Rainbow Six Vegas - Holy Shite

I have just recently graced my shelves with a copy of Rainbow Six Vegas for a wopping 54.95 used at gamestop with my good ol' pal Ian. I've played the demo probably a good 10-15 times before buying this game and i was very impressed with just the demo alone. I had just gotten my pay check for the first week of work so i decided to treat myself to a gift.

Initially i knew this game was going to be great but actually owning makes it that much better. There are alot of improvements that this game has made that will hopefully be building blocks for future first person shooters. First thing is the remarkable cover system. Unlike Gears Of War this game uses the left trigger as its engage and disengage cover system. At first this had felt awkward because of the transition from Gears to this, Gears of course assumes third person action shooter while Rainbow Six is a firstperson shooter. What rocks about the cover system is that when you hit a wall or a car or any random debris you hop out of first person and into third. This gives you a layout of the area behind you and around you. A reticle comes up that looks like a squished plus sign.

The reticle is key for dead on shooting. With your character safely in cover you can line up the shots by moving the cursor over the target and when you pop out you will have the perfect shot. Also in third person if you inclick the right analog stick you can prepare a scoped shot. Say for instance you have a terrorist up on a bridge about 100 yards away and you have a really nice 12x scoped sniper rifle. Well if you inclick that analog stick and pop out of cover you'll have him directly in yer sights then its just a matter of getting it nice and pretty over his head and pop.

Now back to the cover system because thats probably the best feature of the entire game. Aside from a couple of little treats that ubi put in the game for some kick ass action sequences. The cover system is a really fluid and smooth coversystem. Unlike Gears, and i'm not bashing Gears because i will not deny that games awesomeness how ever Gears was not without fault. Now here is a basic overview/comparison of the two games cover systems. For Gears the player can engage covering manuevers by holding down the A button which either sticks the character to a piece of cover or begins a action handheld chase camera sequence where when the character makes contact with any structure he will stick to it. Now the sticking is key to this definition of cover. Since the character his now stuck on the wall it leaves him open to use his weapons and pop in and out of cover by using the left trigger. This can at some times be a pain when you have a person coming at you from the front, because you are stuck to cover it sometimes gets a bit chaotic trying to move out of it. There is also a bit of a delay of action that the character experiences when getting off the cover.

The way Rainbow Six succeeds in this sense is the use of a very fluid and seamless cover system by the use of the left trigger. The characters stays in cover as long as his/her finger holds down the trigger button, this allows a real time response where the character is given a seemless transition between cover and movement. Also Rainbow Six has a very simple but yet very impressive team tactic to it. The player is able to command 2 fellow soldiers while in battle by using the A button they can call out locations that they want the 2 to go. This can prove helpful when slowly crawling up a terrorist infested street or building.
And FINALLY the AI in this game is actually good. It's not as amazing as some of the games i've played but it definitely stands out. Over all i think this game deserves a high 9 like it got. Definately a must own if you are a 360 gamer and a first person shooter lover.

With games like this coming out i find it almost impossible for halo to compete if it doesnt offer a cover system. And bullocks to that stupid shield bullshite.

Cheers!

-alex