After the atrocity that was Rainbow Six Lockdown, it would’ve been easy for Ubisoft to turn tail and run for the hills. With bad AI, questionable graphics and an overall leap backwards, Lockdown could’ve scared any publisher from pursuing another chapter, and gamers wouldn’t have thought any less of the company for abandoning ship. So with Rainbow Six Vegas now on the horizon, it’s understood if gamers harbor a bit of skepticism. But having battled bioterrorists in a handful of digital casinos, let me reassure you that when play Rainbow Six Vegas, you’ll forget about Lockdown altogether.
The improvements start where the game itself does: with the mission loadout. In Rainbow Six Vegas, not only do players choose their weapon loadout prior to each mission, but they can customize those weapons as well. Do you like the machine gun but want a sniper scope rather than the reflex? Just swap it out. Do you want a pistol but feel the need for a larger clip? Just select the clip rather than a laser sight. For that matter, if you want to go totally commando, choose grenades for all of your weapon slots and see how far you get (answer: not very). The choice is truly yours, which lets you play Rainbow Six Vegas as you want to play it.
While customizing the loadout, one thing players won’t be doing is pre-planning each mission with waypoints or markers. On the consoles, though, that’s generally a feature reserved for Ghost Recon (the first one, anyway), and the feature hasn’t touched a Rainbow Six game outside of the PC world, so console gamers aren’t going to miss anything. It would have been a nice option, though, as we’ll discuss when talking about squad commands.
With arsenal complete, it’s time to delve into the actual missions in Sin City. Much like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, the missions in Rainbow Six Vegas are streamed as players travel via helicopter through the skies of Las Vegas. Also like GRAW, the missions are unfortunately rather linear, save for the option to enter rooms via different doors (not exactly an emergent gameplay feature). Unlike GRAW, however, the levels in Rainbow Six Vegas aren’t overexposed and arid, but electric and lush. Remember, the game takes place in Las Vegas, and the missions take place predominantly in and around casinos. This naturally provides some great fodder for level design and decoration.
Slot machines are positioned with the same confuse-the-gambler precision you’d expect, and their lights can be shot out as vengeance for taking that last imaginary dollar. The railings along each staircase, complete with frosted glass, can also be blown out, and every carpet in every casino is wonderfully textured. One of the most immersive aspects of the levels in Rainbow Six Vegas, though, is the audio, even at this early stage. From the sound of slot machines dropping coins to background music, the atmosphere in Rainbow Six Vegas is simply impeccable.
In one scenario in the Calypso Casino, we gathered our squad outside a foyer in which Enya-like music was playing over the loudspeakers. As terrorists rappelled down from the skylights and opened fire from a grand staircase, we couldn’t help but think it was the most surreal experience to be lining up headshots while listening to new age music. Likewise, in a Japanese casino, we found ourselves tossing incendiary grenades with reckless abandon as Zen-like drums echoed through the halls. It seemed like an odd disconnect, but in a game that takes place in a town where anything is possible, the whole thing somehow fits. And it fits quite well.
What’s surprising about these huge, immersive levels is that although they take place mostly indoors, they borrow a blueprint from the multibillion-dollar Vegas casinos in that they’re absolutely huge. Fortunately, checkpoints are generous enough that you’ll seldom lose much more than 10 minutes’ progress. And yes, you will end up relying on checkpoints.
See, the AI in Rainbow Six Vegas is a marked improvement from Lockdown, or any Rainbow Six console game for that matter. As players command their three-man squad, they issue orders either by pressing the A button for context-sensitive commands, or by issuing voice commands through the Xbox Live headset. The voice recognition is still a bit spotty in the early build we’ve been playing, and in fact it still needs a good amount of work. For instance, there are no commands for “open, flash and clear,” and the game actually interprets the “open” command as “Hold position.”
The game therefore relies mostly on visual commands, and since there’s no way to pre-plan waypoints or establish rally points via the mini map, it can be hard to issue commands if you want to flank an enemy, because you can’t actually see the position you want your squad to take. There are definite work arounds in the game, but it will still be frustrating for strategic players, especially considering the enemy AI is good enough to flank you but you can’t return the favor.
That’s right, the enemy AI is good enough to flank. If trapped by suppressive fire, enemies will at times seek hallways and alternate routes to line-up a better shot or get a strategic advantage. Likewise, the squad AI is so effective at finding and eliminating tangos that it’s actually too good at times and clear a room before you even get a shot off. In theory this makes the squad and enemies perfect for one another, but in practice, it would be nice if Ubisoft spends a bit of time balancing the AI a bit so players can get in on some of the tango-takedown glory.
Depending on the difficulty setting, though, the squad AI can be a blessing in disguise. The build we’ve been testing has two settings: Normal and Realistic. Under normal circumstances, Rainbow Six Vegas treats death much like Call of Duty 2: if you get out of the line of fire quickly enough, you’ll gradually re-generate energy and can go about your business. Bump it up to realistic, though, and you’ll face digital death a bit more, well, realistically.
But by far the most realistic part of Rainbow Six Vegas, even in this early build, is the graphics. I’m not going to say it looks photo-realistic, because every game since the PS2’s launch has had that amount of hype thrown at it. However, I can say without a doubt that the casinos are the closest thing I’ve seen to a casino outside of hitting an actual craps table, and that the weapons are some of the best-modeled ever to appear on a console. If Ubisoft can keep polishing the game before its retail release, concentrate on making some of the vehicles and NPCs less blocky, Rainbow Six Vegas could be one of the best-looking games we’ll see this year.
With the customization, AI and graphical improvements, as well as the incredible ambience and sense of immersion, Rainbow Six Vegas has skyrocketed up our Xbox 360 most-wanted list. It still has some issues with voice recognition and AI balancing, but there’s time to fix those small missteps. When we take a look at the multiplayer aspects next week, you’ll see even more reasons to be as excited about this game as we are.
— Jonas Allen