Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 Diaries Part Six

This is my ongoing exploration of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series, played in release order, where I will chronicle my playthrough like a text-based Let’s Play. This time I finish Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2.

Having been left for dead by Gabriel Nowak and ordered back to base by Six, we definitely weren’t about to do that…

Operation: Estate began on 3rd of July 2010 at 1904hrs, some 25 hours after we were called in to deal with the Coyotes in Old Vegas. We were flying in to bring Gabriel in, and by “we” I mean Mike Walter and Jung Park. I had no idea why Logan Keller hadn’t been brought along, nor how and where Bishop had picked the two up, but at least I wasn’t solo.

As we fast roped down to the villa, Jung said that he needed to get to the power box, so that he could disable the security. After telling them to equip their silencers, we were immediately attacked by a strike team. It seemed that our infiltration wasn’t quite as unnoticed as we had hoped…

Fighting our way forwards, we made our way around to the building up some stairs, and Jung disabled the power. All pretense of stealth was now dead, so we fought our way out of the building and into another one, which had been locked by a digital keypad. Restocking at some equipment boxes, I checked under a nearby door with my snake cam. The door led outside, where at least two men in black suits were standing near a car. Exiting the building, I shot a third man, and we killed the other two before heading inside a garage.

Through a door at the rear of the garage, we had a firefight with a bunch of tangos and headed upstairs. I nipped into the kitchen to kill a guy but then continued around outside the building to enter through a different door. We still had plenty of tangos to kill before we could go into an office. Gabriel contacted us to say that he would let us go if we put our guns down, but we carried on anyway.

I burst through the next two doors, gunning down two tangos before a voice came over the comms saying to “show them how it’s done” as an explosion rocked the upper level in the room, and friendlies began fast roping in through the skylight. It was Logan, who repeated something that Bishop told him years ago. He had brought reinforcements - two teams worth - and they were securing everything behind us. Not super helpful, but at least I now knew where Logan was.

Exiting the room, I passed a hot tub and went upstairs where Gabriel teased me about Sharon getting shot. I could also hear some tangos chatting, so ignored the closest door and went around to the right. Opening the door, another black-suited tango was there completely oblivious, so I shot him and led the way forwards to shoot some more tangos around some corners. Despite not using a silencer, nobody knew where I was coming from, and I even surprised two tangos who were holding shields.

After some more murder, we reached Gabriel’s main planning room, because it was filled with computers, monitors, files and boxes. It also had a block of C4 attached to the door. While Micheal disarmed the bomb, Jung hacked a laptop. It contained sensitive information, including stuff about Rainbow operative’s families. Just as Jung found out how Gabriel was selling weapons, such as the micropulse warheads seen in Las Vegas, the C4 detonated and took down Mike!

I quickly got Mike back up, but we were swarmed by tangos rappelling in through the windows, and coming from the doors above us. However, it was pretty easy, even considering how difficult things had been of late. After resupplying, I headed downstairs alone. For some reason, Bishop decided that this was her responsibility alone, despite the two teams of Rainbow and her own squad coming here against orders.

At the bottom of some stairs, I spotted Gabriel in the middle of a tennis court. I wasn’t allowed to shoot him, however, and he blew up the floor beneath me. Luckily, I wasn’t knocked unconscious for long this time and was soon on my feet. Unfortunately, he had an attack helicopter which had a lot of rounds of ammunition.

Luckily for me, I was contacted by Brian Armstrong and Logan Keller’s intel officer, Joanna Torres, who said that they could use a surface-to-air missile battery to take down the chopper. Could, that is, once I helped them get exact coordinates. I could do that by forcing them to use their radio, though I wasn’t told how I would accomplish that.

I fought off wave-after-wave of tangos while firing at the helicopter, and it eventually worked! They called for backup and launched a couple of rockets at the tennis court. My cover was blown - literally - but there were still others to use. Unfortunately, I couldn’t climb over any of it through the broken fence, so I was still having to fire from cover. The helicopter swooped in from the other side, firing down at me.

Repeating what I’d just done in regards to the waves of men and helicopter, it finally blew off a gate for me to use. I crossed the court and went into a building just as the helicopter returned, and a ton more tangos joined the fight. As I killed them, Joanna confirmed that she was getting the coordinates locked in. Finally, the missiles fired and hit the helicopter!

Exiting the building to see what had happened, because the sound had gone wonky, I just missed the chopper smashing into the building. Since it was now a fiery wreck, I went back inside the building and out through the new hole in the wall. And there stood Gabriel, having survived the crash and somehow exited the flaming wreckage in the two seconds that the helicopter was out of my view.

Gabriel blamed Bishop for all of this - his criminal empire, the hundreds of deaths - because Bishop made Six not kick Gabriel out of Rainbow. At the end of the rant, he said that Bishop had no friends, then aimed his pistol - so I shot him twice in the leg with my own pistol.

With Gabriel now apparently dead, my squadmates joined me, and Six called me. He terminated Bishop’s position at the academy - because Bishop was now to join Six in Hereford as Deputy Director.

The End.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Well, I certainly have some thoughts about Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. It’s a decently made game for the most part, and even though I struggled a bit I’d not say it was a bad game. Again, overall.

My main issue was the sound mixing. Sound effects would stop, or happen out of sequence, or just not play. Both sound effects and music would drown out the voice acting, even when set to low levels. At one point, a character was responding to things that hadn’t been said yet, talking over the character they were responding to!

Every game has janky physics, everyone knows that. But both of my squadmates warped through a wall, getting stuck on the other side of shutters that weren’t designed to open. Even if I ignore the multiple times I had to go back and push a squadmate who was stuck on a texture, that’s a major issue.

Vegas 2 is also really hard. In previous titles, I’ve been able to either game it until it worked, or used the built-in god mode cheat. This game has no built-in cheats on PC. So, I went and downloaded a trainer from GameCopyWorld, because I couldn’t have completed Operation: Nevada Desert without it. I was spotted through walls and by enemies with their backs towards me multiple times, and have a screenshot of one terrorist killing me while not even aiming at me!

Finally, as part of a trilogy of games, I had really hoped that there would be no wonky time shenanigans, as I saw in Rainbow Six Raven Shield. Unfortunately, Operation: Nevada Desert cannot take place at 0122hrs. The previous operation ended no later than 2214hrs, as Mike and Jung left to meet up with Logan in Operation: Calypso Casino. That meant either the flight to Operation: Nevada Desert took over two hours, or they stopped off somewhere for almost two hours. Gabriel was posing as our NSA contact, and accompanied us the whole way, despite needing to be at Dante’s Casino before 0300hrs. Even if Alvarez was somehow killed at 0123hrs, there’s no way Gabriel was making it back to Las Vegas in time - unless Bishop and Gabriel sat in silence in the helicopter for almost two hours.

Anyway, as I bid farewell to Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, I also bid farewell to Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, and at least for now Tom Clancy games completely. Rainbow Six Extraction isn’t going to be story-heavy and will focus on replayability as a game-as-a-service, so I won’t have anything to write about. And Rainbow Six Siege is a story-light multiplayer experience, so again, nothing to go over there.

I’m quite impressed with how the Vegas trilogy turned out and would recommend playing them. Vegas 2 had its faults, but they all did. So long as you’re not after the multiplayer experience, because that’s being taken offline if it’s not already, then you’ll enjoy it. Until Operation: Nevada Desert…

So what’s next for me? Well, I’ll get on board the chopper and head back to Hereford. Six out.