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Dummed Down, with full length commercials

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 31 / 46
Date: January 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First. The lure of the Game Console market has completely corrupted yet another great series. This game is no longer filled with the detail and complexity that is common to PC Games, but it has been dummed down for the console crowd. You no longer plan your assualts, select your team, outfit your team as you see fit. It is now a Playstation shoot and scoot type game. Those here that gush over how great it is obviously don't play PC games normally and I'm willing to bet prefer to play console games.
Second. 2142 was bad enough with it's billboard ads in the game, but UBI soft has gone a step further. Now if you shoot the right bottle you get a full minute commercial. A COMMERCIAL IN THE GAME. According to the littature of their advertising department, it's a "TREAT". Yeah that's what I want a tv commercial in my game. I say don't buy this game. Send a message to all game manufacturers that we wont pay for commercials, and we won't buy console games that have been back programmed for the PC!

VeganMalcontent Pretty Much Summed it Up

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: December 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you are a fan of the Ravenshield/Athena Sword era of Rainbow Six, you were no doubt as traumatized as I by the 'Lockdown' fiasco. Unfortunately, this rendition of Rainbow Six doesn't fair much better. Yes, the graphics are much better, and yes, the AI is too. However, that's about the only things in the plus column for this blatant and shameless grab at PC gamers' wallets by Ubisoft. It's just a bland, canned port from a console game.

This game 'misses' with things like a reduced arsenal (there were significantly more guns in Ravenshield), painfully scripted events, an EXTREMELY shallow difficulty range (you can only choose from 'Normal' and 'Realistic', and even on Realistic you can recover from near life-ending injuries in about 30 seconds). The gun specs are also, well, cheezy. There's very little to differentiate them from one-another, and they do not have any technical info listed like you might expect to see in a 'serious' modern combat game (i.e. muzzle velocities, weapon history, etc.)

Due to the lack of a real spectrum of difficulty settings, if you play this game solo you will spend 70% of your time replaying parts of the game you've already played because you'll frequently get killed by a head shot right before a checkpoint...and then have to replay the past 10 minutes of the game over, and over, and over again. The game chooses when it saves, and you get no input on the matter. There isn't even a quicksave, so plan on replaying the same stuff. This type of 'save feature' was barely tolerated in gaming 10 years ago. Why Ubi thought that this would be acceptable in a modern game is absolutely beyond comprehension.

To add insult to injury, the duck-and-cover concept of hiding behind walls and spraying fire at your enemy doesn't get it done. It's a great concept, but if you try to apply it you frequently get disoriented as Vegan mentioned. The AI is good enough to capitalize on your player's temporary paralysis when this happens and they kill you. You get used to the awkward mechanics of this feature over time, but it never is as intuitive as Ubi would have you believe.

The one thing that Ubi can pull from this burning wreckage is the enemy AI. It's actually very good. Enemies attempt flanking maneuvers, and they can be suppressed very realistically with suppression-type weapons while you send your team (other players or AI teammates) around to flank.

If we're lucky, Ubi will return to the winning Ravenshield/Athena Sword formula, incorporate this game's improved AI, work the glaring kinks out of the duck-and-cover feature and, most importantly, grasp the notion that a player should be allowed to save when he or she wants to. Replaying the same painfully boring levels should never be a subsitute for poor game design! Two stars.

Grand fun, but missing important and classic R6 elements!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 15
Date: May 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Red Storm has helmed the Rainbow Six franchise since it's inception in the late nineties, now with Ubisoft taking the reins they've both raised the bar and lowered it drastically in certain aspects.

First of all, the gameplay is vastly improved from previous titles. The horribly lame "lean" option has been upgraded to a complex cornering system. Now you can hug the wall, find the enemy from relative cover, and swing around a corner with your weapon at the ready - like a true tactical operative. The shooting, strafing, movement is all top-notch as one would expect from an R6 title.

However, the planning and team aspects of the game have been reduced or in some cases deleted. In previous titles you could command a team of up to eight operatives and then systematically plan your assault by assigning waypoints and goals utilizing a map layout of the mission.

Now your team never consists of more than three members (including yourself) and you cannot plan your mission out. At all.

It's a bit silly, isn't it? The last thing the supposedly most elite tactial unit on Earth would do is send in only three men Rambo-style. Granted, your missions are vaguely planned out by the developers, but I assure you it's not nearly as much fun as doing it yourself.

