Sin City is about to get a wake up call, but that's ok because I've been up all night playing Rainbow Six Vegas!
The overall game play of Vegas focuses mainly on the Team Aspect, which includes giving orders (whether it be using The Controller or the Xbox 360 headset using "voice recognition") to do things like breach doors, repel down building sides or to change the rules of enemy engagement for stealth or direct assault purposes. The game follows it's "First Person Shooter" genre, however the camera will move into third person while into cover which is quite the refreshing first person break. There isn't much of a health system in this game when you are shot your sight gets fuzzy and makes it difficult to see, but this goes away after a bit. If shot again while in this state of disoriented sight, the symptoms will get worse, making to almost impossible to make your way out of fire. If shot again after this last state, you are dead. The environments in this game are excellent to say the least. With proper lighting use, shadows, and great looking environments .
The sounds of the game impressed me. When on multiplayer or on single player issuing commands using the headset your players mouth moves along with the speech. Many guns can be equipped with silencers, but each gun varies in level of silence, a silenced assault rifle with be obviously louder than a silenced sub machine gun. The graphics are also superb, and this is coming from someone who plays on a 13-inch tube TV. So for those of you playing in nice, crisp HD, prepare to be blown away.The AI of this game surprised me with its keen sense of awareness and, sight distance. For example: I was in the Mexico mission and I spotted a hostile. I thought I would move back a lot to a point in which I figured was too far for him to see me, I got into cover and popped up to line up my shot. It wasn't more than one second out of cover when I heard yelling followed by shots by the same hostile I had set out to kill. This makes it hard to be stealthy at times, which can take away from the atmosphere of the game. However there have been times when an enemy would be in cover yet being in clear line of my fire.
Single player isn't the end to this wonderful experience however. With one little Ethernet cable and an Xbox Live gold membership you can be on your way to excellent multiplayer. Multiplayer scenarios include, an attack and defend match, Team Sharpshooter a.k.a Team death match, a Co Op mode and plenty more. If you are one of the people who have bought an Xbox Live Vision Camera, you can actually take a picture of your face and have it overlaid onto you online character (which also gives you an nice 20 point achievement). Your online character also has a wide window for customization. With more experience you can go up in ranks which unlocks more outfits you can slap on your character to fully express your online persona.
So if your ready for the next gen of console shooters, or have already played through the Gears Of War campaign and are looking for something just as good, I highly recommend Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas.