Rainbow Six: Vegas 2

You may recall that I purchased Rainbow Six: Vegas a while back when it was released as a platinum hit (i.e. budget title). I thought R6:V was a great game and since then, I've been keeping an eye out and hoping that R6:V2 would be released as a platinum hit as well. Unfortunately, it never was so I never bought the sequel until recently when I saw it for sale second hand.

Although the game is called Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, at times, it feels more like Rainbow Six: Vegas 1.5. Having just completed the singleplayer campaign, the only difference that I could tell was that you could now sprint over short distances. Other than this, pretty much everything else feels the same.

Having said that, the gameplay has stood the test of time and its still an awesome experience to setup your elite anti-terrorist squad and then breach and clear a room of tangos. Which isn't to say that I don't have any gripes although in the games defence, my gripes aren't really the fault of the game per se.

All of my gripes arise basically from the fact that the game still isn't a platinum hit. You see, believe it or not, this actually makes a big difference. How? Let me explain.

The advantage of the first R6:V being on budget was that there were loads of new players as lots of people took advantage of the budget price point to buy the game. This led to 2 big differences.

Firstly, in coop gameplay. With the first R6:V, when I jumped online to play coop, there were tons of games for me to choose from and it was pretty easy to find a coop game to play. For R6:V2, although I've tried several times, I haven't really had a chance to play coop yet which is a real shame because, as with R6:V, this game could really shine in a coop environment.

The second big difference is in multiplayer. With the first R6:V, when I jumped online, there were loads of games which had several noobs in the lobby (admittedly, of which I was one). This meant that there was a chance of a competitive game. At the moment, I can imagine myself getting slaughtered by all the hardcore experienced fans who are still playing this game a year after release and whom are all intimately familiar with the game and the maps.

Which brings me onto my third gripe. I deliberately used the word "imagine" in the para above because I haven't actually played online yet. When I jumped online to play a game of multiplayer, there were quite a few lobbies to choose from - the problem was that the ping times were all red. In other words, not only would I have to play against people who are experienced with the game, I would also have to do it while suffering major lag.

At this point, I just thought "fuggedaboutit" and logged out.