Before I Forget: Rainbow Six Vegas 2
April 2, 2008 1:38 am Games for Fun, Gaming
I completed Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (RB6V2) a few days ago. I have to preface by saying that I enjoyed the first one immensely. Sure, the first RB6V has some issues and bugs, but overall I had a good time playing co-op with friends and got a few weeks of multi-player out of it.
After buying the game with three other friends from work, I learned that RB6V2 only has two player co-op! Well, I guess technically they have four-player in terrorist hunt mode, but story mode is where it’s at. I could see why from a design standpoint why they reduced it to two. The implementation of re-spawning on any other alive member of the squad makes the game incredibly easy, even on higher difficulty settings. This was the case in RB6V2 , since it allows one player to be extra aggressive and draw fire, and the other guy to hang back and basically be the mobile spawnpoint. In RB6V, having three extra spawnpoints made the game challengeless.
A friend of mine and I played all of RB6V2 on co-op on the “realistic” setting with little trouble. Another friend of mine has been playing through on realistic on his own, and having much more difficulty. I decided to help him out on the last two levels, and his impression was that all tactical gameplay went out the window after I joined in, but that it was a lot of fun to see me killing other guys and whatnot. Evidently, the difficulty doesn’t scale well for co-op, but the fun factor scales appropriately. Game design issues aside, I think it was a mistake to move away from four player co-op, if only because it’s what people expected from the first game. I will say that the co-op portion of the game is much smoother in the sequel, especially with hot-joining. The server / map list from RB6V wasn’t really gamer friendly.
One welcome addition to the game is bringing the COD4 style XP and leveling system into single-player / co-op. I will admit that I was very skeptical about that feature existing outside of MP, and now with people now cheesing it (finding glitches to XP boost in SP) I still have reservations about it. However, overall, I really like it and it’s not as obtrusive as I thought it would be. I find myself checking to see what stuff I’ve unlocked, changing camo, trying out new gear, etc. However, if I could, I would change the order of the gun unlocks. It seems to me you would want to unlock more powerful guns as you level up, but the tendency in RB6V2 is to unlock weapons almost at random. The weapon progression seems almost non-existent or maybe I just don’t get it. It is nice that they let you keep and respawn with guns you find in the game though.
I think the level design is much better than in RB6V, but I think overall the levels are less epic. RB6V2 has some really cool settings like the convention center, going through people’s backyards, and scaling down a hotel. In the end, you fight a helicopter, but in the end of RB6 you’re trying to stop nuclear missiles from launching. However, I don’t remember getting lost in RB6V2 like I did in RB6V, so I think overall, they’ve improved on their level design and layout. Generally, I think the levels get better as the game goes on, so the first level isn’t a good representation of the game as a whole. Look and art wise, the levels feel the same as RB6V.
In general, I think the story was really weak compared to RB6V. I couldn’t really tell you any specific plot points, or why we my squad was on any particular mission. It could be because we were mostly ignoring the story due to playing co-op. My guess is that because you can customize your character, they probably downplayed the story. There are also a few points in the game where you’re warped, locked, or have guns taken away. I don’t remember these sequences in RB6V, but I think they are for the worse. I prefer first-person freedom in FPS cut-scenes, I haven’t played many FPS games where cutscenes are done right. I think COD4 is the best example of first person story telling (no actualy cutscenes, no break from first person view), where Halo 3 might be the best example of cut-scenes (fade to black, show your character from thirdperson) in a first person game.
Multiplayer is pretty much the same as RB6V. I’m used to the smoothness of getting in and out of MP matches from COD4, so having to go into a “server,” wait for everyone to join and ready up, and load, then play, then have to go through the entire process again is a huge barrier of entry for me. I think in the future, they should consider smoothing out the process to get into an MP match if they want to stay competive with other MP games. RB6V2 has a really unique multiplayer I think which at the core is pretty fun but I don’t see myself playing it in the long run.
I think the new game modes are pretty cool. The domination style game mode is probably my favorite. Basically, your team has to capture three radar dishes before time runs out. If you get all three, the other team has 20 seconds or so to prevent you from winning. There’s a lot of back and fourth, fun offensive / defensive gameplay, but grenades, like in RB6V are still very powerful. Grenade spam is more prevalent in this series than say, COD (which has it’s fair share of grenade spam as well). As soon as you take an objective, expect grenades to start coming en masse.
I don’t want to go on to long about the game. Overall, I think the game is fairly fun. If you liked the last one, you’ll like this one. However, there isn’t a lot of newness in RB6V, just streamlining of RB6V. The story is weaker, but the situations you are put in are more enjoyable. Co-op is a little better, but two-player is the only story option. MP is basically the same, with new levels.
One last question: Whats up with those floaty grenades?