Rainbow 6 Vegas is truly a next generation game. I bought the 360 specifically for this game. The game itself is unbelievable. The single player campaign picks up right where Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare left off. It's set up as a kind of sequel with the main character staying the same, and the game continues on down the same story line for the first mission. It's basically just the tutorial and you quickly realize that the only thing that stays the same is the name of the main character. The learning curve for the controls is a bit on the high side only because there are so many different things that you have to master or you will end up getting killed. Shooting from cover, ordering your team to flank the A.I., and understanding the applications of your equipment just to name a few. I would say that if you have moderate skill playing FPS, or 3rd person shooters, and your comfortable with the 360 controller, it takes about two hours.
The first thing that I noticed was how intelligent the A.I. is. Both your team, and the enemy exhibit a level of skill that is almost revolutionary. Never, in any game that I've previously played have I felt that the computer was a worthy adversary. Normally it's just a matter of learning locations, and patters, then finding the best way to defeat it. In every shooter style game you always have the situation where you have 5 or 6 guys standing around and if you sit at the right distance you can usually pick them off one by one. You know the drill. After you kill the first terrorist the others will stand out in the open firing there weapon in 3 or 4 second bursts in your general direction. The only way they will hit you is if you're being stupid. It's boring, repetitive, and most importantly not fun. Fortunately that is all in the past.
The fist firefight I encountered on RB6 was eye opening to say the least. The A.I. actually uses tactics and shoots straight. Things I noticed were suppressing fire from concealment, immediate flaking, correct use of smoke, flash, and frag grenades, and using 2x2 covering/fire method. One of the controls allows the use of blind shooting. With your back to a wall you can control your player to fire his weapon without exposing any part of his body. The tactic is useful when being overwhelmed by the enemy, or if your trying to recover from a hit. It's also very useful in pinning down your opponent. The A.I applies this tactic often and correctly. While one terrorist is blind firing, his team will split up. Some will move to flank, using smoke grandees for cover. Meanwhile the rest will split in teams of 2 and approach on a direct frontal assault. One terrorist will aim and fire, while the other will run up to the next available cover. This process is continued until there are within grenade distance, or right on top of you. This whole process can take as little as 30 seconds to happen. Try to imagine coming around a corner and spotting 6 terrorists. They all immediately duck for the first available cover. Then, one will start to fire blindly pinning you down. The next thing you see is two of them retreat and you start to realize that they are going to be behind you in under a minute. You look back at the main assault and the enemy has already closed the distance by half. If you stick you head out to get a better view of the battlefield BOOM, your head just exploded. If you try and retreat and come from a different angle they will cut you to pieces the second your body is exposed. The next logical idea is start throwing grenades at the advancing team, which you notice works on the first terrorist. But now you're down to one grenade and the frontal assault stalls and waits for the flaking team to arrive. In ten seconds you will be caught in a cross fire with nowhere to hide. This all happen to me during my first hour of play. I was simply amazed at what was happening. Ohh... and just in case you were wondering it took me about 3 try's to beat this assault. I used smoke grandees and my heat vision goggles to defeat the advancing team. Keep in mind that the enemy did something different every time I repeated the battle. In other words, no two situations are the same.
Some other features of the single player I enjoyed are the use of the snake cam, and door stacking. During the campaign you encounter many doorways that need to be breached. In order to correctly assess the situation use must use the snake cam. The snake cam is a small camera that you can slide under a door before you open it. After seeing what is behind the door you have several different options at your disposal. Depending on the situation you can either order your team to one, open and clear two, frag and clear three, breach and clear (use c-4 to blow it up) or five, if there is a hostage present you can order them to flash and clear. Your team will "stack" outside of the door and wait for orders. Of course many times there is nothing behind the door in which case you simple open the door and proceed. Again, if you happen to die during one of the door breaches the next time you come up to it the situation might be different. I could go on here for quit awhile but I think I have point across. Now lets get on to the really good thing about this game (yes it gets better) playing on-line.
I should start with the player set up. At the start of your career you must first create your own unique player. This includes designing the look of your character, (if you have the camera this is the spot where you can download your own face to your character) deciding on camouflage patterns, and pick body amour. There isn't a ton of options but it's still pretty cool. The body armor is something new and I like it. You have the option on several deferent styles all offering different benefits. The more armor you have on, the slower your player movement is. The game does allow you to change both the armor and camo whenever you want, however the appearance of the player must stay the same. As you go up in rank, more options become available.
The way you go up in rank is by gathering points. You receive points for winning games, and getting kills. Depending on the scenario your playing you receive different point totals. Some are based on the team, while other are based on personal performance. Some of the scenarios include attack and defend, shooter, sharp shooter, co-opt game, and co-opt terrorist hunt. In any of these different scenarios you will find different variations of the same game. Some will respond automatically, while others will give the option.
For now I just want to cover one on-line scenario because that is all I've been playing. That area is the terrorist hunt. In this particular scenario you and up to 4 other player take on 50 terrorist. The maps are Vegas style, urban environments. What that means is you have many narrow hallways, and small rooms to clear out. Trust me this is a challenge. All of the maps have multiple levels so the A.I. will repeal down sometimes right on top of you. You have fire coming from all different angles as well as grenades and flash bangs. If you die in this particular scenario you stay dead until either all of the terrorist are killed, or all of your team members are dead. Team is the key to winning. Working together is the only way you stand a chance. Remember the A.I. is extremely good. Rushing is not an option. If you rush you might take 3 or 4 with you but with 50 terrorists in one map you basically cant walk without running into bullets. This is an absolute blast! I played for 6 hours straight and it felt like 10 minutes.
There are a few other options that I've not mentions such as tear gas, in cinerary grenades, gas masks, police shields (very cool), and a whole host of different weapons and weapon options. There are a few minor flaws (and I do mean minor). I've said this before about other games and I'll say it again, this game needs either more check points, or manuals save. Also, I did notice a few places where my team would get stuck in a room and not advance as I wanted, but all I had to do was walk back and find them. It was more annoying than anything. The story is the same old terrorist plot that we have been hearing since forever. And for reasons I cant seem to figure out, when you play on Xbox live the graphics seem to take a bit of a nosedive. All of the flaws I've listed are minor. It's imposable to play a game without finding something that you wish was either fixed, or different. RB6 is no different; it's just that the game itself is so unbelievable good, who really cares. Honestly, if you even moderately enjoy first, or 3rd person shooters I guarantee you will like this game. As a next generation gamer, I feel that RB6 is the first true next generation game.
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