I have to say that I’m a huge fan of any game involving tactical combat, which also means I’m extremely critical of this genre. R6 used to be an extremely planned swat type simulator, and has since turned into a plan on the go, line of sight breaching, run and gun shooter. I don’t mind it, but I miss the days of old when I could truly plan well organized room clearings without having to see the doors in order to command my team there. I believe that’s my biggest complaint with the latest R6 games. GRAW actually has more aspects of the old R6 than R6V2 does and that just doesn’t make sense. In my opinion R6 needs to get together and have a flipper baby with Full Spectrum Warrior to create a true real time tactical game. Audio wise, I feel these games need to sound as realistic as possible. Anything that seems out of the ordinary is going to quickly take you out of the feeling that you’re in the action. Unfortunately, Rainbow Six Vegas 2 falls a little short in the audio department. Read the full audio review after the jump.

Music:
The music in R6V2 sticks with the whole “intensifies with the action” concept that most of these games have taken on lately. I have to say, it becomes a bit of a distraction, and sort of a giveaway too. As it won’t really ramp down until you’ve finished the action, even if that means you’re hunting the one dude left on the map. The music itself isn’t bad, but it’s not great either. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of variety in it and every time you hop into action, whether you’ve heard this version or not, you feel that you have and it seems repetitive. The only other music complaint I have is the music that plays in when you pause the game, it seems a bit epic for a pause screen, which is kind of annoying since you’re usually pausing the game to walk away from your tv. I highly recommend playing NIN Ghosts as your soundtrack when playing instead of the regular one, it really adds to the atmosphere and loses that whole ramping up and down flaw.

Dialogue:
The dialogue in the game sounds fine, no weird glitches as far as I can tell. It doesn’t sync with their lips half the time, which is kind of lame this far into the next gen of gaming. A lot of the dialogue happens behind closed doors and in rooms that you’re expected to breach, as sort of a hint that there’s guys in the room. Though this effect is done often in tactical games, it seems a little over the top in R6V2. It really feels way louder than it needs to be, and kind of takes you out of the realism for a bit. The little soundbytes shouted out by the enemy during battle tend to get a little repetitive, but are still amusing nonetheless. I love any game that has characters cussing in their soundbytes. Environmentally it seems like there’s really only two effects in the game: Guy in the room talking, Guy behind a wall talking. Nothing too complicated here but nothing new either.

Ambience:
The audio environments created in R6V2 definitely help in establishing the different locations. From the slot machine sounds in the casino, to the random convention type backgrounds in the main hall, I was pretty impressed at how much overall feel the ambiences delivered.

Sound Effects:
The sound effects in the game feel natural for the most part. The guns sound fairly realistic and help add to the games overall feel greatly. Their change in tone as you move through the different areas of each level sound just like you would imagine. There’s a large selection of weaponry and everything sounds as it should. There are also several different samples for the window breaking that seems to happen all the time in this game. I am a little disappointed with the footsteps in this game though. They seem to be the same on most of the surfaces in the game. And don’t react much to small environment changes like a puddle on the floor. There’s one level where a fire is blazing and the overhead sprinklers are on and you still sound like you’re clacking around on dry tile. On the other hand the GUI Sounds are clear and make sense. The Clancy games have always had pretty clean sounding menus and this one doesn’t disappoint.

Final Note:
Overall I’m a little let down by the game audio from this installment of Rainbow Six. I feel like I’m looking for a more serious sounding game than ubi is willing to crank out. I really wish they’d be a little more confident with leading this genre by taking it into new directions with audio, maybe next time.

Music: 2/5
Dialogue: 4/5
SFX: 3/5
AMB: 5/5
Overall: 3/5

posted by Juan Baez III on 03.28.08 @ 12:47 pm

Related Posts