X3F @ WonderCon: Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 Hands-on
We were able to play a demo of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 for a bit while at the Ubisoft booth, and the time we spent with it felt good, and for that time it did feel like an improvement on the first game. The multiplayer mode that was available for us to play pitted the players at the four stations against a force of computer controlled terrorists several times the size of our team. Plus, there was an overall time limit as well as long and limited respawn times, all of which assured that you needed to be fast with your kills, but also careful. With the camera seamlessly transitioning between first and third person, the game never felt clunky or hard to aim, and even though the "blind fire" (ability to stick out your gun out from behind cover and fire) was used by way to many people way to often, the few games we managed to play tended to be fun, with the AI being relatively smart (in other words they weren't overly dumb).
As for the smaller things, there was no way to test any form of voice or lag, as the setup was local, but the feeling of sticking together as a team (especially in the gametype we played in the demo) was prevalent and important. The game never really felt as though we were in any kind of difficult enough position that you couldn't see what you needed to do and how to do it. Though the limits like the time limits as well as the long and limited respawns did actually add to the difficulty, when coupled with the co-operative nature of the gametype and the proximity of the teammate, the experience was much more fun than we had been expecting.
The Ubisoft booth was itself a bit more than was expected, as there was one of the special girl gamers hired by the company to promote all sorts of gaming events. She was from the Frag Dolls and went by the gaming handle of Brooklyn. She was playing before we got the chance to play ourselves, but we got to watch for a bit and boy, she was good at this game. Really good. Or maybe we were just that bad, as you readers can see, there were indeed children present, playing an M-Rated game. And playing badly we might add.
The game itself feels like the proper evolution of the series, which is good, considering it's going to be the last. And even if it's only "evolved" a few new adaptations, well that's fine, this series isn't out to grow new limbs and change drastically. The game feels like Vegas, and it should, just better. Whether it's campaign is up to snuff, or whether the multiplayer will stay intriguing past the twenty-minute mark remains to be seen, but for the time we spent with it, it was a blast.
