainbow Six Vegas takes part in, well, Vegas. But that’s not all; you’ll be surprised to learn that you start the single player campaign in Mexico. And it looks almost exactly like Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter’s Mexico. Then after a little action south of the border, you move into sin city, Vegas, and end at the Nevada Dam, of all places.
Guess what, Clark and Chavez have retired, there’s a new Rainbow Six team, lead by you. You play as Captain Logan Keller, with a smaller team of operatives.
Those gosh darn terrorist have taken over Americas playground, and the entire world is watching, live on TV. You and your team have one night to bring order to chaos, find out exactly what those terrorist are up to, and then put a stop to it.
Weapons and gear:
Sure you get the usual mega-assortment of weapons and gear, far too many to list here. Each has a damage modifier, range modifier, and accuracy modifier, along with attachments for most that change the mentioned modifiers. It’s going to be hard not to compare Vegas with Lockdown, but UbiSoft brought that upon themselves. I’m happy to report that the weapons do feel different and right compared to Lockdowns, which seemed to be pretty general.
At a quick glance, I see about 30 different weapons, from pistols and sniper rifles to assault rifles and machine guns. Also a number of shotguns which seem to me to be a little over powered in game. I don’t know how many times I died because of a distance shot gun blast, wearing medium armor.
Speaking of armor, you have your typical set of armor like light, medium, and heavy. And it does weigh on you and effect your movement. You also get a number of options, usually in unlocks of equipment and gear like new headgear, eye wear, weapons packs and camouflage packs. A lot of stuff here, but I really hate to unlock tactical gear, a team like Rainbow should already have all the gear they need. That’s a little arcade-y in my opinion.
With your firearms you also have a number of attachments like the ACOG scope, 6x scope, 12x scope, High Capacity mags, laser sights, (and you see the laser in smoke), and reflex scope.
You also get hand grenades, flash bangs, C4, breaching charges, smoke grenades and incendiary grenades which is way too popular in the online arenas. Guess what boys and girls, something I’ve wanted in the series for a long time, a shield. Gone is the hammer entry tool from Lockdown, about the only thing I loved from that game. You get a few more things only in multiplayer mode like a GPS device, motion sensor, radar jammer, and gas mask. Brings back memories of the earlier Rainbow Six days don’t it.
Single player:
You have the single player campaign, which is actually pretty good with a good plot and some serious action. I won’t ruin the story for you but let’s just say that you’ll be a virtual changed man after a few incidents that happen with you and your team. You have to play the campaign to unlock the mission list, and then you can go back and play your favorite missions over and over. And guess what, you’ll want to. Gone is the game play were your forced down a certain path. In Vegas there are multipaths and multiways of getting to an objective. Sure you’re guided some, they have to keep you in the game, but you have more tactical options then you did in Lockdown.
Also, as part of the single player is terrorist hunt, just you against light, medium, or high density of terrorists. Hone your combat skills because it isn’t a walk in the park like it was in Lockdown, terrorists don’t just pop up and down in one spot, not in Vegas baby.
You get ten terrorist hunt maps, and they're all well done. Most are from the single player campaign, but there are a couple of classics like Kill House and Streets, remember those classics?
I only hope this game sells well enough to have a few mods and map packs get released for it from the dedicated and talented gaming community.
Don’t think this is all walking and shooting. No, there are no vehicles but what have become very popular in tactical shooters lately are proper cover and tactics. I for one am very happy with this new direction. The maps are made to provide you proper cover, and for you to utilize your teammates in a couple of bounding overwatch type moves to an objective. You run from point A to point B in this game, and you’ll see red fast. No, sad to say this is not the type of tactical shooter that started the series, This is not the one shot, one kill tactical game of Rainbow Six original and/or the much respected Ghost Recon original series. This is a cross between tactical shooter and action game. Sure I miss those diehard tactical shooters but this type is the future. Again, at least it’s not that shooting gallery called Lockdown. As I said when I reviewed GRAW for the PC, don’t look at it as a continuation of the series, but its own game with a similar name.
It was weird at first, but I’ve gotten use to it and like it. When you go up behind some type of cover, like a car, cement block, or even a door frame, you hold your right mouse button down and you’ll be moved from a first person to a third person view, with you up against that cover. Then you can either hit the left mouse button to blind fire, where you don’t aim but just point the weapon in the general direction and spray and pray. Hey, it doesn’t work to well in a wide open area, but you do that on a stairwell with a couple of tangos running up to you and you’ll get the kills. You can also stay behind cover, and then move the left or right key to swing your head and weapon out to aim and shoot while still mostly behind cover. It works well, but I still do wish that we PC gamers could have had lean left and right keys, but no joy on that.
