SPRING BREAK IN VEGAS

Since I work for the NYC Board of Education, my spring break was from March 29th to April 11th. I took the time to get more acquainted with my Xbox 360 - namely, playing Rainbow 6: Vegas multiplayer with my friend (the host).

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For those of you interested in buying the game...


Rainbow 6 games in general have taken a drastic turn from the gameplay of the original game on PC's many years ago. The gameplay has morphed from a tactical strategy game, to an all out action/ urban warfare scenario where the only tactical illusions whatsoever is your character acting stealthy, and making gestures to following team members to do things like: blow open doors, flashbang rooms, etc.

In the old days of Rainbow 6, you’d nearly have to spend 10 minutes looking at a map, and plotting points/checkpoints for your assault teams and snipers – hoping that your plan would work and you’d be able to secure the map from the terrorists at randomly generated positions. Then, you’d have to control each team – ordering them to assault, hold or infiltrate stealthily while carefully manipulating your own character to give the rest of the team support.

Now Rainbow 6 has become more and more like Counterstrike where the focus of the game is surprise attacking the enemy - seeing him first - and spraying him with bullets.
This was inevitable since the 360 and PS3 consoles lack the keyboards and graphical user interfaces a PC can afford, but, a lot has been lost in the translation of the original Rainbow 6 to Rainbow 6:Vegas which some hardcore gamers may seriously miss.

The Singleplayer mode of the game basically has you hot footing it around - shooting holes in the now-generic named terrorists (for lack of a better term) who have taken hostages in a major Vegas Casino. The story is uninspired but it is held afloat by the in game cinematic style explanations from your teammates and comrades. In Singleplayer, you'll be taught all the controls and control modifiers as you progress from level to level so it is a good idea to play the singleplayer game before shifting to XboxLive's online play.

Basically you go up against wave after wave of "terrorists" - putting bullet after bullet into their similar looking bodies. This would be as mundane as the game BLACK except for the fact that #1 these guys bleed when you shoot them and #2 they use excessive profanity while they hide behind cover. And when I say profanity - I mean plenty of curses including the F*bomb.
The enemy is also pretty smart. They will fire at you excessively when you take cover and they will attempt to outflank you when possible. Because of their chatter, it feels like they are actually working together similar to the A.I. experienced in Half Life. Enemy snipers are especially lethal - able to score one hit kills.

If you go down, its game over and you must restart from the last saved checkpoint. If a teamate goes down, they will not die until about a minute later. You have a chance to save them by "healing" them - or you may send another teamate to heal them. (healing involves injecting them with medication).
The healing process looks a bit silly considering a simple injection is used to cure bulletwounds however, when you consider that even if you are shot, you can simply take cover to heal yourself, you realize that this isn't the most realistic experience. In the original Rainbow 6, 2 or 3 hits killed you deader than dead by comparison.

The multiplayer of the game basically has you and your teammates attacking or defending from a second set of teammates. In one such scenario, you must protect a briefcase from being stolen from a casino vault by killing the other team before they can get to it - defending the briefcase for upwards of 10 minutes. Team members pick spawn points and equipment, spawn and then begin shooting. If you are killed, you are out of the game for no more than 20 seconds.

The coolest thing about the XboxLive system is that you can customize a character (make them look just like you) and then play with that customized character in-game. There are plenty of combinations of faces, clothing and equiptment so it is highly unlikely to come across other players who resemble your creation.

Your character gains ACHIEVEMENTS from XboxLive for killing and gaining higher scores. In addition to the higher score, you also increase in rank - which coincidentally allows you to purchase better weapons or various types of tactical combat gear. This makes a big difference in that with better weapons and better armor, you are more likely to win more.

The only downside, of course, is internet cheating where it is highly likely that some players will level up by making deals with one another to kill each other - until their experience and rank increases to the maximum. They’ll have access to all the weapons, all the gear and you’ll… just get killed…a lot.