Another major disappoinment longtime players will notice is a severe lack of mission variety. In previous titles you would find yourself at a millionaire's contemporary summer villa one day, at a snowy European village another, a meat packing plant in South America the next, and still later end up at an oil rig in the Pacific Ocean. Now the game primarily focuses on only one location - Las Vegas. Though there are a couple others (the first missions in Mexico, the dam outside of Vegas) but still you'll find yourself wishing for a bit more variety.

Naturally, I and anyone else should expect this from a title that clearly bills itself as "Rainbow Six: VEGAS" - yet it's still a broad and unwanted change from previous titles.

Also, a note on the replayability of the title. With the last few R6 games we were presented with a terrorist hunt option, which allowed us to play a single customized mission. You could choose to have a hostage situation to diffuse or just straight terrorist killing, then you could choose your map (from a few multiplayer ones and whatever single-player maps you had completed) and plan out your team assault. You could also choose to do the "Lone Wolf" option, which just send yourself in with no team to eliminate the terrorists.

Now, with this title, you're reduced to a strictly lone wolf mode. No team, no plans, and your character insanely doesn't even opt for a helmet by default. It's still fun, sure, but the severe lack of options once again limits it.

While this is an outstanding game and certainly worthy of your time and money - they missed a few key components. Hopefully with the next title Ubisoft will combine both the strictly tactical methods of Red Storm's titles with their more "Metal Gear Solid" run-and-gun style.

Not Rainbow Six. Not even Tom Clancy.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: December 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you're looking for a realistic highly technical tactical shooter, keep walking. This plays ok as a 21st century Doom with paramilitary skin, but as a Rainbow Six game it just doesn't even qualify. All these media "reviewers" that loved the game so much apparently can't differentiate the two.

What this game gets right:
- Better AI than Raven Shield
- That is all

What this game gets wrong:
- Regenerating WHAT? You can eat way too many bullets and still live through this game.
- Single player Terrorist Hunt mode is just that. SINGLE PLAYER. No option for AI backup. Good thing you have that regenerating health, because these tangos come from both sides, and you don't have anyone to cover your back. Good luck, space marine.
- The much vaunted 3rd person corner-looking/spraying deal is hopelessly disorienting. See that guy coming around the corner? He's going to kill you while you're trying to realign your aim when you get back to 1st person view.
- Mission plan? What mission plan?
- The arsenal is paltry with weapons specs simplified so as not to confuse your infant daughter. I can't believe Tom Clancy let Red Storm/Ubi put his name on this. At least he's getting paid.

In short, this game would be much better if they simply patched Raven Shield to accomodate the newer AI system. And after all the positive press this game got, I don't see how we can expect the real Rainbow Six to come back ever. Sigh.

Not that great....

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 19
Date: December 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'm not that impressed with Rainbow Six Vegas. The gameplay doesn't really feel like a tactical military shooter. It feels more arcade run and gun. And, you can't go back and play individual levels like you could in Raven Shield. Vegas is just one seamless endeavor with the only load option being to load last checkpoint. Vegas has no Custom Mission option where you can replay levels. Oh, it has this thing called "Terrorist Hunt" but it's not the same. Just an option to play some areas featured in the game and eliminate some terrorists. The only problem is you get killed almost immediately even on normal difficulty.

The graphics are disappointing too. Everything is faded with a high gamma and blurry with lots and lots of faded brownish colors. Anti-aliasing is also not supported. It just doesn't look as good as it does on the box cover and screenshots. The enemies are VERY tiny and hard to spot unless you lower the resolution all the way down. Who wants to do that?

This game is hard and frustrating in many spots. You die, ALOT. There are no quick saves. That wouldn't be such a problem except for that the checkpoints are very far apart and you will have to repeat long sections over again. The game starts off in the streets of Mexico. After playing for many hours you are still in Mexico! It seems like they should have called this game Rainbow Six: Mexico. I am really not enjoying the Mexico levels. They just go on and on. When you finally reach Vegas the amount of enemies and how difficult the game is takes away from the enjoyment. In my opinion, the enjoyment factor of this game... not that great.

