Vegas 2 trades in the glitzy lights of casinos and slot machines in the first Vegas game for bland generic levels like abandoned streets and warehouses.
I’ve spent maybe 10 hours already on this game, and I think I’m practically done with it. I’ll just come right out and say it: it’s a bigger letdown than Devil May Cry 4! The original Vegas game was probably one of the best releases of 2006 for the 360, but this sequel just stinks of a cash-in while under-delivering on almost every aspect. If the game were priced at $30, or even $40, I’d be a little less annoyed with this rip-off but as it stands, I’m going to be careful with any Ubisoft Tom Clancy game in the future. After all, Ubisoft bought the Tom Clancy name now, so they can just attach it to any of their games without Tom Clancy’s permission. For some reason, I’m not that excited about Tom Clancy’s End War anymore. The Tom Clancy name used to mean something!
Intro
Whenever a sequel to a game gets released in under a year and a half from the first game, one should be a little skeptic. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter was a great game, but its sequel that came out shortly after had a shorter campaign and minor changes. Like Vegas 2, GRAW 2 was more of an expansion while being called a sequel. Call of Duty 3 came out one year after Call of Duty 2. Call of Duty 2 was developed by Infinity Ward, the guys who actually created the original Call of Duty game as well as Call of Duty 4. However, Call of Duty 3 was developed by Treyarch, a small company most famous for some Spiderman games and Call of Duty games for the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube. Call of Duty 3 lacked the charm and overall gameplay design that its predecessor had, disappointing fans. In fact, people are worried about Call of Duty 5 now since Treyarch is developing it and it’s going back to WWII.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series itself has been around for a while – the first Rainbow Six games came out on the PC in 1998 as the first true tactical FPS game. The original Rainbow Six games did not focus on fast paced action like the Quake and Unreal games of the time, but rather, on a slower team-based first person game. In these early Rainbow Six games, the player had to plan waypoints for each team member to take when storming an objective. The player and enemies died in one hit so it wasn’t a twitch shooter. Rather, it was almost more of a simulation in seeing whether your attack plan would succeed or fail when securing a location from terrorists. The series was a welcome change from the more combat intensive FPS at the time, providing players a different type of gameplay.
As the PC gaming market shrank over the years due to piracy and players moving more towards console games, Rainbow Six followed. Rainbow Six 3 was originally released in March of 2003 for the PC, and ported to the GameCube, PS2, and Xbox consoles as well. The fourth Rainbow Six game, Rainbow Six: Lockdown, was released on all the consoles and the PC as well, but its gameplay was changed to become more action-oriented so it played like more of a standard FPS game. This resulted in a pretty bad reception from reviewers. Of course, the PC gaming scene was decreasing as more players moved to the consoles, and this was clearly evident when the 360 came out. The fifth game, Rainbow Six Vegas, was released in 2006, one year after the 360 was launched. A lot of polish was put into the game to the point where its next-gen capabilities outshined the relatively weak tactical gameplay. Sure, some people were annoyed that waypoints were gone, but being able to rappel down the side of a building and bust through a window was probably a trade-off several people were willing to take. Vegas was a hit for the 360 crowd, selling over 2 million copies worldwide. It was inevitable that Vegas 2 would come out, as the team that worked on Vegas 1 pretty much went right on to work on Vegas 2 after Vegas 1′s release.
One of the six acts in the game forces you to play stealthy, alone, and without any gear. If I wanted to play Splinter Cell I would have bought that.
Storyline and Premise
Vegas 1′s campaign storyline wasn’t the best, but it was gripping enough that the cliffhanger at the end of the first game made you want to get the second game, even to just to see how the story turned out. Well, I have to say it was a total letdown. Vegas 2 takes place before, during, and after the events in Vegas 1. The storyline in Vegas 2 is quite confusing, as not only is it not told very well, it jumps around between the past, present, and future without you quite realizing. Apparently, you play the role of Bishop, a user-created character that leads the Rainbow Six squads through the game.
In the opening mission, you lead a team consisting of Logan Keller and Gabriel Nowak, Vegas 1′s main hero and villain. The opening mission takes place five years before the events of Vegas 1, and it shows how Keller and Nowak are new to Rainbow Six and Bishop leads/teaches them. After the first mission, it jumps to the present Vegas time period where Bishop works with Jung Park and Michael Walters, Logan Keller’s main support guys from the first game. While Logan Keller gets to take on night missions in Vegas, Bishop isn’t so lucky – taking his team through larger environments like a train yard, a convention center, and a rec center. Towards the end of the game, Bishop and Logan work as two separate teams trying to bring down Gabriel Nowak at his Costa Rican villa. The ending is quite stupid, but is forgivable for the most part since storyline isn’t too big a deal for action games.
The premise is the same as the first one – you control yourself and your two team mates through a series of six acts, taking down terrorists on your way to the big “finale.” It plays similarly to any FPS game, but the unique aspect of the Vegas games is controlling two AI partners throughout the game. The AI of the team mates allows them to fire upon enemies as necessary, but you can have them throw grenades, stack up and enter a doorway in a prepared manner, etc. For the most part, the AI of the partners is good and they are quite useful even on the hardest difficulty settings.
New to Vegas 2 is a thermal scan, a satellite call with a cooldown that will provide you the location of any enemies in the area.
Gameplay Mechanics
Changes from the previous version
For those that have planed the previous game, there aren’t that many differences between the two games in terms of gameplay mechanics changes. There’s now a sprint button in Vegas 2, allowing you to move quickly to another area, as well as the ability to tell your teammates where to throw their grenades.
The experience point system in the first game is changed now too. Instead of experience only being awarded for multiplayer only games, a persistent character creation system allows you to earn experience points in both campaign and online play. Earning experience points allows you to rank up, giving you access to more outfits and camouflage colors.
Also new to Vegas 2 is the ACES system, a secondary “experience point” system in addition to the main one. While you get a certain number of experience points per kill with the regular experience point system, the ACES system gives you points based on how you kill. There are three different “trees” to climb with the ACES system: Marksman, Assault, and Close-Quarter Battle. By leveling each tree, you get rewarded with bonus experience and weapon unlocks based on how you play. All three ACES trees can be climbed, as they do not overlap at all.
If you tend to play at far distances, you’ll end up getting several Marksman points since you get a point for a headshot or three points per long range kill. Killing people up close or from behind rewards you with Close-Quarter Battle points, and killing people with explosives will reward you with Assault points. The system is sort of similar to Call of Duty 4′s system, but it fails to compare. One doesn’t really look forward to climbing the ACES system – it just feels too gimmicky since the gun unlocks aren’t that special.
In Total Conquest, each team tries to capture and hold all three satellites on the map.
Multiplayer
The meat of Vegas 2 is probably in its multiplayer, since it sports several co-op and adversarial modes. Strangely, while Vegas 1 had 4-player co-op for the campaign, Vegas 2 shrinks it so that only two are allowed to play co-op together. And the worst part is that the second player can’t control the two AI teammates at all. He just simply tags along for the ride. The 4-player co-op terrorist hunt mode is probably the best offering for this game, as it allows four friends to just play a map loaded randomly with terrorists. While the terrorist hunt mode itself is pretty much as good as it was in the first Vegas, the enemy spawns seem almost more blatant this time around. If you walk down a certain area and land on an invisible trigger, enemies will automatically spawn in that location, providing some serious frustration since they appear right in front of your eyes.
The adversarial modes consist of the following: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Attack and Defend, Team Leader, and Total Conquest and they can all be played in either Unranked or Ranked play. Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch are staples of any online FPS game. Attack and Defend revolves around one team attacking a certain area while another team is defending against it while Team leader revolves around two teams trying to take out the other team, with the team leader for each team allowing team members to respawn should he still be alive. The last mode, Total Conquest mode, revolves around three points on the map. Each team tries to capture and hold all three points. Once a team is able to hold all three points for thirty seconds, the game is over.
The online adversarial modes themselves aren’t too bad. It’s the way the online works that is the big mess. Unlike the smooth matchmaking that Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 offer, Vegas 2 opts to follow in its predecessor’s multiplayer footsteps: rooms. Players simply host games, choosing what settings they want for their game and waiting for people to join the game. Sometimes the games fill up very quickly, while others never do. It’s all a crapshoot as to what you’re going to get.
