Rainbow Six Vegas Review - Take your time.

By Sam Coles:

Tactical shooters are far and few these days as people tend to like fast pace action like Call of Duty and Battlefield where there is not a lot of strategy. Back in the day there was a small shooter that came out on the PC called Rainbow Six back in 1999 and what that game did is looked at all the current shooters and said “No that’s not how it works in real life”. So what we got was a realistic tactical shooter where you could deal a lot of damage but your enemies could do the same to you so there were real risks to take in these games. The games went on for many years but it wasn’t until the Vegas games where it got really popular and that was due to the fact that it was released on the Xbox 360 and PS3.

Rainbow Six Vegas begins in a Mexican city where you’re investigating a terrorist group who are threating the US border as they want to attack Vegas for some reason. Honestly I never play a Tom Clancy game for the story because during this period the games had a basic set up and context to complement the gameplay and didn’t really have in-depth stories it’s all about the gameplay.

This is a tactical shooter although it has been streamlined compared to other games but it’s still very much a tactical shooter as you take damage easily and you have to command a squad. This game really encourages you to take your time don’t rush in and try and gun down everyone at the same time as that is a great way of getting yourself killed very quickly. Utilise your squad mates they will follow every order you give them, set them up on a vantage point to give over watch, set them to infiltrate mode where they will only fire when you tell them to or assault where they shoot hostiles on site. The different tactics add a layer of replay value as the levels are fairly open ended and you can take different approaches.

The graphics are pretty good with some decent lighting especially in the first level during dawn in small Mexican town. The character models are somewhat decent but can look a bit dated, but to be fair this game did come out 10 years ago so I wasn’t expecting a huge amount of detail in that department.

The only problem I have is the cover mechanic can be a bit fiddly and your character has a habit of taking cover in the wrong position. Another aspect that got on my nerves is the voice acting and it is absolutely terrible it sounds forced and is not enjoyable to listen to, that is something that got much better in Vegas 2. Also the game is very conservative with checkpoints, look I’m not asking for checkpoints every five minutes like Call of Duty, but having to start 10 minutes back from where I’ve died is annoying and frustrating, that is something they’ve fixed in Vegas 2.

Rainbow Six Vegas is a great and challenging game but with some its flaws I would highly recommend picking up the sequel as it irons out those issues, but it’s still a fantastic tactical shooter. This game is super cheap these days I picked up my copy for 99p and plus you can play it on Xbox One via the backwards compatibility.