Tactics are the key to success
The controls for covering work extremely well; tilt the thumbstick towards the object that you’re perched behind and you’ll take up a combat stance, tilt it right or left and you’ll peer around the side of the object. Covering is a crucial part of Rainbow 6: Vegas and the developers have made sure that it’s necessary to use it as often as possible. There are dozens of objects that can be used for cover and because the enemy AI is so tough, you’ll need to make good use of it to get through a level.
The tough A.I in the single player game means that you’ll probably have to re-start a few levels from the previous checkpoint until you suss out the exact positions of the enemies (there’s always one guy that is hard to spot). This was one of the only negatives I could find in the game because it can be frustrating that the check points are too far apart, meaning that you could play for 15 minutes, die and find yourself right back at the beginning. The tough AI also means that you’ll rarely go in all guns blazing, but you can instead use the snake-cam to peek under doors and survey the situation.
Click for larger imageThe snake-cam can be used under any door and allows you to take a peek inside the room without being spotted. This is ideal for tagging enemies before you attack thus giving your team-mates orders on whom to shoot first. You simply click on an enemy and a red marker will appear denoting that he is the first person that you want your team to concentrate on. You can tag two enemies, but they'll always be more than that in a room so you'll have to find other ways to kill them. The single player maps are designed so that once you reach a building with a roomful of terrorists they’ll normally be more than one entrance; meaning that you can use an element of surprise to gain the upper hand. Many locations are well guarded and the AI is so adept at spotting your movements that there were numerous occasions where I had to try out a number of different ways before I could clear a room effectively. This can be frustrating, because the AI can be 'artificially' too good; they’ll often spot you when there was no possible way they could have seen you or heard you from their position. The enemy AI can be excused for this minor annoyance because in every area they perform impeccably and will blind fire, take cover when necessary and also have an uncanny knack of throwing a well-placed grenade. This makes for some tense, well-paced battles that grow in ferocity and scale as you progress.
Click for larger imageCommanding troops is one of the highlights of Rainbow 6: Vegas. There are two troops that stay by your side throughout the campaign and they can be ordered to move via your targeting reticule to any point on the map. They respond accurately to your commands, for example: I was able to stay on the roof of a building and send the two soldiers onto the casino floor whilst I took up a sniper position. They rappelled down from the roof and automatically took cover behind a slot machine, even blind firing as the enemy descended on their position. This enabled me to pick them off one by one from the roof. The friendly AI is so good that you can rely on them in each situation to do a decent job and this allows you the freedom to play around with the tactical options to create new ways of tackling the terrorists.
