Spontaneous Sunday: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas

For this week's Spontaneous Sunday, I have played Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas (2006, Ubisoft, Xbox 360).

"Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas is the sixth game in the Rainbow Six series of video games. It was released for the Xbox 360 on November 21, 2006. The game's storyline follows a new Rainbow team that is dispatched to Las Vegas, Nevada to defeat international terrorist Irena Morales and her army of mercenaries that is repeatedly attacking key locations in the city."

- Wikipedia on Rainbow Six Vegas

What do I expect?

This is the first and only Tom Clancy game that I have played. As a complete beginner to the franchise, I'm going in somewhat blind, though I have seen and read quite a bit about the franchise. I expect it to be a first-person shooter with tactical or strategic elements and perhaps several approaches to missions and different paths through levels.

I expect that the game's Las Vegas setting will allow for some pretty impressive environments and set-pieces. While conducting research on game environments for one of my assignments last semester, I read a book that contained a case-study about the level design of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and it gave an in depth analysis of how much consideration went into one of the levels in the game, so I expect that Rainbow Six Vegas will also have some high-quality level design.

I expect the game to have quite a serious tone and story. I also expect that it may have some stealth elements to it.

First Impressions - What do I think of the game in its first few minutes?

The game begins with a start screen of the game's logo and the camera sweeping around above Las Vegas' skyline, accompanied by serious and tense music. Left idle for a minute or so, a demo/ cinematics plays showing cutscene-style firefights, gameplay and some of the game's characters. This video is pretty dramatic and gives me high hopes for the game and an idea of what to expect.

Shot from the demo cinematic

The front end menu is simple and effective, if a bit unadventurous. I started a new game and chose normal difficulty. The first level actually takes place in Mexico rather than Vegas and begins with the player character in a helicopter en-route to a mission site while being briefed for the mission. My first thought was that the graphics are better than I expected from a game that is eleven years old. Arriving at the drop-off point, my character zip lined down into a back street and the action began. My first objective is to regroup with my team, and the game began to cover the basics of taking cover, shooting from cover, flanking enemies and so on. I realised at this point that taking cover and tactical movement would be a big focus of the gameplay - which makes sense, as its a realistic shooter.

Start of level 1, before being dropped into action.

I also noticed that the environments also look really good for a 2006 game. Things such as dust particle effects, warm lighting, detail objects and presence of ambient audio and a distant radio playing Mexican music all added to the environments authenticity. This first level does a good job of introducing the main gameplay systems by offering lots of cover, different routes to take and opportunities to try out silenced weapons and the "snake cam", a small camera used to see under doors.

Introduction to basic cover mechanics.

The Snake Cam allows you see under doors and plan your attack.

It wasn't long before I had rendezvoused with my squad on the roof of a church and began learning how to give them commands such as moving around, following or holding position and interacting with things. My squad and I reached a train-yard, took out some enemies then rappelled into a lower level and the next level began.

The AI team mates are actually very useful.

Overall it was a good start to the game. The early game visuals and environment were nice, and the mechanics were well-introduced. The only negatives that I picked up on is that there is no sprint or jump ability which makes movement feel a bit wooden, and the filter applied to the screen when your health is low makes the screen look like it has motion blur and isn't very easy on the eye. 

What do I like about the game? What does it do well?

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas has a lot going for it and, in many ways, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the graphics and the variety and depth of the mechanics. I can imagine that, upon its release in 2006, the game will have been very well received.

A casino is a very interesting setting for an FPS game.

The game's graphics are definitely one of its strongest features. The characters, weapons, vehicles and environments all look very realistic for a game from 2006 - they may be the best graphics I've seen in a game of this age. With the game being primarily set in Las Vegas, there's also a lot of interesting sights to see. I've never seen a casino environment in an FPS before and it works really well, with brightly lit and colourful casino floors aswell as vaults and back corridors. The environments also feature lots of destructible objects and glass to shatter which adds an even greater sense of chaos to the already-hectic gameplay.

The camera switches seamlessly from 1st to 3rd person in cover.

The gameplay is also pretty solid and theres a lot of quite interesting mechanics at work. The squad control system is a particularly strong mechanic and is somewhat similar to the system in Brothers In Arms: Road To Hill 30 (reviewed a couple of Sundays ago), but Rainbow Six Vegas pulls it off better.

You can have your squad follow you or move of their own accord, take cover, attack in different ways and breach doors and they always act well to what you need them to do. Squad control systems can often be awkward and annoying to use, and AI team mates can sometimes be liabilities rather than helpful, but this is not the case in Rainbow Six Vegas. This feature, along with the opportunity to approach and navigate areas in different ways, also adds something of a tactical element to the game that helps to set it apart from other similar games. Other strong mechanics include rappelling and the "snake cam".

The level design is another positive point, and its clear that the designers have put a lot of consideration into the levels so that they play well to the game's core mechanics and offer a lot of choice in terms of routes and play styles. You can use a tactical map that shows the level's layout so you can choose which routes to take, and see enemy and ally positions and interactable objects and use this information to inform your choices in the game.

Another good feature is the variety of weapons and equipment at your disposal, and the different opportunities that these provide. You have access to a wide range of guns including assault rifles, snipers and machine guns and you can customise them with attachments. You also get gear such as grenades, breaching charges and flash bangs that add even more variety to the gameplay and allows you to switch up your play style.

The Outfitting menu allows you to choose weapons and gear.

What do I not like?

For all its positive points, Rainbow Six Vegas is not without its downsides. Firstly, theres a few things that lead me to believe that the game lacks replay value. The missions offer only the main, critical-path objectives. With no bonus objectives or collectables hidden around the levels, there will be little to motivate the player to replay the level. The missions don't have scores or any ending stats to speak of. If there was a score system or even a simple "Gold, Silver, Bronze" performance grade, this would add a lot of replay value. Also, some of the levels are very big with lots of offshoot rooms and little areas that would be perfect for a hidden item but instead feel sadly like wasted space.

Another downside is that the game doesn't do enough to ground its story or the motivation behind the action that occurs. Aside from some dialogue that occurs before and sometimes during the missions, its hard to tell what the overall reason for the characters being there is. Without a good idea of whats going on in the story, the game loses a bit of its impact. This problem could be solved with the simple addition of a short paragraph on the pause menu that allows the player to quickly check the back story of the mission.

Theres also the rather minor issue of the lack of a sprint or jump ability, which makes the player character feel a little bit clunky and powerless. Finally, the inventory system could probably be better, as you have to hold buttons and select with the directional pad to change to your secondary weapon or change your equipped grenade, which, in the heat of battle, can be distracting.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas is really quite a high quality game. It offers some really good graphics and environments, interesting mechanics and gameplay possibilities, AI team members that are actually useful, varied weapons and a healthy degree of tactical choice. The lack of replay value and story establishment does take something away though and the game feels like it has a very slight lack of substance. Nevertheless, the positives outweigh the negatives to make this a good game.