Rainbow Six: Vegas Looking Awesome!

Looks like a good holiday for Xbox 360 owners.

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IGN wrote:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/728/728368p1.html

August 25, 2006 - We saw a new level from Rainbow Six: Vegas at the
Games Convention in Leipzig today. The demo took place in Dante's
Casino, a fictional casino in Las Vegas. Dante's Casino is currently
under construction, so we didn't have to worry about any random
civilians -- just a bunch of pesky terrorists who had taken up
residence in the tower.

Our three-man team -- which consists of Logan Keller (the player
character), a demolitions/heavy weapons expert, and a recon
specialist/computer hacker -- flew in over the city in a helicopter
along with our communications and intel officer. The Dante's Casino
mission will take place late in the final game, so Vegas is pretty
messed up and smoking from all the terrorist attacks. While this part
of the game takes place completely in the in-game engine, the graphics
detail looks like what you would expect from a high-quality CG
cutscene. Rainbow Six: Vegas captures the City of Lights perfectly, and
the entire landscape is literally aglow with neon signage and hundreds
of thousands of radiant lights. The helicopter made its way to the
rooftop of the Dante, and the team threw out their black ropes and fast
ripped down to the surface of the casino.
The first section of the casino we saw focused on open area combat and
using the squad as an effective strike team. In R6: Vegas, you can set
your team to one of two modes: Assault (basically shoot everything that
moves) and Infiltrate (attach silencers to all weapons and only shoot
when they're shot at).

There is also a new feature in the series which allows you to take
cover by approaching any object and squeezing the left trigger. After
you take cover, you can blind fire around objects to suppress the
enemy, peak around corners and fire with better accuracy (at the
expense of being slightly more exposed), or throw grenades. Taking
cover is a good idea in Vegas. From what we saw from the demo it looks
like the difficulty of Rainbow Six has been amped up, so it's more like
old R6 games with one shot, one kill.

It looks like Rainbow Six: Vegas is really attempting to get back to
the feel of the classic Rainbow Six games, and the new health system
stays in line with that design philosophy. In Vegas, there are no
health points and no health bar. Instead, when you get shot your vision
gets muddy, and soon after you will fall down unconscious. If you go
down completely, it's mission over. However, if your teammates go down
during a mission, you can inject them with adrenaline and perk them
back up for the fight at hand.

Another new addition to the franchise is that you can now pick up the
dropped weapons of your fallen foes. Red Storm and Ubisoft was always
adamant that Special Ops anti-terrorist groups would never use weapons
other than the ones they carried with them, although I find it hard to
believe that in the middle of an intense fire fight that they wouldn't
use whatever means were at their disposal if they had run out of ammo
in their original gun. However, one thing we did notice in today's demo
is that you and your squad mates still can't jump. However, you and
your teammates can now climb over objects in the environment, so you
have more mobility around the gameworld.

Adding to the mobility of your team is also the ability to go vertical.
In certain areas in the levels you can attach ropes to the environment
and give rappel commands to your team using the d-pad. You can tell
them to go up, down, or breach a window, as well as make a quick
vertical drop using the fast rope command. As team leader, you can also
pull a Batman move and rappel inverted to look through the tops of
windows.

The build we saw today looks and runs great with only minor choppiness
in heavy action scenes. Of course, it was still unoptimized, pre-beta
code, so some glitches and choppiness was expected. Overall the visual
quality is a step above most of the games out now, even on the Xbox 360
and high-end PCs. The shadows, textures, and character models all look
fantastic, and the overall quality really adds to the sense of realism.


Another nice graphical feature that gives a lifelike touch is that your
squad members' lips move when they communicate with one another. Your
character's lips will also move when you are playing online and talking
through the mic as well. In addition, the thermal and night vision
modes come across as much more realistic as the effect looks as if
you're viewing the action through a vision-enhancement visor complete
with a fisheye lens effect rather than just changing the color of the
screen as in previous R6 games.

Further in the demo we saw a more tactical operation with breaching and
team commands such as "frag and clear", targeting specific tangos and
setting a coordinated master plan in action. Although this wasn't
exactly the same as the E3 demo we saw back in May, it focused on
similar concepts and gameplay elements.

Although they weren't talking much about it today, in addition to the
single-player game, Vegas will also include a four player co-op mode.
You will also be able to play through the complete storyline instead of
just single mission-based outings with your buddies online.

Rainbow Six: Vegas is currently in alpha stage, but should hit beta in
a couple of weeks. That means we shouldn't have to wait too much longer
to play the game ourselves, and it sounds like Ubi Montreal is well on
its way to meet the November 2006 release date.

.