Rainbow Six: Vegas Diaries Part Seven

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.

We had fought across a bridge and into the dam, before finding our way into a secret DARPA facility to put an end to Irena Morales…

Having fast roped through a hole in the floor, I checked under a door with the snake cam. I saw some destruction, and a wounded Agent Lynch - last seen in Part Two. We went through the door and had a chat, mainly to assure him that we’d not screw up like he had, and rescue the two scientists that he’d allowed to be taken from his custody. Yes, Dr. Williams and Dr. Smythe had been kidnapped, again.

We were in an underground parking complex, and as we moved forwards we came under fire. Fighting our way forwards, we went in through a door, and shot three tangos before moving on to a bigger room with a handful more tangos. I can only assume that having two doors blocks all noise, as they were just having a chat before we burst in and shot up the place.

At the end of a hallway leading out of the room was a door, behind which was a mounted machine gun. Nobody was manning it, but I could hear some chatter. We went inside carefully, but obviously not carefully enough as one of my squad shot at a tango through a window. We hid in the hallway to the left, and eventually they forgot about us - so I gave the order to open the door and attack. Meanwhile, I returned to the machine gun, and unleashed rapid-fire hell upon the tangos!

Once the warehouse was full of corpses, including a second wave of them, I checked the two doors to the left with my snake cam. Oh, and I’d had to swap my weapon to a FAMAS, as I was out of ammo. One door led to another door, which had a slightly better angle on the tangos inside the room, so we stacked up and breached - the door exploding in a tango’s face. We cleared most of the tangos, and I led the way up a slope to the upper level, checking for more tangos below us before heading down and through a hole in the wall.

The hole led to a tunnel, which opened on another hole into the research station. It was empty at first, until we went through a metal detector which led us to Lab 5. It was full of tangos and little else of note, though it did look pretty fancy and high tech. Until we got to the rear, where two tangos had been hiding and almost killed me. It also led to Lab Section 2, and left me wondering who numbered these things, and why they did such a poor job of it.

The next section was a maze of labs and offices, most of which had at least one glass wall. It was teeming with terrorists, and it took a bit of navigating, but we managed to make it through. Once we reached a pair of double doors, I checked with the snake cam only to find our hostages. I marked two of the tangos for killing, and we burst in. Or, the squad burst in and I followed once it was clear.

Unfortunately, Dr. Williams’ loose lips may have resulted in sunk cities, because he had given the terrorists reusable warheads - which Dr. Smythe was none too happy about. The bombs could, apparently, travel to multiple targets and destroy them with micro-pulses. Smythe also said that Morales was in the control room, programming the missile as we spoke, targeting Las Vegas.

As we left, Joanna piped through a conversation that Morales had just had, which she’d been able to pick up. She was reporting to someone, and had been given her orders. In the good news column, however, Ding Chavez had given me full discretion in how to handle Morales - which meant shooting her full of bullets.

We entered an office and warehouse that was stuffed with tangos, then moved into what appeared to be a wind tunnel. Out the other side was another office area. A smaller office opened into a larger one spread across two levels, and with plenty of tangos to fill it. We fought up some stairs, then went through a door to the left and followed the corridor around to where some tangos had been shooting from, above where we’d come from.

Somewhere along the way, I’d switched back to the 552 Commando, but I hadn’t spotted an equipment box since we arrived at the dam. We followed a hallway to another door, which held some equipment but was pretty dark inside, so I’m not sure what was there. In any case, it led us to a control room, and down some stairs to fight a few more tangos. Moving through a warehouse, I found an equipment chest and loaded up. There were two doors, one in front of the chest, behind which was an empty, open route to my target, with some boxes in the way.

My objective was to get Jung to a console, which he could use to lock Morales in the control room. From there, we could shoot her full of holes, and Las Vegas would be safe.

