So, if you play the single-player campaign, get Bishop to a bad-ass level, you can then take all those upgrades online, without having to start from scratch. In Vegas 2 this has been taken into the campaign too, making it persistent across the entire game. Vegas 1 featured the PEC (Persistent Elite Creation) levelling up system in its multiplayer game modes. One good thing about it is you can join a mate who’s got a game in progress, with no need to start the level over. We’ll have to wait until we get our hands-on the main campaign, but let’s just say at this point we share those concerns.
Ubisoft’s decision to drop the co-op from four-players to two has drawn some criticism from battle-hardened Vegas fans, who feel the gameplay will be “dumbed down” as a result (the dev team has implemented a casual mode because they felt many people were threatened by the original Rainbow Six – but has made the realistic mode even harder). Perhaps the biggest change is the revamped co-op. It’s a nice addition, but isn’t going to set the world on fire. You can shoot, but your aiming will be all over the place. Sprinting doesn’t last very long, only a few seconds and is really only useful for going from one area of cover to another. Again, the AI knows this, and will continue to shoot you if they have that gun and you sprint behind a wall.Īh the sprint. The light machine gun has a rate of penetration that’s “insane” and can “probably shoot players through walls”. Speaking of shotguns, they’re now twice as fast as in the original Vegas, and “very dangerous for the player”. For example, if you see a bad guy who’s wearing a ballistics mask, you know they’re wielding a shotgun, and so you won’t want to get up close and personal. The team has also added some visual clues so that players know what kind of enemy they’re up against. The AI knows this, and will try and find better cover when they’re getting shot through a wicker basket. The type of cover is all important – a wall or a solid object will provide the best cover, and conversely a chair or table will be pretty much useless. The cover system, one of Rainbow Six’s unique features, has undergone somewhat of an overhaul. Philippe talked about leapfrogging, where one enemy will take cover and the other will provide covering fire. We’ve got a new sprint (left bumper on the Xbox 360 pad), better AI, two-player coop and a “more interesting story” which takes in some varied locales – the Nevada desert, Vegas convention centre, Indoor Rex Centre, a Strip Club and some of the seedier parts of town to name a few.Īccording to Philippe, some of the guys who worked on Assassin’s Creed, also a Ubisoft Montreal game, popped their heads around the wall and gave a helping hand with the presentation side of things. So now we’ve got a multiplayer mode that has graphics on par with the single-player game. Speaking to in an interview you can view elsewhere on the site, designer Philippe Therien told us that there is a feeling that Vegas 2 is Vegas: The Director’s Cut, or the game the team always wanted to make. The answer to the second question is more subjective.
Now, with that under its belt, the team was able to concentrate on new features and gameplay mechanics rather than get bogged down worrying about whether the game would work. With the original Vegas the team spent a lot of time getting to grips with the engine. The answer to the first question lies with the Unreal Engine 3, which the team used to build the first Vegas game and this one. One: how did they manage it? And two: is it a proper sequel or more like a director’s cut? Assuming the game doesn’t slip, we’re looking at a turnaround under a year-and-a-half. On the face of it Ubisoft Montreal has developed Vegas 2 very quickly. With this in mind, we sprinted (that’ll make sense later) towards Ubisoft HQ to get some serious hands-on time with Rainbow Six Vegas 2’s multiplayer, and found out what the score is. You know what I’m talking about: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.Īnd so, with the bar raised, Ubisoft Montreal has quite a job on its hands developing a sequel to the acclaimed Vegas that’s not only a step forward for the series, but stands out as a shining light for the genre. But since then the first-person military shooter bar has very much been raised. We loved Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas so much so that our esteemed leader Tom gave it nine-out-of-10 when it was released back in December 2006. For plenty of in-game footage of the multiplayer mode in action, head over to our Rainbow Six Vegas 2 video preview, where Philippe Therien from Ubisoft Montreal talks about Vegas 2’s key features.