Tom Clancy Rainbow Six Vegas is a solid and fun game, but when compared to today's standards it does show its age.
Gameplay: The gameplay of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is purely tactical combat. The player works his/her way through different rooms and combat places. Each level it's just about the same thing, advance into a building and clear out the terrorist. This is not necessarily a bad thing as the combat is fun enough to make it alright for loads of combat. The game puts you in a squad of 3, 2 bots and then the player controlled character. The player then has the option of commanding his teammates to be stealthy or go in guns blazing. Stealth is sometimes a viable option, but it mostly just involves putting on a silencer and picking off terrorist individually. When in stealth mode your squad will only engage when ordered too. Don't expect a splinter cell quality of stealth. The guns blazing mode will have your squad engage in combat the second they see an enemy. The squad is more than capable of doing damage even though the AI sometimes does stupid things such as being on the wrong side of cover. However, the AI does a fine job of keeping itself alive and dishing out damage. This is important because if a squad mate is downed, after a certain amount of time he will die resulting in a game over. This only happened to me once and it was because I didn't know it could happen. The game offers a mode called terrorist hunt which randomly spawns terrorist on a map and it is your job to hunt them down with your squad and achieve victory by eliminating all of them. I only toyed with this mode and didn't play around with it too much. From what I could tell though it is a solid addition. I didn't get to find any multiplayer matches to join.
The main view is first person and plays like any other shooter with the ability to look through the sites or use a cross heir. The player can crouch, hop over cover, and throw grenades. The cover system puts the player into a third person view that works similar to gears of war. It's a solid and easy to use cover system, but not as solid as Gears of War due to its age. The combat itself is extremely tactical and involves careful planning. Simply going in blasting away in a run and gun style will get you killed. That's what makes this game unique; sometimes I would turn a corner, see an enemy, and be dead in an instant. Other times I was caught advancing up out of cover and got blasted away. Sniper are extremely dangerous and can one shot kill the player if hit in the right spot. This makes it essential to be aware of a snipers position, target him, and take him out. The snipers never feel cheap throughout the game.
The game has even more options in combat and before. During combat a player can order his squad to focus on certain enemies and move from position to position. The player can order his/her squad to hold or follow. It's not complex, but does give the player a sense they are in control of the squad. The game does a superb job of the pre-combat phase. The player can use his/her snake cam to peek under a door and see what's on the other side. From there the player can mark up to two enemies I believe, which your squad mates will instantly take out if given the order to move in. The squad can be ordered to go in silently or guns blazing. Guns blazing options include popping in a grenade first or blowing down the door with explosives. Stealth options include flash bang or smoke grenade first. Both are effective. The game has different entrances into hostile territory with different heights to attack from. Onetime I put myself on top of the roof and gave cover to my squad working their way through the building. Other times I had my self on the ground with a squad mate as my other squad mate went onto the railing. There are many different combat situations and the low amount of damage you can take forces you to be cautious. Planning is important in this game and if you are not careful you will die a lot.
That's what this game does well though, it's fair and dying is rarely frustrating because you can usually blame yourself. None of the enemies are over powered and your squad is more capable of them. However, the terrorist outnumber you so it still poses a challenge. The checkpoints for the most part are well placed and rarely become a problem. The only time checkpoints were a problem that I can remember strongly is in one of the later levels. However, I was not very good at this game so that could have been the problem.
The weapons dealt to you are what you would expect, similar to counter strike. Submachine guns, assault rifles, flash bangs, grenades, sniper rifles, shotguns, pistols, ETC. There is a little customization as the armor you equip yourself with does affect the appearance of your character and has two attributes. Health and mobility, but I didn't test to see how big of a difference the armor made. The weapons can be attached with things such as extra clips, scopes, and some other things. You can also choose to be female and male and it gives you 4-6 faces to choose from. The customization isn't great, but I did toy around a little with it. The player gets a pistol, and 2 main weapons.
Story: Unfortunately it's just another Tom Clancy story. Terrorist attack, you are told to go after them, and you fight your way through hoards of them. It may have a couple of unexpected things in it if the player has not played other Tom Clancy titles, but for me the story was predictable. The characters are uninteresting and the story doesn't have any memorable moments.
Graphics and Sound: They get the job done. The graphics are par, maybe sub-par to today's standard, but don't hinder the gameplay. The music from what I can remember was fine, but not memorable. Over all it was fine.
Final Thoughts: Without a decent story even or great graphics or sound to today's standards, it was essential for Rainbow Six Vegas 2 to have great gameplay for me to enjoy it. And I did enjoy, the gun fights were deep and I carefully planned out some of them. The controls were fine and it was a joy to play. The game challenged me and didn't hold my hand .The bots didn't get in the way and I didn't have to babysit them, but what was impressive is they offered a lot of help. I enjoyed my play through of Rainbow Six Vegas 2.
(I did not play multiplayer and only toyed with terrorist hunt of 20 minutes.
Graphics: 6
Gameplay: 8.5
Main Story: 6
Side Stories: None
Characters: 5
Main Character: 5
Replay Value: 6.5
Freshness: 7.5
Exploration: 5
Voice acting: 5
Emotion: 4
Weapons: 7.5
Powers: none
Freedom: 8
Level Design: 9
Music: 6
Overall: 7.5
The reason I gave this game a 7.5 is although it was great gameplay, the gameplay is still a little outdated. Its age does show at parts and since gameplay is the most important part I couldn't give it a 9. The story and characters weren't memorable and with flawed gameplay is would bring the score down a little more. I'm not huge on completion time or graphics or sound so I didn't consider it too much. The music was average and the only memorable part was the combat. This game is good, but not great in today's standards. I reviewed it based on today's standards.