Rainbow Six: Vegas - First impressions
First things first, this is not the "Rainbow Six" of Rainbow Six/Rogue Spear/Raven Shield that many of us have come to love over the years. However, it also isnt the pile of trash that "Lockdown" was.
Esentially, Vegas can be seen as a tactical-shooter, with the emphasis firmly on the shooter, and less on the tactical. Its closes comparison would probably be a cross between the excellent "Brothers in Arms" series in terms of the tactical elements (mission planning is gone, and commands are issued to your two squad mates on the fly, in combat, via the game interface) and "Gears of War" in terms of the action - implementing as it does an ingamel "Cover interaction system".
Squad AI is good, theyve saved my behind a few times now, and pathfinding and other such issues that have often blighted R6 games, have yet to really appear. Enemy AI however is pretty poor (in one particularly difficult ambush, i found i was able to run around the outside of the room and pick off all the enemies through the windows, which they were seemingly unable to fire back through, without them battign an eyelid, before entering and completing my objective), however they will try and flank and other such basic moves, the gameplay core of Vegas however is pitting you in massive pitched fire fights, rather than putting you up against a handful of super-intelligent crafty enemies, and as such this will often go un-noticed.
Graphics are pretty poor to be honest, however they hide it well under a plethora of post-processing effects and HDR, however, textures are very shoody, and as with many recent titles from Ubisoft, AA will not work on a lot of systems. Considering the game is set almost exclusively in Vegas casino's, theres a decent bit of variety in environments (Developers of FEAR 2 - take note!!). Sound effects are pretty thumping too, which is nice.
The most important thing with this title is that it has halted a sliding trend in recent releases from Ubisoft, that is crappy console to PC ports, ala the kind that eventually ruined "Splinter Cell: Double Agent" for many PC players. Admittedly, there are still problems under the hood, and crashes will occur on occasion, but this is much better than some of the recent "look at me funny and i'll crash your PC" stuff Ubi has been putting out.
All in all, if your after a shooter with some rudimentary tactical squad based elements (ala Brothers in Arms), this is the game for you (and the game GRAW should have been) mixing action and tactics in a fun and enjoyable manner. If however, your after an ultra-realistic shooter, while the realism is still there in Vegas (it doesnt take much to kill you, but as with many action games, the health bar has been replaced with "Overshield" style regenerating health, makign you nigh on invincible if you play wisely), your going to be wanting to stick with "Raven Shield", "Swat 4" and co.
--Jakk:t