Not Ravenshield, but...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: December 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

In response to the vicious reviews below, I'd just like to say that I too am a fan of Ravenshield. I loved the in-depth details about each weapon and the entire planning stage before the actual combat. What Vegas does is simplify these elements without diluting them. For instance, with the weapons, your choice of wepons is obviously as important was it was in Ravenshield. However, the stats are stripped to the bare minimum so that a novice can pick up the game and understand the weapon selection. And the pre-combat planning phase is replaced with an extreemly intuitive set of orders you can issue on the fly, which also fits the more frenzied, on-the-go combat featured in Vegas. The fact that it is a port from the XBox 360 means two things. One, that the graphics are incredible. The game is jaw-droppingly beautiful, but requires a pretty cutting-edge system to run. However, this is no hardcore PC shooter and it was simplified for the 360, as stated above. However, this doesn't get in the way very often. It's just that if you want a sharper learning curve and a more realistic experience, Ravenshield is your best bet. I happen to love both games.

My only complaint is the infrequent checkpoints, and in story mode, you'll find yourself replaying the same gunfight 5-6 times. However, the addition of coop play and the shallow learning curve make this an initially fun game to pick up and play with a surprising depth once you get familiar with the new tactical on-the-go style of strategy.

AWESOME TACTICAL SHOOTER IN FIRST WORLD

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: February 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Just great! This is a very fun game if you liked GRAW or the SWAT games. The high tech is done very well and the controls are fairly easy to pick up.

I like that this game is done in a first world location, most tacticals are done in 2nd or 3rd world locations only. For me this game has a LOT of replayability on the single-player side, that's all I play is the single player modes. Realistic weapon sounds are great too, AI is decent and the missions are challenging, some I had to try several different ways to get past them and luck is a part of it as well.

One thing I didn't like was the inability to order your team to positions just using the map alone, like you can do in GRAW, this brings a measure of overall strategy that was nice in GRAW(still own this one and still have not finished it, replayability is great on this one too). I also think a 4 man team would be a better way to go as well, like GRAW.

I lived in Vegas for a time and this was a pretty good representation of it, the "Spire" level or Stratosphere in real life was just awesome! Although the interior is not the same as the real Stratosphere, but it really feels like you are doing combat in a real casino setting, which is a great novelty. I also liked the outdoor level that looked just like the Fremont Street LED light show, cool!

Tragically Flawed.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Rainbow Six: Vegas represents an evolutionary step forward for tactical shooters. The "context-sensitive" controls currently being pioneered by this game as well as Gears of War is, in my opinion, the next step for first-person shooters. The added elements of strategy and realism e.g. covering fire and using cover, make the tactics of even the original greats such as Counter-Strike silly by comparison.
That being said; however, this particular game suffers from some a few major issues that preclude it from being lauded as "the best tactical-shooter" to come. These problems all stem from one serious development mistake - this game was developed for the XBox 360 and later "ported" to the PC. Bad move. I am not a "console-hater" or a snob, but this is a serious mistake that is being made by more and more developers/producers lately. PC gamers don't pay hundred or thousands more(than a console gamer) to play Xbox quality games. We want the best! Multi-platform games should be designed for the PC and than "scaled-down" for consoles where necessary. The clunky interface/menus and crudely done online matchmaking system are perfect examples of the pitfalls of console to PC ports. Do I even have to mention the save-game system? Ubisoft should know better.
In the end, the game is still fun in both single and multi-player modes. It is just disappointing to see a game with such potential held back by a backwards development strategy.

Should Be Called Rainblow Sux Mexico

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: October 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I am a fan of the Rainbow Six series, and this game falls way short. If you want this game, get the 360 version. Its a direct port from the 360, but its very disappointing on the pc.

Gameplay: You play forever in the streets of Mexico. This game should be called Mexico, because you play the first 2 hours there. Controls are basically the same as other games, but there is no jumping. What were they thinking. You can't jump over stuff, without being pressed against it first. This really took away from gameplay for me.

Graphics: Vegas on the 360 is very impressive, but on the pc its not. It sux even with with my 8600GTS overclocked. There is no AA option, and the game looks very dark. After you get in Vegas it looks better, but all the Mexico stuff just doesn't look good.

Don't bother getting this game because its not worth the $$$. Get one of the older ones instead. Ubisoft laid an egg with this 360 port.

Best FPS since Far Cry

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: March 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game has heavy duty system requirements (I had to dial down all video options to play it on my 3 1/2 yr old 2.8ghz HP with an Nvidia 6200), but if you can manage it, it's worth the money. The squad command controls are easy to work with, and unlike the earlier Rainbow Six games, no planning is required (or possible). The only hitch was that some of the printed instructions were erroneous, but the in-game instructions were correct. I found the story line adequate, the acting very good, and the environment and goals interesting and challenging. Best FPS since Far Cry, in my opinion, and that includes Half Life2, Call of Duty2, the FEAR's and Prey.

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