I finally got round to playing Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 this weekend. Admittedly the two sessions I spent playing only totalled up to four hours or so of gameplay.

For those of you who are unaware of what the team in Rainbow Six are all about, then I could be mean and direct you to the Novel ‘Rainbow Six’ by Tom Clancy. However that is a little mean so I will briefly explain it for you. By ‘I’ I really mean wikipedia, who have an excellent write up of the team available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_6.

So RAINBOW are a NATO counter terrorist special forces unit, and in this title you are playing as the leader of a four man squad, as you infiltrate and assault terrorist held positions in the casinos of Las Vegas.

While playing this I had the good fortune to be in Co-op mode, where I was squad leader, and my friend Idle Han was playing as one of my squad. This led to my first complaint about this game. Only I could give orders to the two AI controlled squad members, more realistic maybe having a clearly defined chain of command, but when I am pinned down and stuck returning fire, Han while in a better position to direct the troops could not give orders to the AI troops to assist.

However that little problem aside for the most part this game is very, very good to play! The AI squad is easy to control, with the A button acting as a contextual button, and the back and down buttons switching between actions (hold, regroup) and behaviour (assault, infiltrate).

It is a fantastic feeling you get as you watch your troops get into position and then storm a room, watching as they drop smoke grenades to hide their positions and execute a quick clean takedown of a room full of terrorists. All as per the orders you gave them with few clicks of your controller.

However the AI were very happy to hold position everytime you ordered them up against a doorway, and then entered yourself. If you didn’t remember to order them to regroup they would stay there indefinatly. They also on one occasion glitched as they both tried to enter a doorway at the same time and got stuck running into each other, rather than one letting another through first.

The actual manner in which you play the campaign is quite different from Halo 3, my usual frame of reference when playing an FPS on the Xbox. For starters like Call of Duty 4 the game features a more realistic damage system, you can only take so much damage before you are killed. Switching between weapons is slower, again more realisticly portraying a soldier pulling out his backup weapon out from his webbing, before being able to open fire.

I never got a chance to play the online multiplayer aspect of this game myself, which is a shame considering the high quality of the single player campaign. I would have loved to take advantage of the online cooperative play to get four of us in versus the single player campaign.

If you liked Halo I would definatly say Rent this title, as I feel you might not enjoy the game-play transition. However if you are a COD4 fan and if you can put up with the few minor flaws in what is otherwise an excellent game then I would happily recommend that you Buy this title. I will be to.