Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas (Ubisoft)

What's more famous than a Tom Clancy novel? A Tom Clancy movie! What's more famous than that? A Tom Clancy franchise video game! That's what!

Man, his lousy name is on everything. Soon, there will be a more action-oriented yuppy-cafe: Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Another Starbucks! More espionage-oriented clothing: Tom Clancy's Spywear! More foreshadowing-lacking Theme Parks: Tom Clancy's CIAland! What a very straight-forward world after all.

Anyway...

To The Story!

Always with the terrorists! This time, you have to stop a bunch of international terrorists from blowing up other nations, internationally! Any twists or turns a long the way. Nope, and that's the way TC likes it!

The Game

This is perhaps one of the most complicated shooters I've played in a while. With a nice duck'n cover system, you lead your team of specialists from room to room locating and stopping the bad men. Sometimes this means with stealthy techniques. Sometimes with a little computer hacking. Sometimes with a little brute force.

The range of equipment you get is pretty sweet, too. I fear that I must say that the load-out system is 'pretty deep'. You can choose any too guns, from snipers, to automatics and semi-automatic machine guns, to some pretty neat handguns. Plus, you have your choice of smoke grenades, frags, or flashbangs. If you're anything like me, however, you would be good to stay away from the flashbangs, as you would end up hurting yourself more than the enemy.

The graphics are nice, too. High level of detail, mixed in with nice color balances make a very pretty game (unlike the over-shininess of Gears of War). The mechanics are sweet, too. I love rappelling down ropes and taking guys out with pistols while upside-down. I'm also highly addicted to the snakecam. It's super-sweet!


Things I don't like about the game is the lack of save-points. There's nothing more infuriating that having to start all the way at the beginning of a level after dying somewhere 99% into the level. Make that a part of a higher difficulty level. Don't punish me severely because I don't play games religiously!

Also, let me skip that god-damned helicopter! Every time you fly in in a chopper, it takes like five minutes where you just look at your team. And if you die, God FORBID if you die, you're right back in that hell-icopter!

Another problem that I have with the game is that the story is not interesting. At all. There are no elements that get me motivated to really play. The best way to play is side-by-side with a friend. One that won't mock you or get pissed off every time you're bullet-fodder!

In The End...

This game is nice, though kind of uninspiring. If you have a friend to kill terrorists with, that's the better way to go. If you don't, I'd skip this game and get a real story-driven shooter.

Go to Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas Homepage