Rainbow Six: Vegas

Time to put it all on the table.

Terrorists have decided that of all the major cities in the United States, Las Vegas would be an excellent location to take a vacation and kill millions of innocent people at the same time.  Fortunately, the elite Rainbow Six are on the case...

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Recommended Age Minimum Age Available On... 14 10 PS3, Xbox 360, PC Overall Fun Length Frustration   Violence Sexuality Substances Gambling 8 7 2   7 0 1 2 Mods Religion Anti-Law Community Sports Magic Miscellaneous 0 0 0 1 1 0 4

1.     Gameplay

• Overall Fun - 8

Finally, a game that’s black and white.  The player is good, the terrorists are evil, end of story.  You, the leader of a small squad of elite soldiers, must venture through various levels (mostly in Las Vegas) and kill terrorists while saving civilians.  You are the last, best hope for the civilian population of Las Vegas.  It’s an awesome feeling to not have to mentally hesitate even for a second as to whether or not you’re doing the right thing.

This game is an excellent change of pace compared to the unrealistically fast-paced Call of Duty or Halo games.  You’re still the ultimate soldier, but you’re no longer completely superhuman.  Bullets hurt a lot, and at the “realistic” setting one or two shots will kill you instantly.

Players have to be strategic in their assaults.  Do you breach into a room with a breaching charge or have your team throw in a flash grenade?  The decisions will directly affect how you clear the room as you enter it.

Breach and clear? Check.

Silenced weapons are not an optional attachment to prevent your blip from coming up on the radar like in some other games.  Unsilenced weapons will draw enemies toward you like bees to honey.  It’s an excellent strategy if you have your team covering you while you draw the attention, but otherwise you’ll be caught in a hailstorm of bullets that will frequently result in your death.

Silencers on? Check.

Playing with a friend in the cooperative campaign and “terrorist hunts” is an excellent addition.  Other humans are much smarter than the AI, so you can easily have one player draw the attention of the enemy with an unsilenced weapon while the other player sits in a corner with a silenced weapon and kills enemies as they run through a doorway.

The enemies are not idiots, though.  They will know to flank your position and will definitely attempt to do so.  If they feel like they are going to get killed, they will try to retreat to better cover.  They will blind fire and shoot at you as you move around.  They will definitely catch even an experienced player unprepared at times.

All set? It's time to save Las Vegas.

This game was definitely one of the most fun games I have played.  I highly recommend it.

• Length - 7

This game is pretty long.  Players can’t rush through this game, it’s not designed that way.  Players will take things slowly.  Levels that would take Halo players three minutes to rush through will easily take twenty or thirty minutes.

Compound this with the fact that there are a number of decently long chapters and players will be entertained for a few weeks.  I’ve played through this game about six times now and even though I remember exactly where the enemies will appear I still have to take my time to make sure I line up my shots and don’t die.  This game will definitely keep players entertained for a while.

Replay value isn’t great, but not terrible.  There is a cooperative campaign mode but the entire story has been removed so players will be sitting in a helicopter for a few minutes staring at each other while they wait for the level to start.  It wasn’t designed well, but it was still fun to go through a level with a friend.

Online multiplayer is older now, so there aren’t many matches available.  There are still a few dedicated fans that keep things going, however, so if players really want to go online and try stuff out they can.

• Frustration Factor - 2

For the most part, the frustration in this game was getting used to the style.  Players are not supposed to run forward and attack.  The game requires you to make slow, carefully calculated decisions about how to infiltrate and clear a room.  If you make the wrong decision you will get killed.  Once players realize this, the game will become much simpler.

There were some situations where the player’s position was terrible compared to the enemy.  It was somewhat frustrating to have to figure out how to assault the enemy line, but not impossible.  The player just has to figure out a good strategy.

There was one thing that I found somewhat annoying.  Throwing grenades is not very straightforward.  The arc is somewhat difficult to predict and sometimes I found myself accidentally throwing a grenade into something solid, which usually resulted in it bouncing straight back at me.  It’s something of which the players will have to be aware.

2.     Parental Notices

• Violence - 7

This game is a first-person shooter that centers on the Rainbow Six counter-terrorism team fighting a terrorist invasion in Las Vegas.  The player essentially has to fight off the entire terrorist army with only him and his squad.  As a result, violence is a key element of this game.  There is some blood splatter, but there is never any gore and the bodies of terrorists show no signs of trauma (other than the fact that they don’t move).

Boom, headshot.

There is one element that did add an extra element of violence was the incendiary grenades.  These grenades would explode into a red haze when thrown, and any enemy (or player) unfortunate enough to be caught in the initial blast would burst into flame.  The enemies would scream in pain as they burned to death.

See kids, this is why "stop, drop, and roll" is so important!

While in most games I might have a problem with burning people in such a horrific way (especially in a game that is made to look and feel realistic), the enemies that the player fights are terrorists.  It’s definitely a nice change of pace to be killing terrorists instead of killing random aliens or people.

• Sexuality - 0

Sexuality is not a factor in this game... with one small exception.  It's listed in the "miscellaneous" category below.

• Substances - 1

If a teammate takes too much damage, they will go down.  In order to revive these teammates, players must inject something into the teammate.  The game never specifies what is in the injection.

