Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 - Multiplayer Hands On Preview

The first Rainbow Six: Vegas game has been one of the most significant multiplayer shooters of 2007. Released at the tail-end of 2006, Vegas has placed in the top five of the Xbox Live chart week-in, week-out, over the last year. While the number one spot has been dominated by Gears of War and Halo 3, Vegas has consistently been the best of the rest alongside CoDs 3&4.

In the meantime, the Ubisoft Montreal team responsible for Vegas had been preparing the sequel. Remarkably, this sequel is due for release towards the end of next month on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, following a broadly similar timeline to Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2.

Either way, the first Vegas was pretty hard to fault, so it must've been pretty useful for Ubisoft Montreal to have gameplay, AI, graphics and a game engine that were already tip-top - all the team had to do was touch up some areas of the game, bring in some new content and ship a new title as soon as possible. In many ways, this seems to be the drive behind Vegas 2. Of course it's not a radical re-imagining of the series, but a logical evolution of the franchise to please its hardcore fan-base and hopefully attract some new recruits along the way.

Last month we were invited to get some hands-on experience of the multiplayer game for Vegas 2 and, naturally, we jumped at the chance. We saw two new game modes, as well as three of the levels in Vegas 2. 'Demolition' and 'Team Leader' were the two new game modes, while the three levels we played them in took on a similar theme to the first game. There was a convention centre, a luxury villa-style apartment and some dusty city streets strewn with run-down vehicles and derelict buildings, forming part of the thirteen new multiplayer maps in Vegas 2.

Getting back to the new multiplayer modes; Team Leader is set to offer Ubisoft Montreal's variant of the ever popular VIP from countless other FPS games. There are a few nice tweaks to the traditional VIP rules though, which should make things quite interesting. While for instance Halo's VIP works on a tally system, whereby the winning team has the most VIP kills after a certain time period, Vegas 2's 'Team Leader' can only be killed once. While the leader is still in play the other team members can respawn, but once the team leader has been killed, the remaining team members can no longer respawn.

This leads to two ways of winning the game: Firstly, getting your team leader to the extraction point on the map, or secondly killing every member of the opposition's team. Ubisoft Montreal has thrown another spanner into the VIP works by allowing the leader on each team to see each other on the HUD. As a result, it will be crucial that team leaders communicate well with their teammates, so that they can find the other leader and take them out.

Demolition, on the other hand, is a take on Counter Strike's Bomb multiplayer mode. Similarly to Team Leader, Ubisoft Montreal has added their own individual touches to the gametype. Like the classic CS gametype, there are multiple points on the map where the bomb can be placed by the attacking team. Once the bomb has been placed, the defending team has 60 seconds to diffuse it otherwise they'll hear a very short ringing in their ears before they're blown to smithereens. The twist comes in the form that if the attacking team drops the bomb, or the bomb carrier is killed, then the defending team will be able to see the TNT on the map. As a result, it's significantly easier for the defending team to figure out where the bomb will be placed, and the defending team loses the element of surprise. While these two new game modes are essentially Ubisoft Montreal's takes on a couple of classics, it's good to see that they've put some original thought into them. They will no doubt please hardened Vegas veterans and newbies alike, and add some reason to fork out some cash on this sequel if you've already played the first game.

In our Vegas 2 Q&A with Designer Philippe Therien, he explained that other than Demolition and Team Leader, the line-up of multiplayer game modes will be very similar to the first game's. The one exception is that Retrieval has been taken off the roster, although Therien points out that the retrieval element in Attack and Defend will remain.

This re-iterates the earlier point that, far from being an overhaul of the first game, Vegas 2 will keep the same winning formula while adding fresh gameplay features where possible. One of these new gameplay features is bullet penetration, which will require hardened Vegas veterans to re-think their strategies a bit when it comes to cover. One of the areas in the convention centre, for example, was filled with paper thin walls. Finding cover there was a bit like being accepted as a communist in 50s America. You'd find what you though was a good spot to duck out from and fire, only to be taken out while you were reloading a magazine in cover.

Once again, Philippe Therien goes into more details about this in our Q&A, but it appears that the main factors determining bullet penetration are the thickness of a wall (obviously), as well as the amount of "kick" (as Therien puts it) that a weapon has. This essentially means that you'll be effective with shotguns and machine guns... which works for us!

Speaking of weaponry, there will be 11 new weapons in Vegas 2. These will include a new silenced sniper rifle, as well as an M468 (which is similar to the M16). However, we were told during our multiplayer hands-on session that the shotguns had been ramped-up a bit. With enough curiosity to kill-off many cats, we tried out the range of shotguns that were on offer. We found that the SPAZ was the most powerful and, by powerful, we mean 'blow-a-hole-in-Fort-Knox' powerful. If you got within 5-10 metres of somebody, it usually took one shot (two maximum) in the top half of their body to floor them. So yes, it appears that the shotguns have been tweaked a little.

One final multiplayer feature that's worthy of a mention is the new ACES system (or Advanced Combat Enhanced Specialisation). This is basically a perk system whereby you get points for certain types of kills. In fact, why they needed such a complicated name for it is beyond us. Perhaps Ubisoft Montreal just wanted four long words that would spell out ACES as an acronym.

Anyway, the system works by giving you points for making kills in skilful ways. We got points for taking out a couple of guys with one frag grenade, while a later kill with the aid of a flash bang grenade also dealt us out a score. Whenever you make such skill moves, the ACES system brings up the points with a short phrase describing the type of kill that got you them. It's a nice little touch and one that's sure to add an element of style to your Vegas technique as well.

While our hands-on experience was with the multiplayer game, we also managed to gather some interesting facts about the single-player offerings. At the top of the pile is the information we got hold of about Vegas 2's story, which takes place in three separate parts: a prequel to the first game, a parallel story-arc to Vegas 1, and a sequel to boot. The parallel storyline follows Bishop's team in Vegas while Logan was in Mexico, while the sequel part of the story will no doubt resolve the "To Be Continued..." ending to Vegas 1.

Other cool new additions to the game's main campaign include a jump-in/jump-out 2 player co-op mode, which will help to bolster the multiplayer offerings no doubt. Additionally, the AI has been tweaked to account for bullet penetration feature. Enemy NPCs will be able to tell whether they're taking cover behind a cardboard box or a brick wall, and they'll move if they realise that they've stupidly cowered behind clothes being hung-out to dry. NPCs will also have characteristics as well, with some of them strong but dumb, while others might take on the role of leader and others will opt for stealth.

Your squad's AI is now more advanced as well because your team will 'leapfrog' each other in and out of cover. This means that they'll give another squad member cover while they dart across open spaces, and then vice-versa in order to move forward. You can also order squad members to use different types of grenades, which has the knock-on effect of allowing you to only carry frags and then use their supplies for flashbangs and smoke grenades.