Early this morning, I completed Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 on realistic difficulty. Great game, though it did seem a little shorter and easier than the first Rainbow Six: Vegas. Overall, I found the game quite enjoyable though it was much like Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 was to GRAW: a faithful sequel, but feels somewhat like a glorified expansion. As with GRAW2, one of the most difficult sections is when you are inserted solo. The end sequence was also a bit of a struggle.

Overall, the game was quite enjoyable. The pacing was good, and there wasn't any section that really snagged me up. The thermal scan was a nice addition, as were the minor tweaks to AI behaviour and greater control over their abilities (i.e. throw grenade commands). The ability to facial map yourself onto the main character for the storyline was also pretty cool and added to the immersion factor - though without the flight helmet I look kind of like "Odo" from Deep Space Nine.

A few minor gripes: enemies seem to be able to hit you even when you're in cover behind a cement wall. Blind firing with a shotgun requires you to hold down the trigger button which is counter-intuitive. The range on the shotgun is also quite unrealistic - as you can practically snipe with it. One of the things that really impressed me with the original R6V were the breathtaking visuals of Sin City by night - it really captured the glitz and glamour of the Nevada desert paradise. I didn't experience the same feeling with R6V2, the cityscapes - while impressively detailed were also unimpressively bland.

Luckily I didn't fall victim to the apparent 'glitch' for the Freedom Shall Prevail achievement. This is perhaps because I completed the entire game solo. I find that games like this in co-op are far too easy due to the respawning system, whereby when you die your co-op partner just has to stay in cover until you respawn. In this regard, you can technically just brute force your way through the entire game, akin to a BioShock Vita Chamber. If you've fallen victim to this achievement glitch, apparently you can overcome it by playing through an act in co-op as Knight.

However, I am still missing my Private First Class achievement. Luckily I haven't ranked up to Officer yet, as it would really grind my gears to have an Officer achievement before PFC, like how I managed to get Halo 3's Act III and IV before Act II due to midnight launch co-op confusion. So, I'll be putting R6V2 on the back-burner until there's a title update fixing this issue. The PFC issue stems from bonus XP granted to you if you've played the original R6V - apparently none of the beta testing accounts had. There is a workaround if you haven't yet booted R6V2 with your main gamertag:


Hope that helps. Happy achievement hunting!