After a few pedestrian efforts the Rainbow Six series brings us Rainbow Six: Vegas, a game worthy of rubbing shoulders with the series’ best. Rainbow Six: Vegas is tense, exciting, and downright difficult, which are the aspects of the original game that made its fans fall in love with it in the first place. Rainbow Six: Vegas isn’t for everyone, but if it’s for you … it’s really, really for you.

If you’re not familiar with the Rainbow Six squad, it is a multinational elite counter-terrorism unit whose primary specialty is hostage rescue. While in many special forces games you’re supposed to kill anything that moves, in Rainbow Six you need to protect the civilians first and take out the terrorists second. This is especially so when you operate in a place like Las Vegas, which a bajillion or so tourists visit on any given day.

Bright lights, Sin City.

Rainbow Six: Vegas is a realistic tactical shooter. What this means is that if you screw up, you’ll die. If you fail to utilize teamwork, you’ll die. If you try to run and gun your way through any stretch of a mission, you’ll die. I’m sure that you get the picture – only sound tactics will get you through the game alive.

Your first friend is cover. Concrete blocks, walls, nooks, cars, … anything that you can put between your body and the enemy’s bullets can save your life. The game has an excellent cover system which is relatively easy to use and will get you through a mission alive. Whenever you run up to any type of cover like the aforementioned objects, you can give the left trigger a squeeze and you’ll take cover behind the object. The camera will then switch to a third person, behind-the-back view that will allow you to see where the enemies are without the need to put your body out into the open. From behind cover you can simply pull the right trigger and blind fire, or you can use the directional stick to lean around or over and take a shot. It’s quite satisfying to keep crouched down while a terrorist empties a clip into your cover and then pop-up and kill him with a quick burst when stops to reload.

Cover is good, but your best asset is your team. You’re the team leader in the game, which means that you can order the other squad members to do the dangerous work. Giving orders is easy with the game’s context sensitive interface. Simply point at an object such as a door or wall and the A button can then be used to issue the appropriate order such as a breach and clear command. The AI of your team is excellent and they are both coldly efficient in killing terrorists and adept at not getting lost. Don’t laugh, wandering or lost squadmates are the bane of many a video game squad leader, but thankfully not here.

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