Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (360) Review

The Rainbow Six franchise has always been a great tactical shooter however, the series really got noticed when Rainbow Six Vegas was released for the Xbox 360 and later the PS3 and PC. This game mixed great tactics with run and gun and a mixture of 3rd and 1st person views. The visuals were sharp and the multiplayer became many peoples next generation counter strike. So now Ubisoft Montreal are back with the inevitable sequel Rainbow Six Vegas 2.
The Story line of Vegas 2 takes place before after and during the events of Vegas with a seperate team working in parallel to that of the first game. You control Bishop the leader of your sqaud of 3. The voice acting has improved vastly however, unfortunately the story still gets lost and you feel like your simply taking on several independent missions.
Bishop in essence is you. You can customise his guns clothes and even put on your face using the Xbox Live vision cam. This brings us into the new ACES system. When playing multiplayer and single player you have a big Call of Duty-esque experience bar at the bottom of the screen. You are awarded different points for getting headshots, blinfiring and even shooting through cover. These different features get split into assault,marksman, and CQB which are rewarded for accordingly so, for shooting someone from a distance you may level up in marksman and unlock a new sniper rifle. This all works very well and gives the game replay value.
The single player is very similar to that of Vegas but I feel the level design is much improved you have to plan your moves a lot more or your stopped dead in your tracks. The controls are improved slightly but in essence are the same which will be nice for previous players.
The multiplayer is still laggy at the moment but if you get yourself into a good game it brings endless enjoyment. Teams are starting to work well together and the new maps are brilliant and mixture of new maps and ingame levels give you a lot to explore. The graphics are close to the single player which is a huge improvement from from the first game aswell.
Overall Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is a must have for fans of tactical shooters they have improved everything nessesary with 4 player co-op and better level design while keeping it on the same level as Vegas 1. It will take you about 8-10 hours to complete the single player campaign and multiplayer will give a lot more play. Unfortunately though the game still has bugs and if these had been ironed out this would be a near perfect shooter. 9.0/10