Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Review

I don't know what it is about Tom Clancy games, but they never really seem to live up to their hype. I'm personally a big fan of Tom Clancy novels, but really, he needs to pick a different game studio for his games because Ubisoft just seems to mess them up.

First off, I never really played the first Rainbow Six Vegas game, so I wasn't familiar with the storyline. When I put in Rainbow Six Vegas 2, I expected to somehow be brought up to speed on what was going on. I had no clue who the character is or what I was doing. The game didn't do much to enlighten me either. The single player campaign jumps straight into a tactical assault with little to no background information. That was the first clue I had that this wasn't going to be a good experience.

The next thing I did when starting the game was pause and try to setup my control scheme. I've played plenty of shooters and role playing games. Some games are really good at giving players customizable control schemes (Halo 3) and some are just horrible at it (Star Wars Republic Commandos). This game fell somewhere in the middle, closer to the horrible end. You think game studios would come up with some standard for control schemes for genres of games. Personally I feel all shooter games should have the same options available. That would eliminate control schemes from being a deterrent for some gamers. Even better would be if the console manufacturer would implement a set of standard schemes that players could set globally and have all their games pull from those settings.

RBSV2 does have some interesting features, such as the ability to use your Xbox Live vision camera to scan in your face and put that on your character. The game also gives immense customization options for how your character looks, what clothes and equipment they have available, and what weapons they carry. As good as those things are, they really don't make up for the lack of storytelling and the inept control schemes available. Overall I give this game a 5/10 score and will be placing my copy up on eBay very soon (Link to Auction (ends 4/11/08)).