Rainbow Six: Vegas Diaries (PSP) Part Three

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 on the PSP.

After having destroyed the water treatment plant, I was hot on the tail of Lucas Picares - even though I was going solo…

It was 0630hrs when Operation: The Dam began, with Brian going in alone thanks to Picares shooting Shawn in the back. There was apparently considerable activity at the dam, which Joanna should know full well, having been here herself less than an hour ago to drop off Team Keller.

I shot two tangos in the parking lot, then another man just inside the nearby building. After taking out another two in the locker room, a civilian offered to open the locked door that I had just found. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a keycard to the penstock, which I needed to use as a shortcut, so I had to find one. He unlocked the door, then made his escape casually out the door he’d just come in through.

Entering the hallway on the other side of the door, I found two tangos patrolling. The office on my left housed a dead body, the one behind led to another office with a tango, and a second tango patrolling the corridor on the opposite side. After shooting them both, I went back the other direction to some kind of control room where I killed two tangos, then another two who were down the hallway on the other side. Heading down that way, I entered another control room overlooking a huge area. Asking where my backup was, Joanna reported that Shawn was dead.

Apparently, he had said that he was clear of the blast zone despite being categorically not. Which meant that I was definitely alone in this mission… After trying to shoot the tangos from my position, I decided to go back and check what was on the opposite side of that other office. Heading down the slope, I found myself on the other side of the room from where I had been. After a bit of a messy fight, I killed all of the tangos and made my way through the room to an elevator. It was next to a locked door, so I had to assume the keycard was down there.

Using the elevator, I shot two tangos, then followed the hallway to where two men were talking. One quipped that he shouldn’t be so serious and he might live longer, then I shot them both and entered the hole which they had apparently made, loading into the next area.

Joanna told me that the water treatment plant was only Picares’ secondary objective, and that going by the data from the hard drive the dam was his primary target. She didn’t have the details, so needed me to go further into the penstock to stop him.

After shooting two tangos, I was spotted by a third somehow through an eight-foot wide pipe. I shot him in the head once I found him, then a fourth tango before heading up the gantry to the room at the top. Unfortunately, it was empty and I had to go back down on the other side of the pipe, and go through the door. Coming out of the short corridor, I put my back against the wall beneath the window and watched as one tango patrolled. I shot him through the window, which he didn’t hear break, then the other tangos.

At the bottom of the gantry, I found a bomb. Not just any bomb, but a nuclear bomb that had been stolen a year prior. The only way to disarm it was to find the laptop which was connected to it somehow - who knew nukes had Wi-Fi? I dropped down from the gantry and exited through a hole in the wall, entering a tunnel and climbing down a few ladders. It let out onto a gantry with stairs leading several stories down.

At the bottom was a tango, with another one just around the corner from him as I entered a passageway. I made my way through the patchwork of dug tunnels and existing hallways, killing a handful of tangos before going up a ladder into a storage room. Exiting into a hallway, I shot a handful of tangos before going through the bunk room to an elevator and loading into the next section.

Ding Chavez came through the comm to tell me that Joanna was out of action - the betrayal must have occurred in the last 10 minutes. I was so far underground that I didn’t even hear the missile exploding! My orders were to deactivate the bomb and kill everyone. An easier way to accomplish that second objective was surely to ignore the primary objective, but clearly that wasn’t an option.

Working my way through the hallways, I killed a bunch of tangos and headed upstairs towards the Main Command Room. One of the rooms I went through was allegedly a conference room, but looked more like a fancy dining room. At the top of the stairs, I looked through my snake cam and what I could see looked more like a war room than a dam’s main control room - there was a giant map of the globe.

As I entered, having spotted nobody, a bunch of tangos ran in along with Picares himself. Taking cover behind the bulletproof guard railing, I took out most of his men before concentrating fire on him. It was fortunate that I only ran out of ammo after he was dead, which I found out when I tried to kill the last tango. I swapped to my handgun and killed him, then headed upstairs to the next level.

Not trusting things in the slightest, I kept low and slow. My caution paid off, as a tango spoke before appearing in my sights. There were a few tangos as I went up to the top level, and around to a room about as far from the door I came in through as could be. Inside was the laptop, and I defused the bomb.

Mission success in 01:13:38.

As an epilogue, Joanna told Brian that Shawn would have called the mission a success, and they flew into the sunrise…

FINAL THOUGHTS

As an entry in the Rainbow Six Vegas story, this was a decent game. It shows that Logan’s missing teammates were being looked for - initially, at least - and that Irena Morales wasn’t the only person in charge. I mean, we knew that from the final part of the Rainbow Six: Vegas Diaries, but still.

As a game, however, it was deeply flawed in a multitude of ways. It was perfectly playable, and that’s speaking as someone who always chooses “easy mode” in games. The controls, and in my opinion first-person shooters in general, require fast turning. Using the buttons to turn is slow, and even with locking on it got me shot so many times because I was facing the wrong way. It isn’t helped by your turning speed changing as the frame rate does.

To put your back against the wall, you have to be facing the wall practically face-on. That resulted in me getting shot multiple times while I was waiting for the animation to finish, because I hadn’t seen the tango come around the corner.

Speaking of getting shot, I had to repeat sections constantly due to the controls being so imprecise, and on two occasions invisible timers running out. There are certain angles and distances that don’t allow you to lock on to enemies, and manually aiming down the scope is cumbersome at best. It’s not aided by the game automatically reloading when you’re about to fire at a tango in your sights…

As much as I did enjoy the story, I can’t get over the fact that Joanna shouldn’t have been in the chopper at 2200hrs to pick up Brian and Shawn, as she was still on her way to Vegas at that time. Also, Joanna was at the Nevada Dam at 0547hrs, so should have known what was going on at 0630hrs when Brian arrived, rather than being surprised about the amount of activity. At least she was unavailable for the final briefing, as Rainbow Six: Vegas showed that she should be.

It’s not all negatives, however, as I did enjoy the better functionality in the snake cam. Sure, its turning arc wasn’t suitable for every door, but you could use it to look around corners! The way that it utilised both characters, too, was a plus. Killing off Shawn was a genuine shock, too!

Of course, I’d probably have enjoyed this version more if there was a planning aspect, a la the original two games, but that’s just me. It’s a decent game, and so long as you go into it expecting not to be blown away, you’ll have a good time.

Next time, I’ll be wrapping up this trilogy - and the franchise - with Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2!