Verdict: Daniel Emery returns to Vegas, and this time, he's not going to run up a £2,000 bar bill.
As you may have guessed, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 follows on from last year's squad-based tactical shooter, although the storyline overlaps both ends of the original, which explains its 'part sequel, part prequel' billing.
Set in 2005, the opening level (which is really just a glorified tutorial) has you and your fellow counter-terrorism military bad-asses rescuing hostages from an observatory high up in the Pyrenees. It's here that you discover two things: firstly, your team contains a rather reckless operative who winds up getting a few people killed; and secondly, the key that you use to operate objects, such as doors, is the same key that you use to issue squad commands.
This arrangement is a problem. For example, say that you want to move your squad behind a wall. You point your cursor at it, press space and your squad moves into position. However, if you're close to the wall, space will turn into a 'self' command, so instead of getting your squad to back you up, you'll vault the wall. This is great for a kamikaze approach, but not great for everything else. The same problem occurs with doors, windows, stairwells, boxes ... you get the gist. As a result, I've discovered a new medical condition - 'venatus saevio', or game rage. This phenomenon happens when ordinary tasks within a video game verge on the impossible - not because the game is tough, but because the basic mechanics are badly thought out. Your frustration at this is compounded by random freezing, video looping and an exploding PSU (in fairness, its demise had nothing to do with the game, but it hardly helped my mood). Rainbow Six Vegas 2 ticks all these boxes and more.
However, enough whining; on with the game. Five years after the European rescue, you find yourself on a chopper bound for Las Vegas. Two banditos, Miguel and Alvarez Cabreros, have moved on from people trafficking to the world of arms dealing - in particular, chemical weapons.
We won't reveal too much of the plot, but in typical Tom Clancy style, it involves treachery, global brinkmanship and hard-core terrorist atrocities.
Nominally, the game is a squad-based shooter, although in reality, it's a first-person frag-fest that features two helper drones along for the ride. They aren't very bright; while they can find cover when the lead starts flying and are able to defuse the world's most complex bomb, if one of them is hit, you have to instruct the other to help. They're also pretty durable; a wound that would prove fatal to you merely knocks them out until you heal them. The only time they really come into their own is room clearance, when you can get them to blast down a door and sweep a room free of enemies with minimal risk to yourself.
Still, the fact that Vegas 2 is able to accommodate two squad-mates in single-player mode means that it handles cooperative gaming very well in multiplayer mode. It's one of the few games that achieves this (Gears of War is the other notable example), and as such, it deserves praise; playing co-op against legions of baddies is lots of fun, an aspect that's often overlooked by FPS titles.
The game uses the time-honoured tradition of 'mort-o-vision', whereby your vision becomes progressively worse with the more damage you receive. Eventually, everything becomes black and you go to meet your maker.
However, if you find cover, after a few seconds of deep breathing, you're as right as rain. It seems odd that in games featuring real-world locations, guns and plots, a spell of yoga overcomes haemorrhaging. However, running around eating medi-packs such as Pacman is equally unfulfilling, so it seems that developers haven't yet come up with a good answer for characters who are shot a lot.
The other KIND of RPG
The developer has also thrown an RPG element into the game. While the first Vegas game only let you customise your character for online play, in Vegas 2, your character evolves according to how you play, with two areas undergoing changes: rank and fighting method. Rank is pretty straightforward; more points equals more stripes, with each rank unlocking camouflage and armour. However, these don't help in terms of gameplay.
The other element ('the A.C.E system') tracks how you play and unlocks weapons accordingly. There are three categories - marksman, close-quarters, and assault - and once you pass a certain milestone, you receive a fanfare, and the next time you tool up, you're assigned more weapons of that style (for example, better sniper rifles). This is a pretty good idea, although it forces you to play in a different manner if you want access to a shotgun that doesn't suck.
If you're a fan of its predecessor (or Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 for that matter) then Vegas 2 is a violent and occasionally enjoyable romp through Bloodshed Boulevard. The game doesn't do anything special and the one-keystroke-fits-all will drive you nuts. Visually, little has changed, apart from the emphasis on more outdoor environments - which is hardly pushing the envelope, especially as GRAW2 did that last year.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Vegas 2 is more style over substance. The Rainbow Six series abandoned complex tactical planning stages and multiple squads long ago, but Vegas 2's problem is that it's worse than the original. In that game, the combination of being able to take cover and work in small teams to shoot your way through legions of terrorists resulted in a game that was dumb but enjoyable.
In Vegas 2, the fun feels as though it's draining away: whether it's the frustrating controls, familiar setting, lacklustre additions or law of diminishing returns, Vegas 2 is like a low-pair poker hand - it's nothing special. If you want a game to play in co-op with friends, though, it's arguably a better bet than Gears of War, as it isn't saddled with Games For Windows Live.
