Tom Clancy must be rolling in cash now. I imagine that every couple of months a truck with the Ubisoft logo on the side of it appears outside chez Clancy, filled with jewels, precious metals and cold hard cash, meaning that Ubisoft have just released their latest Clancy game. I'd also imagine that Mr Clancy was as appalled as the rest of us by the quality of the previous Rainbow Six game – Lockdown, and so sent back said truck, with a note to Ubisoft saying that the game wasn't welcome in 'Team Clancy'. Suitably chastised, Ubisoft went back to the drawing board. OK, pretty unlikely maybe, but Ubisoft have produced a very good tactical shooter this time.
In the main campaign you spend most of the time leading a tactical assault team as they attempt to take down a bunch of terrorists. You start off in Mexico, as is vogue in Tom Clancy games these days, and end up in Las Vegas as the basic plot of the game runs its course. You'll mostly be accompanied by a squad, but there are sections where you're stuck on your own, which gives the game much more a feel of a plot-driven action game than previous Rainbow Six games. If you wanted back the old school Rainbow Six style of game where you meticulously planned your assault up front then you'll be a little disappointed with Vegas, although it's not entirely devoid of tactical planning. You can see the map the whole time to plan your next step, and you can use a fibre optic snake-cam to peak under doors. If you spot anyone inside then you can tag them for your squad members to deal with as a priority on entry. You can then tell your squad mates to stack up around the door and wait for your order, while you head to another door to try and blind side the bad guys as you all burst in together. It's simple, but works quickly with the limited game pad buttons.
For the most part, the game plays really nicely. Having come out at roughly the same time as Gears of War, I found myself preferring the cover system in Vegas – you just pull the left trigger, and you flatten yourself against the nearest wall, pushing the left stick to the sides to break cover as minimally as possible and aim around the corner. Let go of the trigger and you're free to move as normal, which means that seamlessly moving between cover and firing in bursts between works better than in Gears. I know that not everyone shares that opinion though. One thing that should be noted is that if one of your squad is killed it's game over, so you can't just send them into a room full of bad guys and let them clear it out. That's fine, as generally they die a lot less than you and they're quite good at spotting and killing the enemies even before you. However, pump the game up to the hardest difficulty and the game turns from a tactical shooter into a babysitting simulation. They seem to have no idea how to position themselves safely, especially when caught in a crossfire. I gave up with the hard difficulty fairly quickly as I found myself telling them to stand somewhere safe while I went up ahead to make things safe for them, and that was just on the first level…
For a third party game Vegas looks very pretty. It doesn't have Gears of War’s level of detail, but when you're moving around the casino levels and you have hundreds of slot machines and other lights blinking and flashing whilst in a fire fight, it really is quite impressive. The outdoor bits are less impressive, and a bit plain, but generally it's a good looking game, and when you have all the sound effects of the casino around you, as well as the nice gunfire sound effects, it's a very technically accomplished game.
I've already mentioned that the game feels more like a plot-driven action game than the tactical shooter you might expect. You might think that this would be a major stumbling block as, despite the Tom Clancy titled games' literary origins, their plots are mostly well… shit. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter seemed to turn a corner in that respect, and Vegas is better still. If you're playing on your own then you've got 8-10 hours of decent action – which is perhaps dubious value if that's all you're going to play, but the ability to play story mode co-op with one or several mates in split screen adds a lot of value to the game if you want that. If you have Xbox Live or can system link up a few machines then the game shines in either a versus game, or in a co-op 'terrorist hunt', where you have to clear out a level full of terrorists. There's quite a wide variety of online versus modes, and as long as you have a decent host then smooth and sexy 16 player games are easily enough possible. Games regularly turn into extremely tactical and tense affairs, and it seems that the Vegas online crowd is a lot less prone to the idiocy seen in Gears of War or Halo 2. My only criticism is one that most currently published games are currently guilty of – the matchmaking isn't as good as the 2 year old Halo 2's.
Overall, Vegas is a good game, if not spectacular in single player – it's no Gears of War or Half Life 2, but I enjoyed it. However, for me it's currently the game to go to for an online multiplayer session, either co-op or versus, and, aside from Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, I don't see anything coming out in 2007 to change that status.
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