JUNG IS DOWN: YOU MUST SAVE HIM or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (except not really)

Cathie Jung: Queen of the Corsets. Not related to this post, but possibly related to Jung from Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2.


The last two days of my life have been devoted mainly to avoiding my friends and family, as well as completing Rainbow Six:Vegas 2. I have chosen to do this on Realistic difficulty so I have not quite finished yet, however I do have some impressions of the game that I would like to share with you all so if you don't mind:

*The first thing I noticed is that all of the adlibs of the terrorists and what not are almost exactly the same. And what's more, they still aren't applicable to the situation. For instance, when I frag and enter a room, the dude around the corner shouldn't say "I guess it's nothing.." It's a small annoyance but still very telling of how little this installment has been improved from its predecessor as far as AI and other elements.

*The second thing I noticed is that, while for the most part non-intrusive, the product placement in this game is a little excessive. From the Cicso systems interface, to all the comcast shit they have everywhere. Comcast has its megahuge evil corporate dick all the way up in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2's ass. Ubisoft do slip in some sly self promotion during the gaming convention, which is a level I did enjoy despite the fact that it seemed to be based around making it a Comcast commercial. Product placement should be more of an afterthought.

Brought to you by Josten's. Go Josten's!!

*The next thing that hinted at the rushed quality of Vegas 2 was some of the level design. A lot of times I found my self blasting (and being blasted) down long corridors with conveniently placed tree pots or upturned tables or other various short walls, go up/down the stairs/rappel, helicopter, repeat. It started to get kind of tedious. Some of the locations we were in were quite interesting (the aforementioned Gaming convention, also the rec center room with the climbing walls) but really didn't seem to have anything to do with anyone's idea of Las Vegas. Sure there is a slot machine here and there, but you spend a lot of time indoors in really nice buildings that could be anywhere in the world. They should have just called this Rainbow Six 2 and had every Act be in a different part of the country, or world, so at least there would be a different feel to different areas of the game.

*I would even go so far as to say that the saving grace of the single player campaign is the online co-op mode. Without it, the story mode would be downright mediocre rather than merely flawed.

*The other feature that brightens the the campaign somewhat, is the persistent elite creation system thing, which allows the player to rank up his/her character during both single player AND the online versus modes. Actually, it seems that everything you do gives you experience points, which is nice because you feel like all the hard gaming work that you are doing is going towards something. However, in addition to the obvious larceny from Call of Duty 4 (yes I know the XP points system was actually in the first vegas, and that CoD4 probably stole the idea first, but IW did it better, and therefore there is more emphasis on it here) I am not sure how I feel about this trend that seems to be emerging of players having to micromanage and classify all their weapons and types of kill and what not. People are always going to cheat to get their precious stats and ranks up, and there is already an "Unlimited XP glitch" that I am sure no one on Xbox Live would ever take advantage of.

After playing through what must have been half the campaign though, I started to enjoy the game on a different level. It almost started to become like watching a movie which so bad that's its entertaining in itself. That is if you are the kind of person that likes to sit and make fun of bad movies.

The thing is, for a shooter, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 is not a bad game. Its just a shiny yet bland and mediocre version of a good game that was released a couple years ago. This game is so clearly rushed, that its true intention to capitalize on the success of the first Rainbow Six: vegas, as well as take a share of the market away from Call of Duty 4, becomes glaringly obvious. I expected better from Ubisoft, but after this and the bloated mess that was assassin's creed (and I am just talking about the tutorial) I am beginning to lose respect for one of my favorite developers. I just hope Mr. Clancy is happy with the amount that he sold out for.

For the record

Rez HD is overrated like so many other games and pretty much sucks. "Oh, there's music and rhythm in it." Yeah, if you keep linking up maximum combos it just goes "Oh! Oh! Oh!" the whole fucking time you're playing. What a great idea. I have a system for reading about games I might like but unfortunately I still come into some contact with some of you pricks, and it's my own fault if I buy something that sucks. I would probably have been as well off if I gave that $10 to a homeless man for a bag that never materialized, even though I would've felt like a lot more of a chump that way. My fault.

Yes, I've given it enough time by now. The first level in the demo seemed cool enough, I saw all 200 achievement points headed my way, but there are five levels in the whole game and the last one's still way too damn long somehow. No, I haven't beaten that yet. Yes it is challenging but I'm not about to learn some 20-minute pattern for no good reason if I'm not having fun. I beat all the others and my opinion's disappointed. It turns out I will probably never get past 80 points because Heavy Weapon kicks the shit out of this game (it is mindless and not as much to it but it's good at what it does, and I can zone out a lot better to that than these fucking seed pods flying around while I have to watch messages about niches growing) and I don't have time to play dumb shit. I am aware of marijuana, I had some when I got this game and don't now at this time, and that is no excuse. "Oh, there's music in it!" If you were impressed by this at the time I'm sorry that you can't move on.

By now you can load songs on to your game system and hear more than 5 lame-ass songs during a game. The music tracks in most games are pretty lame or even otherwise get pretty old, and this game has only 5 fucking songs, what a revolution and intersection of music, rhythm and gaming. Suck on my pouch. You people wonder why great games are so hard to come by, stop getting hung up for one thing. There's some fun stuff on XBL still, but Rez is not really included, and Goldeneye isn't anything special any more either, fuck ya'll. And I love James Bond.

The 1998 shit you spent a ton of time with is probably usually just not as good as 2006 or 2008 shit (I skipped 2007 because the best games of 2007 were still the best games of 2006). I don't tell you how great Madden 2001 or NCAA Football 2003, or Contra or Blueprint for Atari is any more, because they have been mostly replaced by better games. I remember running in a circle to avoid tacklers in football, it was a ton of fun with friends when I was 17 but now there are better things out there. It is a stupid cycle, if I'm still playing games in five years will Rainbow Vegas seem like old stupid shit? Why play games at all then? I will answer that at a later date, but it doesn't involve learning some stupid-ass long pattern and spending hours getting it down. The departure from that is what's saving games right now, and why I have two systems after selling my PS2 and getting out a few years back because I was bored as shit and it pretty much all felt like a waste of time.

I'm going to wind it down here, everyone has their preferences and no one's opinions are wrong. But I believe this game is underwhelming, and I guess I will have to continue spending way too much time just deciding what's worth my money before I can play. Nothing new there.

PS the post before this was the 100th on dronkmunk.com, raise up a cheer. We would include a six-pack of Ballantine with every 2010 calendar order to commemorate the occasion if we could find the damn stuff. Calendars are selling fast though, get yours while you still can and don't worry about your calendar situation for the next 1035 days.