Preview: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Vegas 2 is money, baby! We play hours of multiplayer and unveil new guns, maps, modes and more!
More Vegas 2
- New screens
- GamePro's Vegas 2 cover story
- First in-game footage
The first rule of Vegas 2? Don't fix what ain't broken. The original Rainbow Six: Vegas blew away players with its tight, suspenseful action that was governed by the rules of real-world warfare. This ain't no pray-and-spray exercise: securing and keeping cover is vital to your survival, high-caliber guns kick harder and hold fewer bullets, and automatic weapons fire in single-shot and burst modes. Because Vegas didn't dumb down its subject matter one bit, it was one of the best games of 2006 and a high water mark for the Rainbow Six series and the shooter genre alike.
Now Ubisoft Montreal is back to finish what they started with Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, a follow-up that's part sequel, part side story. In fact, the game opens several years before the events depicted in the original Vegas.
Playing cooperatively with friends online is a Rainbow Six hallmark, and Vegas 2 adds new drop-in, drop-out play for all its co-op modes. The second player guides Knight, a new team member.
Previously on Rainbow Six: Vegas
Logan, the protagonist from the original Vegas, is MIA this time around. Instead, you play from the perspective of Bishop, a newly appointed Rainbow Six squad leader with a lot to prove. Rather than being stuck with a pre-fabricated Bishop, you can use the Persistent Elite Creation (P.E.C.) mode to fully customize a male or female lead character. Better yet, that character will have a persistent look, skills, and arsenal across all the modes, whether single-player or multiplayer. And as in the last game, you can plaster your face onto your character using the Xbox Live Vision camera.
Ballistics Test
We had an early chance to play Vegas 2, and the experiences were promising. Yesterday, Ubisoft organized a multiplayer showdown with Vegas 2, offering up a few games on 3 of the 13 new maps in the game: CQB Training, Villa and another inside level where we played a couple games of Team Leader, essentially like Halo 3's VIP mode.
Vegas is nothing if not accessible: newcomers are often surprised by how simple the controls are despite the game's depth and realism. Veterans from Halo and, particularly, Call of Duty 4 will be able to hop right into the action, as the controls deviate only slightly from standard shooter layouts.
Our hands-on multiplayer sessions highlighted several key gameplay themes in Vegas 2. For starters, bullet penetration and destructible cover put a new spin on the shooting dynamic, meaning that where you take cover is almost as important as when you take cover. High-caliber rounds pierce through thinner materials (wood, plastic) and gouge chunks off barricades and other cover. If your cover is being torn to shreds by enemy gunfire, you can use the new sprint command (activated by the left bumper) to hightail it to a safer position. These new features don't represent a drastic change - Vegas fans will feel right at home -- but they do make raise the stakes and give the action a leaner, more menacing feel. So far, so good.
Vegas 2 adds several new wrinkles, including bullet penetration physics (you can shoot through doors and other materials) and destructible cover that crumbles under weapon fire.
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