Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

I thought that I would give Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for the PC a spin, since I saw it come out on steam. Ratings for the game rate it mediocre, as Amazon users rate it 3.5/5, and Metacritic puts it in the mid 70s so far, with user opinions in the 60s.

The premise of the game so far–and I’ve only played through the first four missions–is that there are terrorists, and you must kill them. That’s it. It’s not a tactical shooter, has no real objectives, it’s just a spray and pray race through various environments. As a commenter on Amazon puts it, “the planning and team aspects of the game have been reduced or in some cases deleted. In previous titles you could command a team of up to eight operatives and then systematically plan your assault by assigning waypoints and goals utilizing a map layout of the mission. Now your team never consists of more than three members (including yourself) and you cannot plan your mission out. At all.”

The draw of the game is that you can look at ladders, doors, and ropes and indicate that you or your teammates should use them. Aside from that, there’s nothing interesting or novel. What’s worse, the FPS interface and controls are absolutely terrible. The view angle feels awkward, and the UI for switching and customizing weapons is slow. Also, in the windows port, alt-tabbing in and out of the game takes a full minute (on a Q6600, 8800GTS, 4GB ram; it’s not a bad machine), and loading maps is sluggish.

To it’s credit, as the above screenshot indicates, Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (RSV2?) is not a bad looking game, but it’s total lack of plot, tactics, and a usable control system make it a toss-and-return. Don’t buy this game, get Call of Duty 4 (COD4) instead–it’s a better modern warfare simulation.

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