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By Keith B (8th Apr 2008)

When something great happens, you can be sure there’s someone counting the profits somewhere. Ask Sylvester Stallone what happened when Rocky was a smash hit. Well the streets of Vegas are again the scene for some underworld action, so it’s off with Rainbow to clean up the mess.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas is an undeniably superb title, blending wonderful visuals with a good story, capped off with interesting and varied multiplayer. The same could be said of the other Tom Clancy game which had a similar run, Ghost Recon. Both these titles had relatively quick second instalments released, and Ghost Recon’s was short but ultimately enjoyable. Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, on the other hand, is a little less clear cut.
Don’t get ready to throw the mouse at your screen in disgust, because it’s not a big disappointment - there are some brilliant new features here for the player. An advanced experience system featuring development in three different combat traits, with a whole range of unlocks, is a welcome addition and provides continual enjoyment. Where the former game had a meagre system, this incarnation features Marksman, CQB, and Assault categories for development. Each of these contains 20 levels, and you earn points by completing specific tasks in each, such as amassing headshots for Marksman points or obliterating people with C4 for Assault points.
The single player campaign has been developed to mesh seamlessly with online play, so you can jump into a friend’s game and nothing in the story will change. To facilitate this, RS:V2 has multiple entry points to almost every location on the map, allowing for some proper tactical play with you and friends, adding depth to the single player missions.
The developers even went so far as to stage missions outside of Vegas to break up the similarity to the previous game. And that’s the thing – when something is so specific in its storytelling it was always going to be a tough ask to recreate its success without diluting its formula.
And this is what’s happened with Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 in some respects. It’s just too much like what went before, without any sort of meaningful risk taking. It feels like you have the usual locations like casinos and office blocks, the same team mates, the same weapons – it’s just so much like its predecessor that I had a little difficulty in accepting it as its own entity. It feels more like an expansion than anything else. But if you look closely you’ll see the differences, like the 11 new weapons the developers have created.
It plays longer than Recon 2 did so that’s a good point, and the visuals are better than before, with lots of shiny game machines to pepper. One of the videos released online before its launch heralded a new night-vision, although I failed to notice any discernable difference, except to say that there’s a fair bit of it in the game but maybe I’m missing something. The voice commands are refined enough to be useful, ordering around your team like a drill instructor, and the results are satisfactory enough to give it some airtime.
The story is essentially a more frenetic one than last time around, again focusing on the nefarious terrorists and their plans for the US; and the pace of the game itself has been tweaked to quicken the player along a little more readily than before. To this end, there are very few times when your squad will remain motionless trying to disarm a bomb while wave upon wave of foes come in through doors, windows and skylights. You won’t see a timer either, giving you only a few moments to sprint the length of a complex to make good your escape. RS:V2 is a more action focused title but stops short of becoming a boring gunfest. Variations on the general theme include you fighting along alone, or with multiple teams in the same building providing covering fire. The plot, towards the end, even goes so far as to remove the staunch officialdom that had accompanied the former game, with Rainbow adopting a more clinical approach to their work for personal reasons.
This action based theme also means that the maps feel significantly larger than before, and the game really tries to let you know this isn’t an expansion. My problem is that moving through the bowels of the convention centre or through a refinery doesn’t have the same feel as stalking along the strip in Las Vegas. It feels a little less interesting, although it's a beautifully done world. I'm also ignoring the fact that the terrorists shout much of the same stuff as in the first game, more than much - a lot. Tut tut tut.
But overall, the number of minor tweaks ensures that any feeling of disappointment at sameness isn’t around too long. Multiplayer has seen a few adjustments to game modes and rules, with 11 new, smaller maps to engage on and two new adversarial modes; weapons have been balanced and there is now a marked difference between what the highs and lows of each weapon are. There has also been a sprint button added which is a fabulous addition, bring the combat, again, into a more action and cover based world. The team and enemy AI are intelligent and often very handy to have alongside, or difficult to eliminate. The bad guys now boast thermal and night vision, and you’ll encounter enemies with shields who run on and set up a defensive line for their comrades behind. To counter this, you can call in a thermal scan of the area, showing you where the terrorists are hiding and lasting a minute or two.
I took a little while for me, but I did get very into Vegas 2, and thoroughly enjoyed the campaign mode and the way your single player rewards carried into online play.
Those of you that have played the first game will find yourselves instantly back into the action, and it certainly helps immerse the player from the outset, but it’s not essential that you know the world. In fact, if you’re new to the Rainbow Six world, there is no better introduction than this.