You control your team by pointing at a place of interest, like behind a wall or door and will get the options to order them to move to position or stack on door. Then you have three options on how to enter or clear a room, like “flash and clear”, “frag and clear”, and “breach and clear”. The system works pretty well. I forgot to mention the snake cam, you stack up on a door and point to the bottom of the door and get an option to slide in a snake cam, you can then, get this, tag terrorist in order of the takedown. You put your cursor on a terrorist, hit your T key, and it will say “take him out first”, then second, third and so on. You then give your two man teammates the order, and they do a very respectable job at entry and clearing.
That’s not all folks; Rainbow Six Vegas implements some of the best dang rope action ever in a PC game. You see a rope, you can order your team to fast rope down, and/or do it your self. You can order your team to hook up for a fast rope and then you hook up, and give the order for the team to fast rope down together, right in the middle of some of the best dang gunfights ever. Fast roping is one thing, but it doesn’t stop there. Rappelling is modeled the same way, order the team to hook up, you do the same, then order them to move down. Get to a window, you have two options. Hit your invert key, flips you face down, pulls out your pistol and tag a couple of terrorist from outside the window. Or you can order the team, and you, to breach by kicking out and busting into the window, again usually into one heck of a firefight. I love how this has all been modeled and portrayed in game. A big plus for Vegas on this fun action.
OK, something I’m not too happy about but I guess its better then health kits. One of your teammates go down, you have a certain time to get to him and heal him, if a teammate bleeds out and dies, or dies from a direct shot like in the head, the game is over and you have to load the last check point. (Yes that’s how the save system is, a console type auto save point, with a PC, we should have the ability to save whenever.) You can order your other teammate to heal a buddy with a push of a key stroke. That’s not too bad I guess, but I don’t like that when you take hits your vision gets blurry, and all you simply have to do is get back and you’ll auto recover. I personally would of preferred less bad guys, (there's like thousands of terrorist in this game, some terrorist recruiter better of gotten a Christmas bonus or something for all his hard work), and more of a one or two shot and your dead death model.
The friendly and enemy AI in Vegas has been vastly improved and is a lot tougher then anything I’ve ever played. They will flank you, they will wait for your reload and charge, they will throw smoke to conceal themselves, they will call for help, and that help comes in hugh numbers. They will use proper cover, and will talk with each other on what to do. They can blind fire just like you can, and they will bang or nade you in a heartbeat. Some of the best enemy AI in PC gaming. I said some of the best; it’s still not perfect but a far cry from what the AI was like in Lockdown. Your own teammates have gotten some training too. Most of the time they do the right thing, take proper cover, and return fire, but again, it isn’t perfect yet. There’s been a couple of instances, but not many of them, facing walls or guarding an already cleared area.
Multiplayer:
Multiplayer in Rainbow Six Vegas is classic rainbow and with the right following could be as big and tactical, for a while, as SWAT 4 was here at Tactical Gamer. You have multiple modes of multiplay. You of course have the campaign missions that can be done in cooperative mode with a total of four players. You have terrorist hunt on the same ten maps mentioned earlier, you have the typical deathmatch and team deathmatch, along with survival and team survival. You have a mode of attack and defend, where one team attacks the defending team. And finally you have retrieval, where you have to retrieve items and get them back to your “base”.
Unfortunately the only way to play multiplayer is through UbiSofts online service. You have to sign up for an account, no direct IP or anything like that. I’ve never been a big fan of required services from publishers; I prefer a direct IP or a simple in game browser.
When you do sign up for an account, then log in, the first thing you have to do is create your persistent character. You choose from a number of faces, armor, and clothing. You also can pick a tag for those dedicated clans or gaming groups.
Multiplayer is fun when it works. I hadn’t had any tech issues with this game what so ever, until I attempted multiplayer. It seems that 1 out of 5 tries of connecting to a server or just picking the search function will kick me to desktop. I re-connect again, and it works. But it’s happened more then once.
I tried all the game modes, I’ve always preferred co-op with a couple of dedicated tactical gamers like myself (but of course none of you seem to have gotten the game), all on teamspeak so we could properly communicate and organize, but I still had fun in the other modes. Of course, if you simply join a server, rarely is there proper teamwork or tactics that you would find here on our own server. That’s why it is my opinion that games like Rainbow Six Vegas are only good in multiplayer when you belong to a gaming group like Tactical Gamer. Join an open server, and expect a lot of grenade and incendiary grenade deaths. Because people love those grenades, especially the incendiary grenades. Nothing like watching a virtual opponent burn to death. I’d say it’s been my experience on an open server, that most of the deaths I’ve observed were from grenades not gunfights. But they still happen, and can be very intense, and fun.
Like I said earlier, you also have exclusive toys to multiplayer, but for the most part there not used much unless some organized clan vs. clan battle or something similar is planned.
Graphics and sounds:
What can I say, Vegas is beautiful. This is one of the most colorful games I’ve ever seen, on par with the Far Cry tropical island look, but this of course is Vegas. A lot of red and a lot of lights. On the same token it is also an exact port from the Xbox 360 version, therefore the textures are limited. The PC is able to handle more textures then any console, even the new generation, but there not improved in the PC version, just directly ported.
When your flying overhead in your helicopter, you can see thousands of cars stopped on the highway, and if you keep looking, you’ll see emergency service vehicles running code three (lights and sirens) to the frontline. You’ll see the Vegas strip like no other has been produced in a computer game. Then you’ll have all the lights and sounds of the casinos. Flowing water, and even big fish tanks.
The character animations are incredible. When you watch your team enter a room, watch, there movements, they are fluid, fast, and they slide there bodies around the door frames not a simple pivot turn. I do believe that the game textures are reduced in multiplayer mode, because they don’t look as crisp as the single player campaign.
The sounds are just incredible. The sounds of the casinos, the gunfire and explosions. The sounds of the bad guys calling for help, or yelling at a partner to flank you.
Be warned thou, this title is rated M for a reason. The language is very adult orientated, a little too much in my opinion. But I’m ok with it.
Conclusion:
I believe Rainbow Six Vegas is one of the best tactical shooter to come along in a while. Sure it has a lot of left over console elements in it, but the game play, the story line, and the tactical action makes this one any Tactical Gamer member would want to experience, both online and off. Now let me re-state that this is not the classic tactical shooter of yesterday. It is a new breed of tactical shooter, one with more of an action element. Sure not perfect, but don’t miss this game just because it has more action, with the right gaming buddies, you can make it as tactical as you want.
I do fear that UbiSoft may have made a couple of hugh tactical errors in the release of this product and there history with the series. We all know what a disappointment Lockdown was, that terrible piece of work, may just have already cost UbiSoft a couple thousands in sales. And then the required Shader Model 3.0, that’s going to knock off anyone without one of the latest video cards. Even video cards a year old don’t support Shader Model 3.0, again this is going to cost a lot of sales. Then finally the multiplayer service that is required. That’s three strikes, in baseball that’s an out. It’s unfortunate, because I really believe that this game could have been a contender for game of the year. But in the world of computer gaming, most games, not all of course, die within months of release. I feel this is what will happen with Vegas. Heck, I think I read somewhere that they have already started on the next in the series. (Not confirmed.)
If you want a great story, plenty of action, and can handle the computer requirements, then pick up this bad boy. Even if you’re a tactical diehard, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. But if your only true interest is multiplayer, then I’d recommend you pass. Just because of the UbiSoft service, and the difficulty in finding good, tactical, games on open servers. Now of course if you belong to a fantastic gaming group like I do, as long as those members support and play the game on our own dedicated server, then you can’t go wrong with Rainbow Six Vegas. It’s a little more action then SWAT 4, but very similar in tactical play. Instead of 6 to 10 bad guys per level like in SWAT 4, you have 100 or so tangos, this can get a little chaotic.
Like I said with GRAW, don’t look at Rainbow Six Vegas as the next in a tactical series, look at it for what it is, the new generation of tactical shooters. There’s plenty of tactics and techniques in this game, along with an insane number of tangos which equal action.
My system specs:
Dell XPS Gen 4
Pentium 4 3.75 MHz processor
2 gigs of DDR2 RAM
Raedon 1950 XTX w/ 512 video RAM
SoundBlaster Audity
250x2 hard drive
Check out more images here:
http://www.tacticsandteamwork.com/screenshots.htm
Here's a couple of videos I've made:
(realize, while recording a major extra FPS hit occurs)
http://www.tacticsandteamwork.com/Vi...et%20Fight.wmv
http://www.tacticsandteamwork.com/Vi...nd%20Clear.wmv
