Tomorrow, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 ships to retail stores all over. I, for one, am
extremely excited. Although the SP campaigns haven't really been good since the R6's of
long past, the multiplayer in the last Vegas was absolutely stellar. I played it far too much,
although I never attained the elusive ELITE ranking. (So I guess you could argue I didn't
play it enough).

With Vegas 2, Ubisoft seems to have addressed quite a few of the problems associated with
the first title, but they've still left some to be desired in terms of feature sets. The P.E.C.
(Persistent Elite Creation) system returns, and also extends to the SP portion of the game.
That'll be a nice touch, and will reward gamers for replaying SP and co-op segments, as
well as grinding hundreds of hours into the multiplayer portion. The added co-op story will
also be a nice addition, allowing you to progress through the game with a buddy. From a
story standpoint, Ubi also said that this game will actually have a real ending, as opposed to
the blatant cliff hanger that ended the last game. They've also further refined the Terrorist
Hunts by adding respawns, which is definitely welcome.

In terms of the multiplayer, they've kept the basic XP system of the previous iteration, but
added some features which are pretty obviously inspired by COD4. There are now
challenges for each weapon/play style, and you earn XP from kills as well as match
performance. Luckily, they've also added Join In Progress to help aid us in finding games,
but they have neglected to add a Party System. I don't know why Ubisoft/Tom Clancy
games refuse to implement this time saving feature. After playing Halo 3 and Call Of Duty
4, having to manually find games with friends is going to feel very outdated. It's only a
minor annoyance, but as long as I plan to be playing this game, I can see it driving me
crazy.

All in all, I'm very stoked for this release and can't wait to pick it up. Any other
Dtoiders excited about it? If you guys want to play it up on LIVE, my gamertag is:
dj fantastica.
I'm looking forward to spending countless hours freeing the world (or at least Las Vegas)
from terrorists hell-bent on destroying our way of life (or at least our casinos).

- john