Ever since Rainbow Six 3 came to the Xbox in 2003 the serie has been one of the most popular ones on Xbox Live. Although Rainbow Six 3 suffered from a lot of bugs and glitches the online community couldn’t get enough of the game and a year later Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow was released. With the release of Black Arrow most of the problems were taken care of and the gameplay was much improved. Even though it was a great game it got a little blown away by Halo 2 which was launched within 3 months after the game got released. Jelex has the preview.

Short introduction

After the release of Black Arrow  Halo 2 ruled Xbox Live and Ubisoft got to work on their third instalment of the serie to try and win back some of the popularity it lost to Halo 2. They came up with all kind of new features like customizable characters, the PEC mode and they made the game a lot less realistic and more arcade to make Rainbow Six: Lockdown more attractive to the mainstream. We all know how that worked out, the game disappointed most fans of the serie and the game was soon called Rainbow Six: Letdown by the community. Now it’s time to get ready for the latest addition in the serie: Rainbow Six Vegas. It’s developed by Ubisoft Montreal which also developed Rainbow Six 3, so it’s up to them to win back the game’s reputation in the gaming industry. 

Las Vegas is the victim of terrorism in the first Rainbow Six game on the Xbox 360. Team Rainbow, the multinational taskforce against terrorism, has been called up on because every other attempt to stop the terrorists has failed. Team Rainbow has to save the lives of the innocent people in Las Vegas and stop the terrorists from achieving their goal. You’ll be fighting terrorist in all the different locations Vegas has to offer such as the Strip, Fremont Street and of course the various casinos.

The Game

Ubisoft Montreal has chosen to build up the game from scratch. So what does this mean? I’ll tell you what that means.

First of all team Rainbow has been narrowed down to 3 members and yes this also means that these are 3 totally new characters. So we can say goodbye to Ding Chavez and the rest of the team that served well in the other instalments. The new squad leader is a man named Logan Keller and the other members are Micheal Walter, a heavy weapons and demolition expert, and Jung Park, a long range and electronics specialist.

Furthermore they used the Unreal 3 engine to make the game look magnificent it’s good to see that the Xbox 360 is capable of much more then what we have seen till this day and I’m sure future games will amaze us even more. The three main characters are very detailed and look very realistic. Also the animations are very good. Ubisoft Montreal used motion capture to make the movement of the characters as realistic as possible. Due to this actions like rappelling and blind-cover fire look as real as it gets.

Now let’s talk about the new gameplay features. The previous games in the serie already featured some tactics and with Rainbow Six Vegas they take it to a new level without making it too hard for the people who never played a Rainbow game before. A new device is the snake cam which you can use to peak under doors to get a view of the next room and make your tactical decisions. Another thing you can do with the snake cam is tag enemies, you can mark enemies that you want your team members to kill when you breach a door or give a sign. This seems to work very well and this way you can focus your attention on the most important terrorist without having to watch your own back at the same time.

Another new feature is taking cover which most of us know from games like Ghost Recon: Advance Warfighter. It works pretty similar, you walk to a wall and press yourself against it and then you can shoot around corners, the same way with a fallen table you just crouch press your back against it and shoot over your head which is called blind cover fire.

All these features give the game a more realistic and tactical feel. Your team is finally helpful and will assist you whenever they can. In the other Rainbow Six games you we’re doing 90% of the work but it seems that your teammates have improved their skills and will take their share of the action.

It’s too bad that there is little to no information about the multiplayer yet. This is, for the majority of the gamers, the most important part of the game. Like the PEC mode in Lockdown there will be RPG elements in the multiplayer mode. You can customize your own character and the more you play online the more equipment you will unlock however although your equipment changes you will never have advantages over new players. I just hope that they can make a balanced system for Team Survival as well as Team Sharpshooter, because in Rainbow Six Lockdown the race towards level 40 made everyone play Team Sharpshooter to get there as fast as they could. While in my opinion the greatest multiplayer mode for Rainbow Six is Team Survival since that is the mode where you really need to use tactics because respawning is not an option. One new adversarial multiplayer mode has been announced and that one is called Attack and Defend, it’s basically what the names says it is. One team has to complete an objective and the other one has to prevent the attacking team from doing so. Objectives include hostage rescue, bomb defusal and recovering intel.

Special features

·          Special Order Location – Experience a new level of squad-based realism as your teammates, Micheal and Jung, offer you real-time tactical suggestions like busting through walls or hacking computers, all in a race against time to locate the heart of the terrorist cell.

·          Observe, Plan, Assault – Use tactical planning to maneuver through multiple-path Vegas environments, while utilizing high-tech equipment such as snake cams to strategically ‘’tag’’ terrorist targets to your teammates, before entering a room.

·          Real-Time Immersion – Prepare yourself for a new level of in-game immersion with real-time mission briefings, all in the midst of the most intense combat ever played.

·          Next-Generation AI – Next-generation technology brings a higher level of artificial intelligence to Rainbow Six. As you get past the grunts and advance closer to the center of the terrorist cel, encounter deadlier, more skilled enemies who work together as a group to counter every move you make.

·          Customizable Multiplayer Experience – Create your own multiplayer character that evolves as you play online, unlocking new equipment and achievements as you go.

Release issues

The release is planned for Fall 2006. Ubisoft has a pretty good reputation in finishing games in time so I don’t expect the date to change.

Why buy or not

The singleplayer of Rainbow Six Vegas is going to take the franchise to a new level. The graphics look superb, the new features like the snake cam and the tagsystem are great and the setting is original. The only thing I’m worried about concerning the singleplayer is that it might get a little repetitive. Although Las Vegas is a unique city it still has its limits. I hope they can create enough different situations within the city to keep the missions interesting for the whole length of the singleplayer but I wouldn’t be surprised if a plot change would still let us travel to other locations then Vegas. Also if the multiplayer will be a little more back to basics like the Rainbow Six 3 game it will be one hell of a multiplayer title. However if Ubisoft is stubborn and ignores the complaints of the community about Rainbow Six: Lockdown then it might be a disappointment. In my eyes the multiplayer can make or break the game but I have a lot of faith in Ubisoft and they’ve proved to listen to the community before.

Overall Conclusion

I’m going to give Rainbow Six Vegas the benefit of the doubt for now. The singleplayer looks promising and I think Ubisoft will do the right thing and listen to the feedback of the community to make sure that the multiplayer is going to be just as much fun and great as it was in Rainbow Six: 3 and Black Arrow.

Rainbow Six Vegas will have a tough competition at the end of this year. Gears of War is being released around the same time and Rainbow Six Vegas might get its thunder stolen by GoW. But for us gamers it’s going to be one action packed fall.

Article by Jelex

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