Be warned, though, that Vegas takes its tension-drenched atmosphere very seriously - perhaps too seriously for some gamers. Despite all your cautious self-preservation, a good portion of your conflicts will inevitably finish with a "game over" screen and, just like that, you've lost half an hour of your life. Vegas doesn't enable you to save anywhere and check points are spread extremely thin. Some will find this design choice incredibly irritating; others will enjoy how it ratchets up the feeling of mortal danger even further. Our opinionshifted with the quality of the mission we were stuck on and how much fun it was to try over and over.
Remarkably, we found ourselves reloading that last checkpoint without hesitation more times than not. The game gives you so many tools to work with (snake cameras, smoke grenades, heat vision, etc) that you're always eager and able to attempt new strategies.
The most obvious tool is your Rainbow Six team- really more of a Rainbow Two- and they are surprisingly helpful. Crucial, even. Completing a mission without having them breach and clear a door, or sending them to the opposite side of a room to draw fire, can be next to impossible. And while they do need an awful lot of medical attention, throwing yourself into the center of crossfire to deliver a life-saving Pulp Fiction-esque injection is one of the most heart-pumping aspects of this game, or any game.