Furthermore, the weapons sometimes feel poorly balanced. Bullets do not take down enemies like you'd expect them to because the game's energy system allows a player to "recharge" his health simply by staying out of gunfire for a few moments. Despite the desire of the game to be "tactical" enemies continue to move at the same rate even if they've taken a bullet in the back.
I am dying for the day when realistic physical models are used that allow you to cripple other players with well placed gunshots.
It seems easier in the game than it should to hit an enemy from 100 yards away with 95% of the assault rifles and machine guns in the game. What is noticeable is that there is no “bullet drop” modeled into the game. That is, over whatever distance, gravity has no effect on bullets.

If that wasn't enough, GRENADES in the game are worse than ever - able to allow the person who throws them at you an easy, one-hit kill (not helped by the fact that they have a powerful, wide range and tend to kill everyone in the room with you). If not a grenade, C-4 explosives can be tossed into the room and detonated - with their considerably larger instant-kill blast radius. If not C-4, the enemy can spam you with TEAR GAS which blurs your vision to the point of practical blindness. If not tear gas, the enemy may hit you with a FLASHBANG which temporarily blinds you as if you'd held a flash camera to your face and snapped a photo (complete with the ghost image effect).


What I do like about Vegas, despite my disappointments with the weapons is the attention that has been paid to context sensitive controls. In the effort to make the game feel more “tactical”, your point of view will switch from 1st person perspective, to 3rd whenever a major change in your characters orientation occurs. For example, If you move close to a wall or object large enough to hide behind, you can tap a button to make your character hide behind it, which switches the view to 3rd person mode (allowing you to see around corners). Moving the analog stick allows your character to pop from behind cover just long enough to take some pot shots at the enemy. In fact, without peeking, you may also blind fire at the enemy by simply aiming the cursor at them and pressing the trigger. In the single player campaign, the context sensitive controls are extremely important as, you with your 2 other teammates must single handedly take down SCORES of enemies. For the most part, you spend a good deal of time hiding behind cover.

The Sound is good - containing a mixture of ambience and dynamic action music appropriate to the setting - especially in the casino where the roulette wheels, slot machines and other gambling devices make their typical noises. When an enemy spots you, the music shifts its tempo as an aural clue that you are about to be involved in a shootout.
I was surprised that the guns all sound relatively alike and are very difficult to tell apart (unlike Counterstrike).


The Graphics never cease to be impressive. Everything is interesting to look at from your character model to the huge areas you'll find yourself fighting in. The Xbox360 has a great draw distance and it takes games like this to fully demonstrate how powerful the system is. The only problem is, on a SDTV the graphics can be blurry as hell... this game cannot be fully realized on anything less than a 720P HDTV.

The artificial intelligence is not too shabby. The enemy does a pretty good job of aiming accurately at you and hitting you. If you stay from cover too long, you are likely to end up dead very quickly. Stick to cover and you’ll be fine most of the time. Unfortunately, the enemy A.I. has its drawbacks. It will try to outflank you, or get you in its sights for a clean kill, but too often, it makes the mistake of leaving its body exposed while you take long range shots and hit them with higher accuracy than they can muster.
Furthermore, the enemy is damn near deaf. If you have just had a major firefight upstairs or downstairs, the enemy will not seem to take any notice whatsoever. Perhaps this is because they have just been spawned into the map as you approach, but what’s weird is that the enemy is never doing “enemy stuff”. There are basically two types of enemy. The patrollers and those at attention. The patrollers will walk around patrolling a preset route (basically begging to be shot dead with a silenced weapon) and those standing at attention for the most part will simply stand still not doing anything at all.
Never mind that the “terrorists” are breaking into a Casino vault to rob it, or holding hostages with their twitchy trigger fingers…all of their actions are prescripted for certain cinematic style moments, but, if there is no script, they wont react until its too late and they’ve been clipped.

I was also disappointed that Vegas didn’t have a voice command interface like Rainbow 6: 3 for the XBOX. Instead of just being able to {say} commands to your computer controlled teammates, Vegas allows you to merely press the [A] button to contextually tell them what to do: open a door, breech a door, move over there, etc.

Overall, Vegas is a great multiplayer game if you have XBOX LIVE and have plenty of time to lend to leveling up your character. If not, the singleplayer campaign – which is decent at best - leaves a lot to be desired.