This week games giant Ubisoft has announced that Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is scheduled for a March 2008 release. We are given some information on what to expect from the next installment in this series as hype starts to build for it. The story sees you playing as Bishop, one of Rainbow’s best commanders and you have to stop the terrorist threat in Vegas which is led by Alvarez Cabrero. Some of the key features that are included in Rainbow Six Vegas 2 are:
- Full PEC experience: Your character will develop in skills and personality in both online and offline modes.
- Co-op Experience: The story mode can now be played by two players with the Jump In Jump Out feature allowing a second player to join and leave the game whenever they wish. This was something I personally felt was missing from the other Rainbow Six games.
- Improved AI: The enemy is much more responsive in RB6V2 adapting to each situation. Teammate AI has also been improved to offer better cover as you advance towards any enemy.
- There are also new Player vs. Player modes such as Demolition where you must plant a bomb in at a predetermined point and must protect the bomb until it explodes. The other new game is Team Leader where you must guard your leader as you take him to an extraction point while trying to kill the other Team Leader.
We were also given a trailer for the new game which seems more like its advertising a movie instead of a game and doesn’t actually show much of the gameplay or anything different from the first Rainbow Six Vegas. If Ubisoft puts as much effort into the game as they put into this trailer, then you’re looking at a game that will blow you away.
The announcement itself has been met with mixed reactions from fans of the series with some still annoyed at Ubisoft for not providing a patch to fix problems in Rainbow Six Vegas for the Playstation 3 with many complaining about the fact that the game froze at certain points or slowed down interfering with gameplay. Ubisoft had promised they would release a patch earlier this year but this never came to fruition.
Some customers have already said they will not buy the game after having issues with the first installment and the lack of customer support that was available. Some even claim that this will be nothing more than an expansion pack.
“It’s going to be the same gameplay…They used to call these expansion packs.” Post on Ubisoft forums.
Will this reduce sales overall for Ubisoft? In my opinion probably not as the Rainbow Six series has become one of the biggest established series in gaming so the name itself will sell the game.
Should you preorder the game then? At the moment I’d say no. Let the developers work on the bugs. They have promised they will be using the full Unreal Engine instead of the beta that was used in RB6V which many blame for the bugs that were present. All I can say is that we will have to wait for more news releases about the game and the game itself before we can give the game a proper review
