As leader of the Rainbow team it is essential that every situation be read carefully, to fulfill the primary objective of staying alive. The health system has been changed in Vegas, there are no health packs. Instead of losing life, if the player is hit their vision starts to get blurry through to heavy exposure resulting in a near-complete blackout. Vegas is a first-person but seamlessly integrates third-person moments. The third-person elements are used primarily for instances when taking cover, whilst tracking down a wall with the use of the L1 button will zoom the camera out enabling the player to view what's round the corner and execute a perfect kill. Likewise when crouching behind boxes a view over the top is visible. At moments like these you can employ a blind fire technique to slow down on-rushing bad guys. Deploying squad mates has been made simple by aiming to the required waypoint and tapping a button they will go to the location but are smart enough not to run out into the fire and will take cover nearby. As pointed out earlier, tactics are essential and Vegas gives the player a fair amount of control on how to approach situations, for example there are many time where a room will need to be rushed and enemies eliminated. These circumstances will usually provide the option of crashing in through the roof, down the side of the building or taking the approach via the stairs. All equally effective and more dependent on how daring you are feeling. It has been stated that the AI of enemies has been greatly increased in this outing, although they are difficult to eliminate and can be deadly accurate, there is not the feeling that they are hunting you down as in For the most part they are satisfied with waiting for you to reveal yourself. Foes do in fact have some moments of sheer ineptitude, for example, at a later stage you arrive at a door to use the snake cam. The problem? The door has a glass window and you can clearly see the bad guy looking straight at you, have no fear though as he won't move an inch even when standing right next to the door.

There are a whole host of game modes to get your teeth stuck into when playing singleplayer, such as campaign and terrorist hunt. These are fairly self-explanatory. Then there are the modes, and you can revel in co-op with a friend either or off. There are options for LAN play and then the goodie bag that is the Playstation Network play. On the network there is the option to customise your online persona with goes by the not so catchy name of PEC (Persistent Elite Creation) in much the same way to with more games accumulated at a higher rank unlocking weapons and outfits. Vegas comes with the usual online game modes with the following names, deep breath: Attack and Defend, Team Sharpshooter, Team Survival, Retrieval, Survival, Sharpshooter, Assassination mode and finally Total Conquest. All the modes you could ever need, but for me this is the one area where this game really disappoints, not in the gameplay itself but in the lack of numbers. All my attempts online have been a frustrating experience, opting for a normal evening time on the more popular Sharpshooter mode, produced a Mary Celeste moment - where was everyone? Searching through all the rooms aching for some was fruitless, being turned away with them all being empty. In the rooms where a few people were congregating the game host seemed to have gone off for a couple of beers. It became quite normal to spend 10 minutes in rooms to only leave when the host did not initiate the start of the game. At first I put this down to it being a new game and people taking a while to venture online but after the second week when only a handful more people were visible I came to the conclusion that something is most definitely wrong. Vegas has all the options and settings you could wish for, indeed it has given me one of the first opportunities to try out my headset, this again wasn't a pleasant experience with large numbers waiting in the rooms. There was someone in particular taking great pleasure in burping down the headset and other noises that I would not like to comment on. Other pleasing occasions involved a 13 year old American kid telling me how he was going to 'Whip my ass', unfortunately I could not dish out a beating as the team mode I was hoping for only consisted of me and the irritating teen.

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To summarise, Vegas is very good, the only drawback coming from the slightly short singleplayer campaign which can be dispatched in about 8-10 hours. The short campaign should somewhat be compensated by the various online modes, if only there were the people around to play against. I'm sure as time progresses this side of the game will improve, for all it needs is numbers and when I did manage to play the experience was seamless and very enjoyable. Graphics and gameplay are realistic with the exception of shooting enemies only to watch them fall like a puppet that's had its strings cut. Bodies littering the battle scene would have added a certain realism instead of the old school fade out with gun left as tombstone. There are a few moments that seem to lack a bit of intellect, most noticeably when having to protect a member of staff while they are performing a task when surely they would fire back rather than stand there asking for a bullet to the head. Minor niggles come in the form of annoying throughout the casino environments and the squad wouldn't be complete without the token English "bloke" with the 'alright guv'nor' accent, he could give Don Cheadle a run for his money in Ocean's Eleven he is that good. Vegas is a superior, action-packed tactical shooter with endless battles; in the closing credits a newsreader states a rough 600 body count, this is probably accurate and while your squad will have to take a lot of credit this does not mean that you'll not get your fair share of kills. To conclude, many bad things have happened in Vegas. Most noticeably perhaps when the cast and crew of Showgirls turned up, if only Rainbow Six had been around, what a better place the world might be.

87%

By Tom Carpenter