Before this one, Rainbow Six PC games were first person tactical shooters. You had to create a plan of action before the actual mission, you had two or three teams to give orders to and could control multiple characters. Planning was as important as the action itself.

Rainbow Six: Vegas discards most of the tactical features mentioned before and could be considered more an action FPS with some light tactical options. At first I didn't like the idea, I thought the essence of the saga would be lost and the remaining would be another average FPS, but I was wrong. Given the good reviews received by the game, I decided to buy it and give it a try, and I certainly don't regret it.

In Rainbow Six: Vegas there's only one team. You control one character, the team leader, and can give orders to two other men. This allows you to put in action some simple tactics, but nothing similar to having more teams at your orders like in the rest of Rainbow Six games. Despite this fact, even though you are more limited tactically, the game created by Ubisoft Montreal has its own personality, standing out from the average shooters.

Graphics are good, thanks to the Unreal Engine 3. At the time the game was released hardware requirements were considered high but, now, I was able to play with all details at maximum level thanks to my cheap ATI HD3850 (of course it depends on the resolution you want to play at, I have a 19'' widescreen monitor, so I don't need to play at very high resolutions).

Most of the game action is located at Las Vegas (where else), and the developers have manage to recreate its unique atmosphere really well. The avenues, buildings and casinos look quite good and make a great scenery for the ambushes and shootings you're always involved in. It's here where the ability of your character of taking cover behind columns, cars and any other big enough object comes real handy.

AI is also good, which is very important in a game like this, where you depend on characters controlled by the computer. Your teammates are competent enough and you can count on them most of the time. Of course, the perfect AI has yet to be programmed and they sometimes do stupid things, but I have seen much much worse AI.

Rainbow Six: Vegas is a very good game worth having.

my rating: