Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 is the seventh installment in the Rainbow Six series. It is a first-person shooter video gameand the sequel to Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas. It was announced by Ubisoft on November 20, 2007. The game was released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on March 18, 2008 in North America and March 20, 2008 in Europe, except in Germany, where the game was delayed. The Microsoft Windows version, however, was delayed until April 15, 2008. It was released in Japan on April 24, 2008 for the Xbox 360 and on May 29, 2008 for the PlayStation 3.
A world-exclusive first-look of the game appeared in the January 2008 edition of the Official Xbox Magazine. It was announced that Logan Keller, the lead character from the previous game, had been removed in favor of having the player create his or her own character to play through the campaign. The player assumes the role of Bishop, a member of the Rainbow squad with a great deal more experience who has a deeper involvement in the story.
The game, billed as "part sequel, part prequel", has events that run both before and concurrently to the story of Logan Keller and continue after where the first game concluded. In addition to the ability to customize a character in multiplayer, the player can now customize Bishop, Vegas 2's protagonist. In single-player, the developers claim to have vastly improved teammate AI, so that now teammates cover each other as they advance. There are also several new commands, for example, the ability of a teammate to throw a grenade at a specific point. It is also possible to give commands to one's AI teammates using the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 headset, or a PC microphone.
Single-player
Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 includes a single player campaign/storyline mode as well as a variation of the Terrorist Hunt mode included in previous games, which involves repeated encounters with enemy AI terrorists in a non-linear map.
Terrorist Hunt mode may be played in "Lone Wolf" (alone) or with a pair of computer controlled allies that may be issued environment-based contextual commands. Both the campaign and Terrorist Hunt game modes support cooperative multiplayer which you can have up to three friends playing. Present in all game modes is a multi-dimensional advancement system.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer in Vegas 2 has been expanded to include more than 10 new close-quarters maps, two new adversarial modes, a newer and different rewards system, and according to Ubisoft, improved online matchmaking. Another feature for multiplayer is that using an Xbox Live Vision camera or a PlayStation Eye, the player could take a picture of his/her face and make him/herself the playable character. A camera can also be used in the PC version to create a playable character.
Ubisoft released downloadable content for Vegas 2, a Fan pack that includes three maps from the Rainbow Six Vegas and new XP ranks.
