Rainbow Six Vegas (RSV) starts out strong and puts you right in the fire. You begin in Mexico trying to bring a criminal to justice. Sounds simple enough until you begin to go through the number of political twists and turns that ultimately take to the streets of Vegas. Because RSV's level design mostly takes place in Vegas, the environments brim with gobs of interactivity. Slot machines, neon lights, and tons of glass windows add flair to an otherwise ordinary gunfight. Nothing feels better than hiding behind a roulette table and tossing frag grenades at the "tangos" hiding behind the bar. Although RSV's storyline and narrative is strong enough to help you advance the plot, there are a couple of gameplay issues that can mar the experience. In ye' olden console days of yore, checkpoints (or savepoints) were rare in many action games and RSV has rediscovered this tradition and decided to bring it to modern gaming as a reflection of what gamers suffered from years ago. It's unfortunate that these issues with checkpoints occur in most of the games missions. With no ability to run and checkpoints separated miles apart, the player may feel cheated after finishing RSV's brief single-player campaign. Seasoned vets of tactical FPS games will briefly fly through the game and find themselves with a dissatisfied ending. Throughout the game, RSV's balancing act of the game's difficulty is a constant battle of replaying long winded stages.
In addition, some parts of RSV have bugs that haven't been addressed even as of this writing. Imagine reaching near the end game only to trigger a scripted event and not being able to progress after the event.
Sometimes level-of-detail problem causes friendly character models to be temporarily stuck in their non-textured models. On occasion, the high-detail texture and geometry will load in while the person has started talking to you.
On multiplayer, RSV's hide-and-shoot game mechanics work well and the experience can be satisfying when flashbangs and snake cams play a strong part of it. While Attack and Defend, Team Sharpshooter, Team Survival, and Retrieval are all variations of Deathmatch and Capture The Flag. RSV's real savior of multiplayer is the Cooperative Campaign. The difference in having three friends approaching three different attack points instead of three AIs going through a single door changes the experience. Just imagine you and your friends rapelling while breaking through the glass door and clearing each enemy in seconds.
Overall, RSV is not without its flaws. Taken individually, these flaws are minor, but the small problems add up to noticeably affect the overall quality of the game. Fortunately, RSV's multiplayer co-op mode plays as a savior despite these flaws.
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