Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2

In the gaming world, it is generally accepted that by strapping the name "Tom Clancy" to a game, it's a licence for unparallelled, realistic gun combat. This is, however, completely untrue. The licence granted by strapping the name "Tom Clancy" to a game is the licence to punish gamers with face-bendingly difficult fire fights. No human being can ever be "good" at a Tom Clancy game, just occasionally lucky enough to finish a mission, or win an online scuffle.

I know this, because in the past I've dabbled with GRAW, Rainbow Six 3, the original Vegas and consequently, anger management. It would appear this that this time, Ubisoft has finally noticed the extensive bill from people made mentally ill by being completely unable to get past the third level of any Tom Clancy game. As a result, Ubisoft's CEO has decided to have a meeting with Tom Clancy only to kick him in the testicles and say "non!" (French for "no", apparently). This would seem to be the case, seeing as how I seriously doubt I've become a lot better at shooting games in general - mostly down to my aforementioned statement regarding possibility.

While on the original Vegas and Rainbow Six 3 I spent months getting no further than the third level - including a particularly embarrassing bout of repeatedly killed while entering the first room. I'd like to say I respected the vigorous challenge and realism of the games too much for me to get angry at them, but that wouldn't be true because I discovered how many different shades of purple the human face can turn while playing them.

When I played Vegas 2 for the first time, I felt that special chill down my spine that you only ever feel when you find out you have a stalker when it welcomed me back and rewarded me with a new helmet. Then I got all sensible and remembered I'd played Vegas 1, so the save game was on my hard drive, but also got embarrassed by the fact I only ever got up to third mission.

I'm happy to report that for a change it's possible to get used to entering a room full of angry men with guns and balaclavas, and therefore being able to shoot them before they turn your liver into a munitions crate. It's by no means easy, just more intuitive than ever before. While playing it late one night, I'd actually begun playing the game how Mr Clancy would want me to, by stalking around a room before entering, rather than running in, shooting my way into a hole and sitting there killing anyone who came near me. I mostly made this change to figure out the best way to enter a room and kill everyone silently after listening to them discuss their latest visit to the urologist. It's also partially down to the fact that the latter idea only ever works on games like Halo.

Graphically speaking, I think I'm right in saying Vegas 1 is a little better than Vegas 2, but I spent far too long shooting blood out of my eyes on Vegas 1 to give a fair comparison. But considering there was about a fortnight between announcement and launch, you'll surely agree it's impressive. That said, a lot people seem to get more joy from waiting for a game to come out rather than actually playing it, or at least that's the impression I get from most of the gamers I meet.

In fact, who cares about development times? That's one of the many facts that's about as interesting as golfing, along with the advertisement saying they used the Unreal engine. Just like everyone other FPS since August aside from COD4 and Halo 3.

Towards the end of the game, I figured out how Ubisoft managed to make Vegas 2 easier than the original. The truth is, occasionally the terrorists are about as aware of their surroundings as a dead pigeon. I lost count how many times I've tried shooting someone in the head with a silenced rifle, only to miss because they had to sneeze, then trying a few more times resulting in a wall covered in mysterious bullet holes in the wall behind my target with his friend claiming it was just him "breathing". Almost as frequently, I've managed to go into a room, stare an enemy in the face expecting him to have already pulled the trigger (as was the punishment for such stupidity in the past), but instead he was oblivious to the three heavily armed strangers in bright orange camouflage. So he died, I made damn sure of that.

It's hard to think of things to write about Vegas 2, other than it's more of the same Tom Clancy stuff, only re branded for human use, seeing as how the box pretty much agrees he Clancy and Ubisoft have been flogging the same basic principle for 10 years making minor tweaks to scam you out of another £40 every year or so. The only tweaks I noticed while playing the single player campaign, because I'm having trouble getting on Xbox Live with my Internet, was the addition of a "sprint" button and the radar being removed in favour of a "tactical scan" or "thermal scan" depending on the game's mood.

And I have a bone to pick with that. Rainbow Six games are supposed to be close combat, tactical, stealthy shooters, which has always separated them from others. Rather than being allowed to explore everywhere (and inevitably get lost), the game plays in a way that encourages you to finish the mission by filling you with a sense of pride an accomplishment. Considering you'll always be indoors and trying to make a little noise as possible, why the hell do we need a sprint button? For pretty much all of the game, the only use for it was to run away in a vein attempt to correct a stupid mistake and this never actually worked because Lord Clancy doesn't like cowards. The one time it's useful is right at the end of the game, when you have to dive in and out of cover around a tennis court while being shot at by a helicopter. And you also have to take it down with whatever rifle you happen to be holding.

No, seriously, that's exactly what happens. Considering you've just spent (if the story is anything to go by) the last day creeping around corridors and dark train stations, a one on one fight with a helicopter, a lá Die Hard 4, is about as practical and sensible as keeping a pet elephant as a secretary. I assure you, you will die a lot should you play this part, because not only do you have a helicopter and its Gatling gun hovering just in front of you, with an over-enthusiastic gunner, but you also have quite a constant stream of terrorists on foot shooting you from all sides too. This wouldn't be quite so bad if you could stay put behind a wall and keep popping out and killing terrorists as you please, but no. Once you piss everyone off adequately by refusing to die, the chopper starts firing missiles that only hurt you, due to the "friendly fire" rule. So, good luck with that part. That's the only way I got through it.

I mentioned the radar/tactical thermal scan thing and I'd quite like to have a word about that. Bollocks. Now I believe I need a few more to explain. I'm sure the idea of this is to add even more realism to the game, but as long as you can recover from a handful of bullets in the chest by curling up in a ball for a few seconds, realism will never magically come around. The tactical scan works, or rather doesn't work, by showing you an overhead scan, featuring you and your team as triangles, and terrorists as thermal dots. Or something, that's what it looked like to me. The reason this doesn't work is because it will only show the terrorists in the room with you... and they're usually the ones you already know about. The display lasts about 30 seconds, and you wont be allowed another one for about 10 minutes. That's the bit I don't understand. Why would someone equip an elite squad of... people... I don't know what their job title is other than "rainbow"... anyway, why would someone equip these people with a scanning device like this and only let them use it once every 10 minutes for thirty seconds? Who thought that was a good idea? Who?! There's also the small issue that you can't use it during missions without your team mates - not that I chose to do the mission alone, the game forced me - and the problem with this is that, as everyone who's played a Rainbow Six game (or any tactical shooter), is that the main use of team mates is to send them into a room and let you figure out where terrorists are by judging the trajectory of the bullets now embedded in your loyal friends' skulls. Without them, you need something extra, instead you loose the next best thing.

I wont say much about the abundance of Dodge cars in Vegas 2, because the advertising was more subtle than in the last game I played which seemed to be in partnership with Dodge. What I will say is that there seems to be an almost frightening amount of new options when playing online, but as I've said before, I didn't get a chance to try them out.

Aside from the ending, which seems to have been bolted on in a Scrapheap Challenge manner, Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is a very solid shooter and taught me to think before running into rooms and hoping for the best in the future when playing other shooters. I guess I could also carry this over into general life and stop blindly walking out in front of buses or into locked rooms, as this will probably benefit my health in a similar manner. The problem is that Vegas 2 is let down by an almost complete lack of new single player features, so they could have quite easily have just updated Vegas 1 with a downloadable patch with the new multiplayer content; like the extra content for Crackdown.