RAINBOW 6 VEGAS 2
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on: PC, PS3. Developed by Ubisoft, Published by Ubisoft
Not a football score but a game, a sequel in a series that seems to alternate between extremely high quality offerings such as GRAW and the original R6 Vegas title and cheesy expansion packs. Guess which one this is…
The original R6 Vegas title came off four console titles from last gen of descending quality. The first Xbox R6 title was a pretty good game for its time and its follow up Black Arrow was more goodness. Then there was Lockdown and the Classics game (which redid missions from older PC titles). They were shithouse. R6V2 is somewhere in between the two extremes.
GRAW came out shortly after the 360 launch and was a great game with a sequel coming out a year later whose only major shortcomings were its lack of anything new and brevity. It was still kick ass. R6V2 seems to have lost a lot of the sparkle from the original Vegas. Its not so much kick ass as it is suckass.
The gameplay is identical in most respects. The locale is not, as there are health centers in Vegas, Junkyards in Vegas and the convention center, but the casinos are conspicuous by their almost complete absence (I do remember thinking they were a tad overused in the first title, but come on, Ubi. Only one level?). Being able to tag which enemies your fire team will prioritize when you use your snake cam is useful but that’s hardly anything other than expansion pack de rigeur.
With the more prosaic locales in most of the game, the graphics seemto have taken a big hit. Lightning is flat as a pancake most of the time and the frame rate can really struggle on some levels (particularly the health center). The brief MP game I played looked awful, like an early Xbox 1 game. It was even flatter than the Single player campaign after being flattened by a steamroller driven by a very large man.
Sound is a mixed bag as some of the voice work is barely audible and yet more use of the same sound effects these guys have been using since at least 2003 with Rainbow Six 3.MP was pretty ordinary as well. I played a Team Deathmatch game on LIVE – lag was fine but the gameplay seemed like an old R6 3 user map with spawn points almost always in the line of fire from camping whores. So massive fail there.
I ended up stopping playing this game’s SP about two thirds of the way through since it just wasn’t any fun and was frustrating enough to prevent me finishing.
I wouldn’t recommend this unless you looooooooooved the first one so much you need more. It would make ordinary DLC and is quite poor when its supposed to be a sequel that Ubi’s charging full price for.
AVOID LIKE HERPES
C1 Rating: 0/3
