The biggest flaw I found in Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is the clear mistake the designers made with everyone’s wardrobe. Everybody from your character, you’re A.I. buddies, to the enemies, all have tactical uniforms for combat and stealth. They should all be sporting the ever popular, “I’m with stupid” t-shirts that can be purchased at many novelty stores. Believe it or not, even with the extremely deep character customization, this outfit is nowhere to be seen. I can only guess that this outfit will be coming later on as DLC for $5 or so (crossing my fingers). But in the day of micro-transactions, I really think Ubisoft should have included something as vital as this.
If omitting the team’s proper t-shirts was the RSV2’s #1 flaw, framerate would come in a close second. During one section of the campaign, the terrorists are taking shelter at the local in-door rock-climbing center (makes perfect sense to me). The instant you start fighting wave after wave of enemies as you try to climb the wall (using ropes, not the actually grips humans would normally use) the framerate shits the bed. I haven’t seen anything like this in terms of slowdown since the days of the Nintendo 64. As this happens, it is impossible to precisely aim when grenades, including incendiary grenades, are thrown at you, and avoid headshots coming from your enemies. This is broken. How is it possible that the quality assurance department didn’t think this was a showstopper?
Usually the game looks very similar to RSV’s first outing, even though that was running on Unreal Engine 2 (2.5) and RSV2 is running on UE3. One thing I will say is that the Dodge lineup of vehicles has never looked better, and seemingly rock solid, literally. Explosions look pretty good, but the environments are mostly indestructible and glue to the floor.
To be fair, the combat for the most part is solid when your squad mates aren’t twiddling their thumbs and trying to rationalize whether rainbows lead to pots of gold or bowls of Lucky Charms. It is really too bad they do this while bullets penetrate their body.
The weapons are diverse. Grenades are very satisfying and fun to use. The cover system and firing works just as it did in the previous iteration of RSV. And I hope you enjoy to breach and clear rooms. There is plenty of that, and that’s practically half of the game.
Online play is very solid. Co-op play was seamless and lag free on Xbox Live. The same can be said for the death match and team objective base game types. Nothing has really changed from RSV 1, except that the co-op play is now only 2-player, and follows the single player path through the campaign’s story mode.
Now, for the $60 question. If you liked the original RSV and can look past the apparent flaws in the sequel’s body armor, it is probably worth it. But if you have any hesitation whatsoever, rent it first.
Score: C+
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