The game starts off in Pic des Pyréneés, France with a hostage
situation and then promptly moves you into the familiar surroundings of
Las Vegas.
As soon as you arrive in Las Vegas it is taken over by terrorists (how
inconsiderate of them) and panic is widespread. As the story develops
you get to go to different locations around Las Vegas including the
Convention Centre and a few other locations such as a small town in
Nevada.
Good Points:
Decent graphics and sound.
Better voice acting than the first one.
Customisable load outs (weapons, armour, helmets etc)
ACES system
Bad Points:
AI can be stupid at times.
Frustrating at times.
Vegas 2 is a lot like it's predecessor Vegas 1 graphics wise, although
the Vegas 2 graphics do seem to be much sharper than those of Vegas 1. The graphics aren't going to blow you away by any stretch of the
imagination but they are decent enough for what the game is...a console
port.
The sound quality seems to have gone up a notch, weapons now sound much
better than in Vegas 1. It also appears that they've fixed the sound
issues that plagued Vegas 1 (repeating sounds etc).
Vegas 1 had some really horrible voice acting in it especially Jung and
Michael. You would think that two of the main characters would have
decent voice acting but thankfully that has been sorted in Vegas 2. The
Voice acting in Vegas 2 for the most part is consistently of good
quality.
New to Vegas 2 is the fully customisable load out. Unlike Vegas 1 where
you could only change your weapon load out in Vegas 2 you can change
your armour, weapons, helmet, camo paint and even wear tactical
sunglasses (gotta love those sunglasses). Being able to customise your
load out adds another level of challenge, do you go in lightly armoured
and fast or heavily armoured and slow?
Another addition to Vegas 2 is the ACES system (Advanced Combat
Enhancement and Specialisation). The ACES system rewards you by
unlocking weapons, armours etc based on the tactics used in the game.
ACES in divided in to three parts Marksman, Assault, and Close-Quarter
Battle (CQB). For example a head shot will count towards marksmanship,
shooting through a wall will count towards Assault, and killing an
enemy at close quarters will count towards CQB. By getting a high
enough score in a category you can unlock a specific item in that
category, for example the assault category will unlock a new assault
rifle.
One thing that hasn't been fixed since Vegas 1 is the AI. I've found
terrorists just standing in the open while I blow them away or i've
just slaughtered everybody in a room and two terrorists are standing on
the balcony outside oblivious to what just happened.
At times Vegas 2 can be frustrating especially when enemies know
exactly where you are even though they'd not even seen you. Other
frustrating times are when one or both of your team mates go down
because they were stupid, usually by standing out in the open. Not
forgetting the age old problem of your team mates standing in your line
of fire. I think you should get bonus points for shooting your team
mates in the back of the head. :P
Overall Vegas 2 ticks most boxes but it's not for everyone. With no
more mission planning, more forgiving style of game play and a much
more shooter orientation the Vegas series has very much moved away from
the roots of the Rainbow Six franchise. Die hard Rainbow Six fans may
feel that the game has become shallower as a result but one things for
sure this newer formula makes for a game that's easier to pick up.
Review system: QX6850 Extreme (3.0GHz Quad Core), 4GB RAM, 768MB Geforce 8800GTX, Windows XP SP2.