• Gambling - 2

First of all, the game is called Rainbow Six: Vegas.  The player is going to be going through casino after casino.  If a level doesn’t have a slot machine somewhere within it, it’s extremely unusual.

Great, now I'll never find out if I win the super mega big-bucks Thursday-night jackpot.

That being said, the only interaction players have with these slot machines is the ability to shoot them (and have all of the coins flow out of the machine).  Players cannot gamble, but since the gamplay environment is deeply entrenched in gambling it is definitely a factor.

3.     Other Factors

• Mods - 0

There are no mods available for this game.

• Religion - 0

There is one level where the player must play through an unfinished casino called “Dante’s”, a reference to the epic poem Dante’s Inferno.  Dante’s Inferno has many references to religion, but there is no direct mention of organized religion in Rainbow Six: Vegas.

• Anti-Law - 0

You are a member of Rainbow Six, an elite military team.  You are the law enforcement.  The police have nothing on how pro-law you are.

One member of the team reveals himself as a traitor, but he’ll get what’s coming to him in the sequel.

• Online Community - 1

There is an online multiplayer mode for this game.  When  I went online there were still a few dedicated players that were online.  These players can be fairly skilled, so anyone who finds the campaign difficult should not play online.

Otherwise, the online gameplay was fairly civil.

• Extreme Sports - 1

There are  a few examples of extreme sports in this game.  Most levels require that the player “fast rope” down from a helicopter onto the ground.  Fast-roping is basically a controlled, slowed free fall from the helicopter down to the ground for a quick tactical insertion.  There are also other fast rope locations around certain levels that allow a player to drop down a few floors very quickly.

Fast rope insertion right into the action.

The second is that a player has the ability to rappel in certain locations.  The player will slowly crawl down the side of a building with the ability to shoot in many directions with a pistol at enemies.  The player can also flip himself over and rappel upside-down.  This is useful for if a player needs to attack an enemy that is standing in a window in front of him, since his pistol will pass the cover of the wall into view of the enemy before the rest of his body.

Just a couple of guys hanging out.

This is hardly “extreme” and since it’s exactly the same type of tactics and abilities that an elite squad of military commandos would use, the rating for this category is low.

• Magic - 0

There is no magic in the game.

• Miscellaneous - 4

Civilian Deaths

As the game progresses the player will occasionally find bodies of civilians on the ground.  The civilians play little role in the overall progress of the missions, however, and can be easily missed.  I tended to worry more about the terrorists standing around with guns ready to shoot me at every turn more than I worried about the lost lives of civilians (considering I couldn’t save them once they were dead).

Dead SWAT member.

There were a couple of situations where live civilians were caught in the crossfire.  On Fremont Street, the player is forced to try and shoot terrorists while a few civilians are trying to keep out of the line of fire.  It’s not a frequent occurrence, but it did add a level of anger towards the terrorists who treated civilian lives so casually.

One situation early on has a news chopper deep in the no-fly zone.  The chopper is shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade.  However, this scene occurs while the player is being shot at by terrorists, so it's easy to miss.

I appreciate his dedication to delivering the news, but c'mon. This is a bit much.

Hostage Situations

There are a few situations in which the player will have to breach into a room where hostages are being held and execute the terrorists in order to save the hostages.  If the player does not react quickly enough and/or does not order his team to eliminate the targets (terrorists) efficiently, the terrorists will kill the hostages and the player will fail the mission.

Just once I'd wish a hostage would save me instead. It would be a nice alternative.

One mission in particular was disturbing.  The terrorists are on what is supposed to be like the Stratosphere (a large tower structure in Las Vegas) holding a man hostage on a balcony while a television helicopter films the entire event.  The player must prevent the execution of the hostage on live television.

Bomb Defusal

There are a few situations in which the player’s team has to defuse a live bomb.  If the bomb is shot enough times it will detonate and the player will abruptly fail the mission.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

The terrorists are threatening to use a micropulse bomb on Las Vegas and other nearby cities.  The micropulse bomb seems to make a person boil from the inside (as was demonstrated in a somewhat pixilated video while the player was informed about the bomb).  The demonstration is only seen once and after that the game essentially tells the player to not let the bomb be used.  Fortunately, the player stops the bomb from detonating.

Advertisements

I wanted to say that sexuality was not a factor in this game, because it’s not.  There is only one female character in the game and she is purely tactical support.

However, Ubisoft decided to include some in-game advertisements for real products.  Some of them work with the environment since Vegas is a very colorful location with lots of advertisements.  But one of the primary sponsors of the game is Axe, that same company that creates the infamous deodorant and body spray commercials.  Axe includes a number of very obvious advertisements in the game that are definitely tailored to the stereotypical gamer.

Hmm... I wonder what they're selling here...

This was definitely an annoying element to me.  When I’m killing terrorists I don’t want to see cleavage with tag lines like “Improve Your Game” or mentioning my “score”.

The ads aren’t so distracting that you’ll be looking at them instead of the terrorists, but they don’t fit in with the rest of the environment very well.  Most of the rest of the environment is bright but not as vibrant and detailed as these ads.

There is also a set of placeholder ads in the game that are meant to show slightly pornographic content.  It's almost impossible to find, especially while terrorists are shooting at you.  I only found it when I accidentally took cover against it.

Hot press, but the terrorists take precedent.

It's so insignificant I wrestled with whether or not I should even include it.  So take this image with a grain of salt.