We were up against a hand picked crack Ubi team...
Ok, so by now you should have read my experience of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 in the co-op mode, which was that it’s brilliant fun if you’re playing with someone sitting next to you… and probably almost as much fun if you’re in a co-op game over Xbox LIVE too. The difference being that over system link you and your teammate can shout at each other and have a laugh at the same time… something that doesn’t quite happen over the ‘net but hey ho.But after all this co-op fun and a bit of ranking up and unlocking a few extra weapons, it was now time to really put our skills to the test. Now the Xbox 360 isn’t my machine of choice for FPS games, I’m a stick-in-the-mud keyboard and mouse PC based shooter fan… so my joypad abilities are somewhat below par. By that I mean I can’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo once I have a joypad in my hands… something that was to become the focal point of the session… Not cows’ arses and musical instruments, but just how truly awful I am in a firefight when joypads are the control method of choice.
But who were we playing against in this clash of the titans? Would it be a random bunch of Ubisoft guys, selected because they had nothing better to do? Perhaps Ubi had dragged some folk off the street and press-ganged them into playing? Maybe, just maybe, our opposition would be as inept at shooters as I am? No such luck. Ubisoft had hand-picked a team of four that, for the last few months, had lived, breathed, ate and slept Rainbow Six Vegas 2… yes, they’d line us up against the Rainbow Six Vegas 2 playtest team… not only were we gonna get creamed, but we’d get buttered, toasted and served up with an apple in our mouths like some Sunday roast… and it was only a Friday.
But Ubi did take pity on us and offer up JP, a god among men, who is in charge of every aspect of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 multiplayer. So although we were up against a bunch of players who knew every map better than their own homes, knew every weapon, every trick and basically everything about Rainbow Six Vegas 2, at least we had out ace-in-the-hole in JP… though I still maintain that I had to do more than my fair share of carrying the bloke. (By the way, that last bit is blatantly untrue.)
We kicked off with a session of Team Leader multiplayer, which sees one of your squad marked out as the leader. You can see who it is on your display but not where they are... but to keep things spicey, enemy team leaders can see where each other is, and, if they feel like being bastids, direct their team-mates to attack your team leader. Whilst your team leader is alive, you can respawn but once he’s dead, you’ve just got that one precious life. You can win each map one of two ways, either by getting your team leader to the extraction point or by killing the opposing team leader and all the other enemy players.