Rainbow Six: Vegas Diaries Part Five

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 continue Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas.

Having rescued another scientist and stopped a micro-pulse bomb from destroying everything within five miles, Irena Morales had got in touch to tell us where my old squadmates were…

We headed straight to Dante’s Hotel and Casino for Operation: Dante’s Casino at 0215hrs. It was still under construction, so we landed in an unfinished section, and I told the squad to take cover behind a wall in front of us. Taking up position near a ramp heading up to us, we opened fire on the tangos in the area. As the point man, I went down using a fast rope point to the left, and moved forwards. My strategy worked, as it coaxed the tangos out of hiding, and into position for the squad to shoot them.

As I moved forward and called my team to my position, Joanna showed me a few news feeds for some reason. Things in the rest of Vegas were going badly, and the National Guard had apparently been dispatched. Not that I could do anything about that from inside a half-constructed casino full of terrorists…

Climbing up a ladder, I found myself in front of a large bell, as well as a bunch of tangos. My team joined me, and we fought them off. At one point, I even shot something explosive, which clanged the bell nicely when it went off. With the area clear, we rappelled down the side of the building, and smashed through a window into a room full of tangos. As we finished killing them, the bell smashed down, through the middle of the room and down a couple more stories.

With the air now thick with dust, we cautiously made our way down a ladder and rappel point. Annoyingly, my night vision goggles were literally useless, not that my regular eyesight was working particularly well in the dust. It took a while, but we eventually reached the bottom, and exited into some artificial lighting.

Joanna contacted us to say that Gabe had obtained a radio long enough to say that he was in the arcade, before being recaptured. We overheard some men discussing how they were being pulled out “already”, as roads were being blocked. We cleared out the locker room, and I carefully checked out the two doors ahead of us. One led into an office with a single tango, the other led into a garage with several.

Equipping my silencer, I shot the single tango in the office, and told my squad to take position at the door into the garage nextdoor. I went to the other set of doors, and we burst in on my go command, killing the tangos easily. A door led out into a corridor that had a door, and windows showing some more tangos in a room. While I was strategising, Jung began firing through a window, while Mike opened the door to join in. Slightly baffled, I provided covering fire for the few seconds it was required.

The room led us to a large, unfinished hall, which had a bunch of tangos waiting for us. Ordering the squad behind some cover, I moved around to the left where a door led into the same hall. Opening it, I shot two tangos, and called the man over - so they went around the way I had come, instead of through the hall… As you might expect from an establishment called Dante’s Casino, the whole place was made to look like a Christian church. We took cover behind pillars and a giant statue of a tree or something, and eventually finished shooting everyone.

Going through an open doorway, we took a staircase up and shot a tango. Taking up a sniping position on the unfinished landing, we took out everyone in the slot machine hall below us. Moving on, I switched my weapon for a UMP45, as my rifle was out of ammo, and we shot a couple of men guarding a door that we needed to use. I sent the men through to hide behind a wall, and eventually joined them to direct their movements. It was tense, and as I had no grenades it wasn’t easy, but we got through the area. I call it that, as it didn’t appear to have a purpose in a gambling establishment - unless they also offered wedding services? Maybe it was going to be a lounge?

Heading upstairs, I found an equipment crate and reloaded, glad to finally get some more frag grenades. The corridor ahead of us was filled with plastic-wrapped arcade machines, and a few terrorists, so we cleared them and checked the room ahead. It was the arcade, and only one person was inside - Gabe Nowak.

Cautiously making our way up to Gabe, he whined about how we took too long to get here, before yelling at Logan for leaving him behind. Not that he had time to complain much, as a bunch of tangos stormed our position. We successfully fended them off, and Logan reported to Joanna that we had Gabe. She said that they would pick him up from a nearby exit, and Gabe went downstairs to open the door. Following him, he whined a bit more before starting to type in the door code. After watching him for 35 seconds, I decided that he was either wasting time, or incredibly bad at hacking. Either way, I led my team to a door where a tango burst through and almost killed me.

