82 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC| JUL 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
IN THE LAB^
REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWAREL
et’s skip the bad Vegas puns
and get down to the sober truth:
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 looks
and plays like a rehash of last year’s
original. Put both action shooters side
by side and you’d be hard-pressed to
distinguish between them. This doesn’t
mean Vegas 2 is terrible—the fi rst
game was a righteous shoot-’em-up
that melded quick pacing with exciting
fi refi ghts. The follow-up fl eshes out the
story and completes the plot lines left
unfi nished in the last go-round, but it
falters from the same tiresome action
sequences that are more frustrating
than challenging.
As the new protagonist, Bishop,
leader of Bravo Team, you embark on a
drawn-out terrorist hunt that happens
concurrently with the events of the
fi rst game. The twist-heavy plot sends
you on seven missions, from seiz-
ing a biological weapon planted at a
monorail station to rescuing hostages
trapped in a towering casino. The
diverse locales—most are actually
off the Vegas Strip—are cleverly designed to
accommodate the linear missions, and each
includes a mix of large rooms and narrow
hallways to allow for both open and close-
quarters combat. We also have to give props
to the developers for setting a level in the LasVegas Convention Center, which houses the
annual CES technology conference.
Less stellar, though, are the actual fi refi ghts,
which are essentially glorifi ed shooting gal-
leries. Cowering behind cover keeps you
impervious to all harm (even though penetrablesurfaces are supposedly a new feature), but ex-
posing your head for more than a few seconds
will transform your cabeza into a bullet magnet.
It’s also much too easy to send your overly
competent teammates storming through maps
on a killing spree while you sit back and miss
out on all the action. The unbalanced combat
is made worse by the inconsistent checkpoint
save system, which forced us to rage-quit out of
the game on far too many occasions.
Fortunately, multiplayer co-op and
deathmatch games are genuinely intense and
actually require skill and tactical planning.
We felt tremendously satisfi ed and rewarded
aft er perfectly executing a nail-biting online
operation—it’s too bad this feeling never arises
in the solo campaign. – N O R M A N CHANRainbow Six Vegas 2
Shooting it up in Sin City
The duck-and-cover tactic works a little too well against armed mercenaries.The only baddies you’ll have to worry about are snipers and enemies holding bullet-proof shields.+ -
VERDICT$50, http://www.rainbowsixgame.com, ESRB: M7
Fast action, urgently
paced story, and
well-designed levels.Lack of tactical depth
and a quick-save
option spoil the fun.PENN & TELLERRAINBOW SIX VEGAS 2SIEGFRIED & ROY