Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 Review: Drop-In Co-op Is the Reason to Return

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 puts you back on the Strip, and this time the game wants you to bring a friend. Ubisoft Montreal built the 2008 sequel around a single idea: that the line between the solo campaign and co-op should be thin enough to step over mid-mission. It was released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in March 2008, while the Microsoft Windows version was delayed until April. The game arrived in Japan on April 24, 2008, for the Xbox 360 and on May 29, 2008, for the PlayStation 3.

Trailer, via Rainbow 6.

Bishop Replaces Logan Keller

The biggest change is who you are. Logan Keller, the lead from the first Vegas, is gone. Ubisoft Montreal swapped him for a player-created character named Bishop, a Rainbow operative with more experience and a deeper stake in the story. Co-op players take the role of Knight, Bishop’s teammate. Knight’s appearance also varies by player choice, but the role is limited: Knight is a co-op body only and does not appear in the single-player campaign’s story.

That trade costs the game a face and buys it ownership. Bishop’s appearance shifts with your choices, and that identity carries across modes. The game bills itself as “part sequel, part prequel,” and the events run both before and alongside Keller’s story, continuing past where the first game ended.

The plot splits in two. In 2005, Bishop leads Logan Keller and Gabriel Nowak through a hostage rescue in the Pyrénées, where Nowak’s impulsiveness gets the hostage negotiator killed. Five years later, Bishop commands Bravo Team — Mike Walter and Jung Park — and heads to Las Vegas after the National Security Agency suspects two smugglers, brothers Miguel and Alvarez Cabreros, of moving chemical weapons out of Mexico.

The Co-op Drop-In Is the Whole Pitch

The headline feature is that you can turn single-player into co-op at any time, just by jumping in. A friend can drop into your campaign and help without changing the story. Ubisoft Montreal says the single-player maps and storyline were built with co-op in mind: every map has multiple entry points, and the story stays the same.

That is a real design commitment, not a menu toggle. It shapes how the levels are built, and in this paper’s view it is the most interesting thing the sequel attempts.

The multiplayer side got its own pass. The mode from the first Vegas returns with 11 new, smaller maps meant to force more intense face-offs, two new adversarial modes, more rewards, and easier matchmaking. Smaller maps look like the right call for a tactical shooter — less ground to cover, more contact — though that is our read, not the developer’s.

Thermal Vision, Shields, and 11 New Weapons

The enemy AI is the sharpest upgrade on paper. Terrorists now carry thermal vision, night vision and shields, and Ubisoft Montreal promises a range of reactions meant to make every fight play differently. You answer with intel and tactics: thermal scanning to find them, leapfrogging to move on them.

Teammate AI got attention too. The developers claim teammates can now cover each other as they advance, and there are new commands, including the ability to order a teammate to throw a grenade at a specific point.

There are 11 new weapons, plus new camouflage, clothing and gear. The customization runs deeper, and it is not cosmetic-only: your character progresses as you do, and rewards earned in single-player carry into multiplayer and back.

The best are back and this time winner takes all.

Sin City is back and bigger, with new hot spots, and the environment moves from dusk to bright daylight to dawn. That is a lighting trick as much as a level-design one, and it changes how the city reads hour to hour.

Where Vegas 2 Stumbles

The structure is the weak point. The campaign opens in the Pyrénées in 2005 and then jumps five years to Las Vegas, and the two halves do not carry equal weight. The prologue sets up Nowak’s recklessness and Bishop’s authority, then the game moves on. What follows is a run of emergencies: the team races to intercept the chemical weapons, gets delayed by a hostage situation, learns a van possibly carrying explosives has fled, and finds the chemical weapons van empty.

In our view that is a lot of running and not much arrival. The plot keeps adding devices — a chemical bomb, a conventional explosive, hostage crises, hidden bombs — and we would say it never slows down to let any one of them land. The game is billed as “your last chance to rescue America’s sexiest city from an escalating terrorist siege,” and to us it plays like a countdown clock instead of a story.

The AI promises are also the kind that only hold up in the playing. Thermal vision and shields on enemies, cover-and-advance on teammates — these are claims from the developer, and our honest read is that they are improvements within a formula, not a rewrite of it.

Here is what we think actually matters, ranked:

1. Drop-in co-op that folds into the campaign without breaking the story.
2. Enemy AI with thermal vision, night vision and shields.
3. Eleven new multiplayer maps built smaller and tighter.
4. Character progression that carries between single-player and multiplayer.
5. The 2005 Pyrénées prologue and its five-year jump.

In our view the first item is the one that lasts, and the fifth is the one that stalls.

An 8.2, and Why

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 is a sequel that knows what it is good at and doubles it. The identity system, the shared progression, the co-op that does not demand a separate mode — we think those are the parts that will keep people playing past the campaign, and they are why the game earns its score.

The cost, to us, is ambition elsewhere. Bishop is a player-created character by design, and we would argue a player-created protagonist cannot carry a story this thin. Sin City is back and bigger, with the environment shifting from dusk to daylight to dawn, but in our reading the plot moving through it is a pileup of emergencies rather than a narrative.

In our view the co-op is the reason to return, and the campaign is the reason you will finish it once and move on.

co-op games · PS3 · Rainbow Six Vegas 2 · tactical shooter · Ubisoft Montreal · Xbox 360