I've been putting off playing
Rainbox Six: Vegas for quite a while. These
sorts of realistic tactical shooters just don't
win me over. They all feature the same weapons
- basically a machine gun. The enemies are all
the same with similar health levels and drop
with a headshot. The levels are always realistic
real life settings. Still, Vegas somehow has
an aggregate score of 84% of Game Rankings,
slightly below what is arguably 2006's action
game of the year Gears of War. The latter deserved
that title, Vegas doesn't.
I can't say much about the
gameplay beyond what I said above. There are
various weapons in this game; all act and feel
exactly the same. Sure you can put on a silencer
or change the rate of fire. Sure you can use
a shotgun instead. But the most effective is
rapid fire with a sniper scope. You have several
different versions of the same gun in this game.
They're supposed to be completely different
guns, they look different and have specific
names. I'm not a gun expert but they just didn't
feel any different at all. You'll also never
run out of ammo as every single enemy drops
almost full ammo.
The enemies, like above, are
all exactly the same. As you progress some of
them have slightly more armour, but it didn't
make much difference to the difficulty. The
first level plays exactly the same as the last
level. That's not to say that there aren't any
challenging situations in this game. The enemies
have pretty decent AI and use cover a lot, as
well as flanking you. They also take you down
fast, so if you walk out into the open and have
missed an enemy, you'll likely die.
There were a few frustrating
sections in fact, made frustrating because of
no quicksave. Most of the game was fine but
there were 4-5 times where I had to replay from
a checkpoint at least a few times, which was
very annoying. One scene in particular where
your team mate hacks a computer while a dozen
enemies attack from both directions. It took
me 4-5 attempts ON GOD MODE to complete. It's
the only time I needed god mode, so the rest
of the game is balanced well enough. There is
a lack of any kind of end battle though. You
beat the main antagonist with ease then expect
a helicopter fight (how original) only for everything
to suddenly end with "to be continued".
There were some unique features
in the game that I really liked. The ability
to 'snake cam' under doors to see what's on
the other side, then assign your team mates
to throw a grenade in while you attack from
another entrance. This was effective and fun!
As was when you're blinded by a smoke grenade
and have to revert to infrared. Your team mates
are adequate and useful at times clearing rooms
out and usually not getting in the way.
The plot is simple and boring;
hunt down the terrorists who have attacked Las
Vegas and finish them off at the Nevada Dam
before they launch a bomb. I don't know who
I was playing as or anything about my team mates.
Then at the end one of my team mates turns out
to be the bad guy. I'm assuming he was a team
mate because he had on the same military clothing,
but beyond that it could have been any random
character. Story scores a C at best.
Now Vegas should look good;
it used Unreal Engine 3.0. The only other game
in 2006 that uses Unreal Engine 3 was Gear of
War, which looked MUCH better than Vegas. Tweaking
the game to look better wasn't an option, apart
from blurring, shadows and something about long
range rendering which put the game to an unplayable
crawl in large areas. For some reason, the textures
look really bad, like they were only limited
colour gifs. They were very grainy instead of
smooth. Perhaps the lighting had something to
do with this, as it was very dull and lacked
contrast. At one point I was supposed to be
in a pitch dark room, but it was still only
70% black. In hindsight perhaps turning the
brightness down may have helped, but this was
the default setting so why should I have to
change it? The entire game, a bit like Gears
of War, looks very muddy and desaturated. Almost
like the lighting creates a dirty fog over everything.
It certainly isn't crisp and clear like Crysis.
The levels also never acheived
greatness. There were a few neat set peices
such as looking out across Las Vegas on top
of a casino tower, Dante's Casino which is still
under construction and the Nevada Dam at the
end. Some of the casino's look really cool and
life like, but overall there's a lot of corridor-room-corridor-room.
And with weak texturing and lighting, Vegas
isn't a great looking game.
That's about how you can sum
up Vegas; good but not great. In some ways it's
replayable because everything is professional
enough. It's clear it's not built by an indy
studio on a budget with major bugs. But the
gameplay is the same old Rainbox Six tactical
shooter with no variety, an empty storyline
and the levels don't look too different to your
local casino; perhaps with a slight architectural
upgrade.
