"How the Overlook Hotel might have been - with guns!?"
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas
PS3 version
Reviewed by Matt Adcock
The only good terrorist – is a dead terrorist… So if you’ve a PS3, now is the time to sign up for some terrorist extermination with Rainbow Six Vegas which takes what was one of the Xbox 360’s top shooters – packs in the additional content that they had to pay extra for – and hits the ground running. In a word ‘must-buy’, erm, damn it, that’s two words…
This is the real deal in terms of tactical run, gun and blow the enemy the hell away… Counter terrorist assault work looks the absolute business on the PS3. Vegas sparkles in neon light, supplemented by the high velocity muzzle flashes of the massive firepower being wielded by both the Rainbow 6 team and the many many cunning terrorist scumbags.
Logan Keller is your man (he’s the leader of the main three-man team which you control in the single player mode). Now I’ve played some FPS’s in my time, personal favourites include Black, Timesplitters 2 and Halo, but I’ve never really got into the Tom Clancy games. Ghost Recon was a passing fancy for me a couple of years back but after some great personal recommendations from trusted sources I just had to get Rainbow Six Vegas and boy am I glad I did!?
After a quick blast through dusty Mexico (which looks terrific in dusty shades) you trace the terrorists to the high rolling casinos of Vegas. And faster than a Britney Spears spur of the moment wedding you’ll find yourself knee deep in shell cases and dead bad guys as you traverse the gamblers paradise. It ends up in a full-scale assault on a James Bond Villian’s Lair-alike in hidden in a hydroelectric dam.
Now it’s all very well being a special unit commando armed to the hind teeth with shiny heavy assault weaponry (which you can customise with various options in both single and multi player modes) – but – what you really need to know about in this game is how to use cover. If you run into confrontation situations in Vegas, like some psyched up Rambo wannabe, you’ll be very dead, very soon. What you need to do is fight in a controlled and measured way, scouting out positions of cover, which you can dive behind when the hail of automatic gunfire comes your way. So it’s run, dive behind slot machine, pop head out, whip it back in as two baddies open up on my position from behind the craps table, reload my carbine (with extra capacity magazine), take deep breath and jump up targeting controlled bursts of hot leaden death at the two bogeys. They go down in crimson sprays of blood amidst the splinters of the casino’s décor. I move forward and signal to my two team mates to cover me as I slip my snakecam under the next door, using the motion sensitive SixAxis to scan the corridor ahead.
One nice touch is the ability to stay behind cover and just use your rifle to fire off a blind burst of gunfire which may or may not hit your target – but will cack them up a bit! Another cool feature is being able to rappel down the sides of buildings or out of helicopters – this changes the whole scenario in multi player mode because it means that trying to cover a stairwell could be futile if you enemy is flanking you by going out the window and abseiling down the wall! Most of the well-designed levels have areas that are accessible in many ways – this means you can try out various strategies and keeps you thinking about how you’re going to approach each mission.
There are two difficulty levels available - choose ‘normal’ and you’ll be able to take a couple of shots before collapsing in a shameful heap on the floor. If that’s not enough of a challenge then pick ‘realistic’ and you’ll be introduced to a life expectancy, which is one good shot away from the afterlife. These allow for you to break yourself in on ‘normal’ level before working up to an adrenalin tension overdose with ‘realistic’ – which kind of lives up to it’s name (he says having never actually been in a life and death high velocity gun battle) but you get the idea… You’ll die time and time again but you’ll also vow to not make the same mistake again and get back out there and kick their little terrorist asses!!
This is a big factor when playing cooperatively either split screen or over the PlayStation Network. I am working my way through story mode but once I discovered ‘terrorist hunt’ (which as the name suggests lets your team loose to hunt down some badass terrorists) – I found that I couldn't drag myself away... it is the most addictive multi player shooting game experience I’ve had the joy of playing!!
Damn – there’s lots more I could mention, like the way you can unlock cool new armour and outfits in order to play dress up in multi player mode, but I’m gonna leave a few things for you find out for yourself because this is a seriously highly recommended investment…
Darkmatters rating:
Overall ööööö – kill, kill, kill (pause to admire the scenery)
Darkmatters: H O M E
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