Fat Ninja

I never mastered PC gaming, so you’ll forgive my being late to the first-person party. The genre struggled to find a foothold in the console market early on. Yet, amidst so many failures, there were successful translations that paved the way for the FPS-saturated console market that we live in today. Now, if any of these early efforts pushed me into first-person shooters, it would be Goldeneye and a copy of Rainbow Six for the Nintendo 64 that I rented back in college. Goldeneye was great and it wreaked havoc on my academics, but Rainbow Six was a different sort of beast. I loved the authenticity of the gameplay. At the time, it was the closest thing a rotundity such as myself could ever have of participating in counter-terrorism. My tryst with Rainbow Six on the Nintendo 64 was over after the 5-day rental period expired, but a flame was lit that would soon drive me to latch onto Ghost Recon and, later, Rainbow Six when the series released on the Xbox. Since my initial exposure to the series, I’ve seen Rainbow Six through its growing pains. Rainbow Six 3 and the Black Arrow expansion sat atop my Xbox playlist for months, while Lockdown proved a stunning disappointment and seemed to spell doom for the much-loved franchise. Fortunately, the latest entry, Rainbow Six Vegas for the 360, is poised to restore the franchise to its former glory.

Who ya gonna call?!
In spite of the franchise’s many evolutions, there has always been one constant. When terror rears its ugly head and the fate of the free world is at stake, the international strikeforce known as Rainbow will be there to meet the enemy with lethal resolve. While Vegas is really no different with respect to plot than those that have come before it, it throws in a couple of twists to keep things feeling fresh. For instance, John Clark has stepped down from his post as Rainbow Six, making way for his protegé and son-in-law, Ding Chavez. You’ll play as Logan Keller, Rainbow’s new rough-around-the-edges, but untested field-leader. When Logan’s first operation goes awry in a small Mexican border town, he’s quick to blame Chavez for the mishap. However, when a wave of terror sweeps through the streets of Las Vegas, Logan and Chavez are forced to set aside their squabbles and deploy to Sin City. From here the narrative is fairly routine. You and your squad will battle your way through swarms of terrorists in order to rescue hostages, defuse explosive devices, and save the free world.

While there is little deviation from the narrative formula that has driven the Rainbow Six franchise for so many years, you’ll find that gameplay has been beefed up in a number of ways. The series has always done its best to immerse gamers in the world of couter-terrorism and special operations, but it’s always been missing a few little elements. Insertions were never really addressed, opting instead to just start us off with a chopper at our backs and leaving our imagination to fill in the space between. Similarly, breaching a room was always fairly static and linear, where the only really flexibility that we were given was a matter of choosing which door we wanted to use. Well, Vegas doesn’t just reinvigorate the flagging franchise, it reinvents it.

“Flash and clear!”

Command & Conquer
A great deal has also been done to improve upon your role as a field commander. Squad dynamics are fluid, and you’ll find that your team mates, Jung and Michael, are both willing and able. With the left-bumper you can set their rules of engagement. In the Infiltration stance Michael and Jung will only return fire. In the Assault stance, they shoot first and ask questions later. Once you’ve established the rules of engagement, ordering your men is as simple as targeting a destination with your reticle and pressing the A-button. This, of course, is context sensitive in relation to the destination.

So, if you’re looking at a door when you order them to move, they’ll set up for entry. Once they’re in position at the door, you’ll find that you can tell them exactly how to enter the room using the D-pad. Depending on whether you have them in the Infiltration or Assault stance, you’ll find that the options are varied. When there are hostages or sensitive materials (i.e. explosive devices) involved, you should opt for Infiltration mode. In this stance your team can be ordered either lead their breaching maneuver with a Flashbang to disorient any targets in the room or a smoke grenade to cover their movements. Assault on the other hand is designed for those occassions, as Ordell Robbie would put it, “[w]hen you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room”. In the Assault stance Michael and Jung can lead their entry with a frag grenade or by placing a breaching charge on the door.

Both of these particular maneuvers are decisively lethal, so it’s always a good thing to check the room for hostages by slipping the Snake Cam under the door. This allows you to survey the room, pinpoint trouble areas, and assign target priorities. So, if there’s a hostage in the room, you obviously want to make sure that the terrorist closest to them is taken down first. In past Rainbow Six entries you’d have to rely on yourself for such delicate work and hope that your squad would pick up any other threats. With Vegas you can actually assign priorities to your men by targetting that individual and pressing the Back-button. But keep in mind that you’re limited to two targets, so you can’t just leave all of the dirty work to your squad.

Raising the Dead
Factor in Vegas‘ aggresive enemy AI, and you’ll discover that sitting on your hands and letting Jung and Michael do everything will just get them and you killed. Vegas‘ health system follows the recent trend of getting rid eliminating the health meter. Instead, if you take damage you’ll need to find cover and pause long enough to return to normal. Naturally, if you fail to do so, you’ll die like a dog. Unlike you, however, Michael and Jung can be revived once they’ve reached their damage limit. If it’s just one of them that’s been hit, you can order the other to “see to him” or do it yourself. However, doing so leaves the guy playing medic vulnerable to attack, so you’ll often have to address any hostiles in the room before tending to your fallen comrade. Take too long, though, and they’ll bleed out and you’ll find yourself having to reload your last checkpoint.

On that subject, Vegas does not offer an in-game save feature, so you’ll find yourself at the mercy of the checkpoint system. For the most part, checkpoint placement is logical, though in some cases they seem to be designed to ensure maximum aggravation. There are moments where you’ll finally beat that section that’s been kicking your ass, only to get gunned down by some plebe around the next corner. As you’re waiting for that next checkpoint to load you’ll be praying and hoping that it saved your progress only to find yourself back at square one. The feeling is maddening, however there’s a very tangible sense of accomplishment that comes along with surmounting some of Vegas‘ more brutal missions. As a whole, Vegas‘ single-player game is a welcome addition to the Rainbow Six library. It manages to overcome all of the bad press that accompanied Lockdown, returning the franchise to its roots and restoring it to its former glory.

Similarly, Vegas‘ multiplayer component was also left with the onus of being an apology for the much maligned Lockdown. Rather than tearing everything down and rebuilding it, UbiSoft has instead taken the series back to the style of play found on Rainbow Six 3 and Black Arrow. At the same time they’ve retained the innovative ideas that just never came to fruition in Lockdown, while adding the new gameplay innovations that make Vegas‘ single-player so much fun. At its core, Vegas plays a lot like its more successful cousins, just with a few tweaks.

Ubi’s Persistent Elite Creation (P.E.C.) system has been carried over from Lockdown and modified to create a much more balanced experience. The class system has been simplified a great deal to level the playing field. The customization options are well executed, allowing you to really create a unique avatar to represent your virtual persona. The amount of equipment, camouflage variants, and weapons promise to keep you tweaking your character for hours. As if that weren’t enough, the integration of the Xbox Live Vision Camera actually allows you to do a passable job of putting your face on your in-game character.

In addition to the customization features, Vegas also has a great ranking system that is based on both playtime and performance. As you earn points, you’ll rank up, and as you rank up you’ll unlock new gear. Fortunately, the developers have taken steps to ensure that the experience is balanced. As such, the equipment gap between ranks is never significant enough to seem unfair.

The online suite in Vegas really represents the bulk of its overall value. It offers a solid multiplayer experience with a number of cooperative and adversarial modes. Finding the right weapon and equipment combinations to suit your style of play may be daunting at first, but there’s enough versatility to guarantee that you’ll find something that works for you.

She’s no Gears of War, but she’s got it where it counts
Visually speaking, Vegas is a bit of a combo-plate. There’s a lot to love about the general visual design, particularly in the lighting and character model departments. Sin City definitely makes a perfect backdrop for the gameplay. Still, there are times when things can feel a little last-gen, particularly on the multiplayer side of things. There have also been a few unusual moments in which textures aren’t applied to the environments, resulting in a bleak, clay-grey world. Moments like this have been isolated and end up resolving themselves, but they were certainly enough to raise some eyebrows. In spite of all of this, Vegas nonetheless pulls it all off with a generally strong visual presentation and unified art direction.

In terms of audio, Vegas does everything you’d expect in a Tom Clancy title. Weapons all sound authentic and varied. Environmental sound is well done, from the plinking tune of the slot machine next to you, to the scuffling boots of the terrorist sneaking up behind it. The soundtrack, while fairly muted, is appropiately action-driven. Where it really succeeds is in setting the mood and tone for Vegas‘ different levels, incorporating thematic elements that accentuate the environs. As always, UbiSoft puts together a compelling audio package.

FINAL THOUGHTS

In closing I’ll say that I went into Vegas with no small amount of trepidation. After the debacle that was Lockdown I feared that the franchise had lost its way for good. When screens first started surfacing, a little voice inside of me spoke of hope and promise. This voice was quickly silenced by the resident cynic. When the single-player demo released on the Marketplace, my inner cynic was suddenly nowhere to be found, only to return when the multiplayer demo dropped, yelling over my own attempts to explain that it was an early build and that the graphics would look better. Luckily, I held out and picked up Vegas the day that it released. Since then Vegas has held my attention hostage and there are no signs of a successful negotiation for its release anywhere on the horizon.

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