“Rainbow Six Vegas 2” now available
Tom Clancy’s realistic military games are known for putting players in lifelike conflicts with stunning graphics and realistic game play. The newest game, “Rainbow Six Vegas 2,” is no exception.
“Rainbow Six Vegas 2” came out on March 18 for the Xbox 360. The sequel to the 2006 hit offers a number of maps from chemical factories to casinos, and like all Tom Clancy games, this one emphasizes teamwork.
The use of teamwork is crucial to this game. It is hyper realistic and one shot is enough to kill the player or a teammate. As with all the Rainbow Six games, playing Rambo and taking out a whole army alone is certainly out of the question.
Though the weapons are fun to play around with, the ability to direct computer-controlled teammates to use snake cameras, flash and smoke grenades with thermal vision is the best aspect of the game and extremely useful in the difficult missions.
Some of the missions are very tricky and it can be hard to find the best way of completing each level. Strategy is the key to making this game enjoyable and utilizing the element of surprise and organized team fire is important. In many instances the gamer has to breach a hostile area by repelling with the entire team through a series of windows all at once.
Another feature of the game is being able to create a unique character. While it can be fun, it is somewhat pointless since the entire game is played without any view of the player’s character.
A nice touch to the game is the enemy’s level of intelligence. The computer AI is impressive and the enemy’s tactics change each time a level is played so the gamer never completely knows where every guy will be. Not only does this add some difficulty to the game, it also adds a higher replay value, since the game never quite plays the same twice.
Healing teammates is also a new part of the game. The original “Rainbow Six” made the gamer deal with not being able to use their veteran units lost in combat from mission to mission. Now if a team member is hurt, the player has to go over and help them and the mission will not end until everyone is healed. Ironically, if the player’s character is hurt, a computer-controlled teammate is unable to help, and the game is over.
This game is really fun, especially for the gamers who like the organized black ops battle more so than the chaos battle of war games like “Call of Duty 4.”
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Andrew Nute at Nute@colorado.edu.
