Rainbow Six Vegas 2 review PS3

If you played and loved Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas last year, you'll know pretty much what to expect from its sequel. Least surprising of all will be its name: Rainbow Six Vegas 2. This is not necessarily a disadvantage: seasoned players will be able to dive straight in without too much trouble, and we've been promised graphical and strategic improvements on the original. Plus there's been lots of time and effort invested in the co-op play, which will open up the game enormously. So can it carry it off - is Rainbow Six Vegas 2 a worthy successor or just more of the same? Find out now in our full review in this issue of P3Zine.

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Rainbow Six Vegas 2 review PS3

Fundamentally, Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is a game with few surprises. It takes all the good work done by its predecessor, tidies up a few issues here and there, then concentrates heavily on making the multiplayer elements even better than they were in the previous game.

That being the case, Vegas veterans are going to be able to dive into this game right from the off. The only immediate difference is a brand new ‘sprint' button located at R2, which lets you dash from point A to point B - fairly useful for dodging between different areas of cover, and more than a little reminiscent of the same feature in Call of Duty 4. A blind-fire option also allows you to spray bullets from cover without putting yourself in danger. Very similar indeed to Gears of War and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, but it works well enough.

There is a saying that familiarity breeds contempt, and the fact that the single-player game is so similar to the original Rainbow Six Vegas is something of a disappointment. Additionally, the fact that the glamorous, glitzy casino settings of the first game have given way to a far blander array of office blocks, warehouses and rooftops also serves to make the game look far less appealing. Ubisoft is selling the sequel as some kind of graphical leap over its predecessor, but we're struggling to see that at all. Indeed, it's probably the blandest-looking Unreal Engine-powered game we've seen to date.