 Review By: Jared Black |
Developer: | Ubisoft Montreal |
| Publisher: | Ubisoft | |
| Genre: | Squad-based FPS | |
| ESRB: | Mature | |
| # Of Players: | 1-2 (14 online) | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | PlayStation Network (online play), HDTV 720p, 1080i | |
| Buy Now: |   |
While the original implementation of P.E.C. in Lockdown was unbalanced and slanted towards advanced players, it’s been vastly improved here. Rather than turn characters with high experience points into unstoppable killing machines, it instead rewards players with new ranks and equipment to use. While this equipment definitely does improve a player’s chance of winning against lower-ranked opponents, it doesn’t go so far as to totally unbalance the game. So while there’s still probably some room for P.E.C. to improve in the next Rainbow Six title, I am very pleased with the progress shown here.
Aside from P.E.C., the online portion of Vegas continues the franchise’s reputation of providing a great and varied online experience. The online gameplay types are numerous, and broken up into Adversarial and Cooperative modes. Under Adversarial, there’s Attack and Defend (two teams fight over an objective), Team Sharpshooter (get the most kills), Team Survival (my personal favorite), Retrieval (retrieve canisters), Survival, Sharpshooter (death match essentially), Assassination (one team defends an NPC while the other tries to take him out), and finally Total Conquest (teams hold three Mobile Radar installations). Cooperative is less sweeping, but solid with both Co-Op Story and Terrorist Hunt modes.
Unfortunately, Rainbow Six: Vegas experiences some problems in its port to the PS3. The most glaring problem lies in the game’s support for 1080i. For some reason, if played in 1080i the overall visual quality is much worse than it is in 720p, with blurrier textures, artifacting, shimmering, etc. that literally made my eyes hurt. Since I’m not a developer I can only speculate on why this is, but my guess is that the art was drawn with 720p in mind originally (for Xbox 360) and not ported/coded properly for the higher resolution. HDTV owners (even those with 1080p TVs since this game doesn’t natively support it) will definitely want to manually set their PS3s to default to 720p as its highest resolution before playing the game, which can be a real hassle if switching between games frequently.
Beyond that, there are other glitches that may or may not be PS3 specific. For example, team pathfinding can occasionally get confused and fail to pick the best route. In one instance I stood on a ledge with my team in the room below, and instructed them to go through an open doorway into a hallway exiting the room. Instead of simply going through the door however, they instead went all the way around down a side corridor, looping back before eventually ending up in that spot. That being said, this is still the smartest A.I. I’ve seen in a Rainbow Six title to date. Collision detection is also hit or miss (literally), with the player able to walk directly through chairs, grates and other objects. I suspect that some of this is intentional to prevent potential problems with players getting stuck and whatnot (since objects in the environment are much more reactive than they’ve been in the past), but it’s still annoying.
Aside from that pesky 1080i issue, graphically Vegas is very nice. Ubisoft Montreal was able to squeeze a surprising amount of variety in the architecture and locations within the mostly Vegas setting, including things like a cavernous theater, world-famous Fremont St. (the one with the overhead canopy light show) and even a towering dam. It’s not quite the world-hopping experience past Rainbow Six titles have been, but I’m not complaining about it in the least. Casinos are also lit up like you’d expect them to be, and things are destroyed in a pretty realistic manner.
The audio is also solid. The voice actors do a good job in their limited roles, although most of the characters come across as limited stereotypes. I was particularly impressed with the game’s music however, which relies mostly on the ambient music found inside of each level. When it’s not coming from inside each level it feels appropriate though, in particular the “Wild West” feel of the opening level’s music. The developers also did a great job with the sound effects, with plenty of ambient casino noises, howling wind outdoors, and impressive muffled gunfire in relation to the player’s position.
Bottom Line:
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas is a nice revamp of a series that was in desperate need of an overhaul. The Vegas setting is surprisingly effective, the gameplay is as compelling as it has ever been (though not as strategic or deep as the original PC titles), and the online experience continues to be refined. There’s still work to be done before this series approaches the level of polish it did with Rainbow Six 3 on Xbox, but the team at Ubisoft is well on its way to reaching that plateau once again.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 8.7 |
Posted: 2007-08-20 09:33:51 PST