Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas (X360) (gamespy)

- gamespy -

The mix of epic sets, over-the-top action and great looks of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas make Sin City the perfect place for the triumphant return of the Rainbows. Pretend that Black Arrow and Lockdown never happened and you can be a Rainbow Six fan with pride once more. The multiplayer and single-player games both shine for numerous reasons, but the short form is this: Be ready to put down Gears of War for something a bit more... mature.

The two new stars of the show need to be introduced: Vegas and the cover system. Vegas is the setting for most of your multiplayer and single-player time, and it looks perfect. Not just because you can look down from pre-mission helicopter flybys and easily pick out almost any building on the strip -- hell, you can all but pick out your favorite buffet -- but also because it feels very real. Fighting down a major street has tourists flinging themselves out of the way of bullets. When you hit a slot machine, coins come jingling out. But when you have a firefight on the floor of a casino, the mission will probably also include trips to an office, a vault, or even employee restrooms. It adds immensely to the sensation of "being there" to actually have to fight through the back-end parts of the Strip. Vegas, divided into individual cells of fictional casinos, feels as real and alive as anything else in the game.

The cover system operates a lot more smoothly than Gears of War's, which is the only real comparison available (kill.switch really isn't in the same league). Unlike Gears, where toggling into cover mode will leave you grabbing cover when you might want to be running, Vegas's cover mechanic is active. Hold down the left trigger and you'll shimmy to whatever cover you can use, making it easy to shoot over or around the box, car, or corner you've put yourself behind. Firing blindly exposes you less, but the enemy AI doesn't care enough to put its head down -- so use blind fire to intimidate live opponents.

The real genius of these two new features is how well they share the stage with each other and the core game system. Rainbow Six has always been about lethal combat, and the way real people survive gunfire is to grab cover and stay behind it. Now you can do that, and thanks to the setting, it feels very natural. I never got the feeling that a crate or a gambling table existed because a level designer thought it would help balance the map, even when that was clearly the case. Thank Vegas -- it's a city where nearly every square inch is filled. Backstage areas are always full of shipments for shows and casinos, the streets never empty out for "sleep" like other cities do, and casino floors are full of gambling mechanics and glitz. Just as the cover system feels natural thanks to the new setting, the new setting rewards clever use of the cover system.

It's unfortunate that the game kicks off in Mexico, despite being a familiar place for fans of that other Clancy team shooter GRAW. What feels natural in Vegas seems a bit contrived in Mexico (and the other stage not set in Vegas), so the mission suffers from a lot of people running around spouting exposition. I didn't care who was who by the end of the Mexico stage, or the end of the game, so hopefully the next Rainbow Six will focus more on its storytelling or just give up that ghost and focus on making every level a winner.

Other than Mexico, the single-player is one of the most rewarding solo games on the 360. It'll be a lot easier if you decide to play co-op, but even then you should be ready for a fight. Since you can heal your teammates from the brink of death but your own death sends you to an immediate reload screen, single-player demands that you use your squad mates to take the risks. "Risks" meaning things like entering a room, entering a hallway, moving across a room -- anything, really. I wouldn't go anywhere without sending my squad ahead to see if they made it through alive. It sounds frustrating, but the checkpoints are fairly generous, and what it comes down to is a tactical exercise followed by a firearms drill.

Whether on stealthy or aggressive, you can count on your teammates to smartly grab cover, take the shots they're allowed, and do their best to survive and win. Your success depends on putting yourself and your teammates into positions where you can win against numerically superior forces who have already set up positions -- sort of like an elite squad of counter-terrorists would have to. When you're just between checkpoints and dash down a hallway to catch a chestful of shotgun as you clear a corner, it's frustrating, but when you finally find the solution to one of the massive set-piece fights, it's sweeter than anything else out there.

It isn't explicitly said, but the game breaks down into two types of hallway encounters. There are quick one-offs, where you bump into a guy or two, kill them, and move down the hallway. Then there's the meat, where you face ridiculous numbers of enemies over multiple floors of a casino, access tunnels, a still-under-construction tower, or an elegant theater. The hallway encounters keep you on your toes, but the set-piece fights will demand your best and reward you with thrilling, over-the-top fun.

The multiplayer visuals take a bit of a hit compared to playing solo, apparently to allow for the scale of the maps with up to 16 people playing at a time. That noted, I can only tell you this: Get on Vegas Live, now. Beyond the sick customization options that let you pick clothes, camo patterns article by article, or put your own face on your character via the Xbox Live camera (with mixed results), everything I pointed out about the single-player is only more true in multiplayer. The cover mechanics, the lethal firearms, the satisfaction of working with a smart team, plus maps that couldn't get done in time for the single-player game and some returning classics make multiplayer golden. Grappling down a wall to burst in a window is less likely to let you surprise another player than an enemy, but it's even more rewarding when it works. I can't overstate how good the multiplayer is here, so just put down your chainsaw bayonet and trust me. Vegas baby, Vegas!