In the next room, there were loads more tangos waiting for us on two levels, and it was annoyingly tough to get through them all. Once they were finally dead, we went past a radio which revealed that Kan Akahashi was in “the construction site” - and here I had thought that was what this entire place was…

We exited the building into a construction site, proving that I was in fact mistaken about how much of this place was under construction! They hadn’t finished some of the outer walls, let alone the roof on this portion. However, it was highly doubtful that around 3:00am was the ideal time to build, and so everyone here was definitely a target - and what an abundance of targets I had available!

We made our way down the ramp and to the right, under fire almost the entire time. Heading up a slope and onto the unfinished construction, noticing a heck of a lot of crates marked with “Mexico”. We fought our way up to the middle level, and I had to swap my UMP45 for an MG36, as I’d run out of ammo again. Not that I had much time to use it, as a few tangos and a ladder later, we reached an equipment box. Swapping to a 552 Commando, we moved out - and immediately came under fire, because a tango was literally behind a wall made out of a sheet.

We fast roped down, now below street level, and through a pipe we could see someone being shot at by tangos. Returning fire, we joined the person only to discover that it was Kan - and he’d been hit. Mike and Jung attempted to save his life, but he bled out… Before he died, however, he said that Morales was planning something bigger, but couldn’t tell us what, just that this was all to draw the military away…

Reporting to Joanna, she said that she would send the authorities to take good care of him, but we needed to cut off the terrorists’ communications. Jung would need to hack their equipment, which was in the nearby theatre. This damned place had more square footage than most shopping centres…

We fought our way out through another section of pipe, and up a ladder at the far end of the foundation. Entering the next building, we overheard some terrorists talking about how they were worried that Morales had set them up. One kept saying that she wouldn’t do that, but I was certainly getting that vibe. We outside, having finally reached what appeared to be the main entrance, filled with tangos. Or, at least, what would eventually become that once the casino opened up…

We crossed an ornate plaza, before entering the foyer, which was also full of tangos. It also had more than its fair share of slot machines, but that should have gone without saying by that point. Once it was clear, we ascended some stairs, and loaded into the next area. Joanna piped through a news anchor talking about angry residents in the streets - at around 4am by this point, I might add - which were having to be dispersed by tear gas.

Approaching a door, I realised that there were stairs to the right, so we went up there and scoped out the hall that we were above, from the upper floor. Unfortunately, one of my men fired at them and brought hell upon us. It was a rough firefight, but eventually the hall was empty, and we took a staircase, which was behind a door in the far left. Sending my men up first, with silencers equipped, they shot the two men stood chatting. We moved up the next set of stairs, and I carefully looked out from the balcony we were now on. It was an opera theatre, because when else would you have the chance to constantly play A Symphony to Dante's Divine Comedy?

Actually, the two pieces of music, played on loop, were In Solitude and Cold War by Chris Payne & Paul Rogers, but never mind that. I mostly heard the “enemies are close” music…

Moving over to the left side of the theatre, I shot most of the tangos without them realising where we were, before moving downstairs, and through to the backstage area. There were two more tangos in the dressing room, and one outside to the left - hiding behind some crates in a room of his own.

What followed was over 23 minutes of failure, for a section which would ultimately take me two minutes. Telling Jung to hack the console on the table, he started to get Joanna hooked into the system. However, it caused whole bunches of tangos to swarm the theatre. Some were on the two levels of balcony, a few fast roped through the windows in the ceiling, a bunch came in through the sets of doors…

My winning strategy, which ensured the computer wasn’t destroyed, and that I wasn’t shot dead, involved going back into the dressing room. There was an equipment chest, so I swapped my loadout to have a shield. Standing in front of the computer, firing at the enemy with my handgun, was the only way that I could get through multiple waves of enemies, and even that took multiple attempts to get right.

Eventually, Jung finished with the computer, and Joanna confirmed that Morales was hitting the Nevada dam. We didn’t know why, but that was her plan. The helicopter was on the roof, so we had to climb the ladder on the left-hand side of the stage, up to a walkway. The door at the end opened, and we shot the tangos who tried throwing grenades at us, and exited into the hallway. It led to a stairwell, which took us to the roof - with one final tango waiting for us. Exiting onto the roof, we boarded the helicopter. We were going to stop Morales’ dam plan…