Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Sells Over 2 Million: A Review

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Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Sells Over 2 Million: A Review

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Tom Clancy must be worth a fortune. Not only does he have some major best sellers and multiple movies behind him, he's got his name attached to one of the best selling games of all time.
Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Vegas 2, a prequel/sequel to the first game, arrived on store shelves for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 March 18th (just in time for my birthday). And then they flew off the shelves. And back on, then off again.
To the tune of 2 million units shipped. That's a lot of cash.

Gamerankings.com, which aggregates the scores from tons of gaming review sites, seems to think so, at 83% for xbox and 81% for PS3.

Personally, however, it's just not quite there. The game is the same engine as the first one, which was amazing over a year ago and is becoming fairly commonplace now. So the graphics are slick, but there is still noticeable framerate lag in some areas (the action on screen literally slows down as there is too much going on).

The storyline is slightly better than the last game, though it is taking place before, during and after the events of the first one so it may not make a ton of sense if you haven't played it. Terrorists are attacking Las Vegas, hundreds of them, and you have to stop them.

You get to pick what your character looks like, customize their outfit and weapons and then roll out with your squad of two other players, or go online for some co-operative gameplay or head to head versus. I personally macked my guy out in official Canadian Forces armor, weapons and even camouflage colou. Thanks for adding that nice touch, Ubisoft!

You can unlock more guns, armor and equipment options the more you play, regardless of whether it's alone or online.

So the gameplay can be fast and furious, or slow paced and methodical until the moment you attack...unfortunately, stunningly stupid AI means your enemies will all run out the same door, one after another, leading to boring 'cheats' of standing in one place and shooting them as they all pile out.

Likewise, one of the most fun aspects of the game for me, playing the single player campaign online with 3 other people, has been removed in favor of two AI companions that will follow you. So I've been 'upgraded' from having two of my smart, competent friends to two idiots who don't know when to run away from a grenade? Thanks, Ubisoft!

There is also terrorist hunt, which involves running through the same maps as the versus modes with three friends and taking out random AI that spawn throughout the map. And when I say random, I'm not kidding. Spend 2 minutes setting up an ambush on a room with 3 friends, take out the terrorists with well placed shots and then getting shot in the back as three AI enemies 'randomly' appear out of nowhere behind you...well, you get the drift.

It seems that once again Ubisoft has skimped on the Quality Assurance portion of their game.

So while they did a couple small things really well, some of the major gameplay mechanics (such as framerate dips, idiotic AI, respawn issues) as well as a very awkward online lobby system keep it from being a great game, and in fact make it downright mediocre.