What if you want to play with your friends? Good luck unless you start your own room. Trying to play with friends in this game online is quite an exercise in patience, as there’s no team matchmaking of any sort. Teams are automatically balanced by default when you enter a room (most hosts keep it this way so it doesn’t end up going 9v3 or something), and each person has to enter one at a time. If you and your friends all enter a room in a row, you’ll alternate which teams you end up on and the only way to get onto the same team as your friends is to ask someone on your team or the other team to change teams so that you and your friends can be on the same team. This is manageable when there are perhaps only two or three friends, but if you want to play on a team of six with your buddies, it’s pretty much impossible.
The only possible way to play with six on your team is to host your own game, so that way all six of you start on the same side before the start of the match and you don’t need to ask anyone to change teams. However, imagine how people would feel if they joined a room that said 6/12 but when they enter it they see all six on one side. Is this lone wolf really going to stay to play against that team of six? I tried staying for a couple of those games against a team of five or six players. After getting owned, I didn’t bother to play anymore and switched to another console game. As I was playing Orange Box, I got an invite to play Vegas 2 online with one of the guys I just played with. Apparently, this AT team of six is just inviting everyone on their “played with” list on Live. Hopefully they find six random people that join the game and are willing to face off against them. Talk about a ridiculous setup. And that’s not even to mention the 10 seconds of loading it takes to go from the room selection menu to the room itself!
Why Ubisoft decided to go with two player co-op only for the campaign instead of four is still a mystery. Are those two computer AI partners really that important?
Achievement System
I’m generally meh about the Achievements in this game. While I hate games that have online Achievements, the online Achievements for Vegas 2 aren’t so bad – if you’re willing to actually play the online portion of the game. Gone from the first Vegas are most of the Achievements for ranked matches. Instead, nearly all of the multiplayer Achievements (about half of the 1000 points) revolve around certain objectives that can be completed in unranked play as long as there are six players. But because these objectives are pretty ridiculous to get, “boosting” rooms are rampant. (“Boosting” rooms involve players that all join the same game with the intention of getting the Achievements, so they take turns allowing each other to get what they need to get. It’s stupid and makes me hate online Achievements even more.) Just check any Vegas 2 forum and you’ll see people trying to meet up to get Achievements.
The single player Achievements are practically the same as the previous game, with two notable exceptions that I’m not happy with – there are no Achievements for beating the campaign on Realistic difficulty by yourself or all of the Terrorist Hunt maps on Realistic difficulty by yourself. The game doesn’t differentiate whether you beat those Terrorist Hunt missions by yourself or with three people helping you, making it pretty much simple for anyone to get the Achievement. The single player itself isn’t very hard to begin with, so whether it’s beaten with the help of another person or not isn’t as big of a deal to me. I remember working pretty hard and feeling proud that I was able to beat Terrorist Hunt on Realistic by myself for Vegas 1, but no such Achievement exists here in Vegas 2.
Team deathmatch can be mildly fun – getting all of your friends on the same team however, is quite the headache.
Final Thoughts
I’m totally disappointed that I paid full price for this game. Had I known what I was getting myself into, I wouldn’t have actually bought it. $60 is way too steep for a sequel that is worse than the first game. Why remove 4-player co-op in the storyline? Why reduce the campaign length from 16 hours to 6 hours? Why use the location of Vegas again, but not make use of locales that makes Vegas so special? Several questions like this went through my head as I went through the game. I can’t believe I paid full price for this on the first day.
I give this game a C+. The game works on a certain level, but only because the gameplay engine created in the first Vegas game continues into this one. However, the campaign is short, multiplayer is a mess, and the game plays more like an expansion than a full fledged sequel while being priced as a sequel. In my book, a sequel to a game better be at least as good as the original game. Vegas 2 fails to even be as good as Vegas 1. Why didn’t I see this coming? Ubisoft punked several of us, as over 2 million copies of this game have already sold between both the 360 and the PS3 versions.
What is so disappointing is that the first game is closer to an A- on my grading scale and this one gets a C+. What wer the developers thinking? Why not have a campaign that was as long as the first game, a coherent storyline like the first one, 4-player co-op like the first one, and online matchmaking in this day and age? The lack of online matchmaking has pretty much broken multiplayer for me; I won’t bother playing this game online except co-op with friends from now on. I’ll probably return to Call of Duty 4 for my regular FPS multiplayer fix. I’m not a fan of Halo, but I’ll even prefer playing Halo 3 online to this!