However, that second door, and the lack of terrorists, had me concerned. After checking that the door led to a fenced off area, with cover, I led the way out and spotted a tango hiding behind a crate, waiting for that other door to open. Jung helpfully said that it was an ambush, and I used my silenced 552 Commando to shoot the tango. Changing angle, I could see another tango, so shot him too. One of my men opened fire, and suddenly we were under attack. In short order, however, we were alone and I headed for the console.

This bit took a couple of attempts, as it turned out that I wasn’t allowed to leave the immediate area, otherwise it was an instant failure. So, while Jung hacked the console, Mike and I had to repel the attacking waves of tangos who fast roped down from the balcony above. However, staying in the right-hand corner between two boxes gave me an ideal angle on most of the tangos as they came into view, and I took very little damage.

Jung reported that Morales was locked in, and I took off to confront her while Mike protected the area. This was ultimately meaningless, as there were only a couple of tangos left upstairs, and as soon as Logan ordered the door open I was rejoined by my squad anyway. Morales mocked me, destroying the launch console before the door opened, and I led the way inside. We staged most of our fighting from the hallway outside a large office, but pushed forwards and remained behind some reinforced crates.

Morales was firing at us and throwing grenades from the upper level, so when she had taken enough damage she retreated, and we moved on upstairs. She was by the rear doors, and when we killed her she dropped to the floor. She regretted not being able to see us lose the war - then listed off some Rainbow personnel. Ding Chavez, Alistair Stanley and several others. She finally died, and I stole her pistol while Jung and Mike came up with another plan to stop the missile: Mike would plant a charge on it, letting it explode harmlessly in midair.

We got into the elevator, and loaded into the next area. During the elevator ride up, Mike and Jung summed up the basic plot so far. I used the nearby equipment box, and we went up the nearby stairs to shoot two tangos. After checking the two doors in the building that we were in, I decided to stage our attack out of the right-hand one, and I opened it. There were terrorists to the right and ahead, and a bunch of them to our left around the massive missile truck, which was already in a firing position. It was a challenge (although less so on the fifth attempt), but the enemy was defeated, and I ordered Mike to attach the explosive.

By the time he had finished, I had retreated to a safe position, beneath a tree. The missile launched, and when it was safely far ahead, Mike triggered the detonation, blasting it to pieces. Walking along the road a little, I went inside a building to look at the bridge we had started on. Then Gabriel Nowak got in touch.

It transpired that Gabriel was the one giving Morales her orders, and had done something to Joanna. He also had a bomb, and was in a helicopter. Hurrying down the road further, I could see the chopper blades above a truck, and as we approached Joanna burst out from behind the truck - followed by tangos. We shot them, and at Joanna’s suggestion I manned one of the machine gun emplacements to open fire at the helicopter as it flew around a hill - Gabriel still planned on attacking Las Vegas! But this was to be continued...

As the credits rolled, news reports explained that relief efforts were underway in Las Vegas, and casualties may have been as high as 600, with 2,000 injured. Authorities had captured more than 30 terrorists, and were going to ship them off to Guantanamo Bay. More, a helicopter had been downed in a lake, with only the pilot’s body being recovered…

FINAL THOUGHTS

I will admit to having reservations when I realised that this was entirely made by Ubisoft, instead of Red Storm Entertainment. They were further compounded by the opening level being basically Battlefield in so many ways, with a stupid yellow colour filter to show that it’s in a country that doesn’t have English as its primary language. I’m almost certain that I heard a radio playing La Cucaracha, too.

However, the gameplay in Vegas felt better than Lockdown, and it was obviously better looking. It was in Unreal Engine 3, so there were none of the fun glass and ragdoll effects, just the ones I’ve seen in other games, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t look great. Las Vegas is nice and bright, and a far cry from how bland some of the environments in past games have been.

I did have some issues with the audio, as certain lines from the squad seemed to be coming through two or three radio voices at once. The terrorists also seemed to only have a small range of lines to say, and I got sick of hearing about the party a few of them were planning after this whole thing was over… A few of them also wondered “what was that?” in the middle of an ongoing firefight with multiple tangos…

Regardless, I wasn’t too sure about this coming in, but now I’m eager to continue the story in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas on the PSP!