Review: Ranbow Six: Vegas 2 (Updated)

*online gameplay may have subtle differences*

I was sitting in a friend's room one day and another buddy of mine came in and said, "Hey, wanna come play Vegas 2 with me?" To me the answer was simple, "Most definitely." While I have never really been all too interested in any of the Rainbow Six games that were previously released, I decided to give this game a try. I found myself enthralled in the gameplay mechanics and some unique features, but then all of a sudden the euphoria I was feeling was prematurely aborted.

The co-op storyline lasts all of three and a half hours. While I'm sure that the single player storyline is a bit longer, I don't understand why the co-op game's length was so short. Me and my friend had a great deal of fun with Army of Two (we even played through the game again) and that game took a good 6-7 hours to complete. That's a good length for a co-op experience if the game has enough content and variation in gameplay to fill it. Based on my short time with the game, it definitely could have included a full 6 hour co-op story. Another thing that made me feel unfulfilled was that by the time we had played through the story mode, neither of us had unlocked many guns.

*SPOILER ALERT* THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS. HIGHLIGHT THE DARK TEXT TO READ.

On top of the brevity of the story, the level design and story didn't make a whole lot of sense in some portions. In one level in particular you start off in a library, then you go outside and just across the parking lot there's a residential area. Makes sense to me so far as libraries are often near residential areas. However, here's where things get weird. The residential area turns into a junkyard that is full of broken pieces of neon signs and old structural supports. Then, without going up in altitude, you are on the roofs of buildings and a helicopter comes to pick you up from a heliport. What? Also, the graveness of certain situations are not fully realized it seems. Late in the game it is discovered that your old colleague has betrayed you and the terrorists have the personal information of you and your teammates. this includes address and addresses of immediate family as well as credit card numbers. After the final "Boss fight" though, everything is happy go lucky. You get a promotion and everyone pretends that nothing bad ever happened.

One of the somewhat unique features in Vegas is that when you kill guys you get experience and as you gain levels you unlock new articles of clothing, armor, and camo patterns. You unlock guns by getting kills that are categorized in one of three categories Marksmanship, CQB, and Assault. Marksmanship points are earned by getting kills at long range, getting headshots, or killing running opponents and they unlock sniper rifles and accurate assault rifles. Close Quarters Battle (CQB) points are earned by killing enemies that are up close or that have their backs turned to you and unlocks SMGs and pistols. Assault points are earned by killing enemies with grenades or killing opponents through other objects and these points unlock shotguns and light machine guns. Each action gives a different number of points as well, so in co-op it feels like a competition to see who can do more difficult things. You don't really feel like you're working with the other player as much as you're working against them at some points in the game.

There are also some really weird glitches that I experienced while playing. These may be due to a lack of split-screen optimization, but they are present nonetheless. The first glitch I encountered was one where enemies would glitch to and from cover. For instance, an enemy pokes out from behind cover and I shoot at him with my sniper rifle and he jumps back behind the pillar as the bullet is flying through mid air. This wasn't very prevalent, but it occured a half a dozen times to me over the 3 hour experience. Also, invisible edges of cover that prevented bullets from hitting enemies was a problem.

Second, there was a glitch where the game would freeze if both players turned on nightvision or thermal vision at the same time. This happened numerous times throughout the game and really broke the flow of the game. It basically prevented us from using the "Throw smoke grenade and use thermal vision to see enemies through it" tactic unless we staggered our activation of thermal vision.

Thirdly, there was massive framerate reduction in rooms that had a lot of color in them. When we ran into a room that had multicolored rock climbing walls the framerate chugged down to 20-30 frames per second. Also this same thing occurred in the boss fight of the last level. This made beating the level terribly difficult. Another indication that this game wasn't optimized for split screen play was the fact that anytime the game had a video it wanted to show you, a screen popped out of the upper left hand corner and took up half of player two's screen, thus neutralizing his effectiveness in shooting and seeing where he was going and forcing us to wait until the video was completed. I found this to be very frustrating throughout the game because theres a video shown at nearly every checkpoint.

The game was by no means horrid though, regardless of my gripes with the coding. The weapon customization was fantastic. You can put any scope on any gun with the exception of the 12x scope which is only exclusive to the sniper rifle. The clothing and camo options are pretty fun to fool around with too occasionally. One thing I haven't mentioned yet is the team AI that you are presented with in co-op.

I still don't truly understand this addition in co-op besides the fact that these two yahoos are the only people that can defuse explosives or hack computers. Some of the levels feel very crowded having four guys there cramped against a single entrance to a room. One unique thing is that you can command your team to prepare to enter a room, then you have the option for them to throw a flashbang or frag grenade in the room before they enter. Most of the time this is only useful for distraction or incapacitation purposes because only the AI team have the ability to open doors and throw a grenade in without being noticed. Sometimes though, the AI refuses to enter a room and you end up running in and have to attempt to take out 7 enemies with only you and your friend.

EDIT: In single player these guys are very useful and the AI works better as long as you always have them with you and have a decent semblance of military tactics.

Even though the game experience was greatly compromised for the split screen aspect of this game, it was still time well spent. If only the game was longer, less glitchy, and more comprehensible would it be a truly great co-op experience. As long as you and a friend have coordination and are familiar with tactical shooters, you should enjoy this game.

I give Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (UPDATED w/ SP) 2 1/2 stars out of 5

UPDATE: Single-player also has a few of the glitches above. I got about halfway through the SP game and the game froze as well as the cover issues I stated earlier. The game is also not any longer in the single player and all of the guns of the same type feel exactly the same when you shoot them. I have updated my score to reflect these new discoveries.