Fun With Sequels

This weekend has been full of sequel fun for me and mine. We kicked it off by watching Delta Force 2, lured in by the promise of terrible acting, cheesey 80’s explosions and a bounty of awful one-liners. Of course, we’d never seen Delta Force 1, which was alright as the sequel seemed to have no relevance to any film predecessor, any interesting moral stance, reality, or rational thought at all. What it was good for was straight up American entertainment, and we were entertained. (Beverage of Freedom in hand. (Not really, that stuff is poison.))

But that wasn’t the last of the sequels. Master P brought over Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, to scratch his horrible itch of curiosity. Now, I was skeptical. Vegas was good, its graphics still impressed me, its gameplay was solid. I was, however, done with it. So they added more weapons in Vegas 2? More armor and camouflage? So there’s a little graphical upgrade? Is that really worth sixty dollars?

Well, apparently it was, because after seeing Master P play it for twenty minute’s I’d resolved to have it for my own, and afterwards went down to Gamestop and shelled out the better part of my precious ducats for a copy. Now, I must justify myself. First off, the graphical update isn’t necessarily an overhaul, but it pushes the bar up from noticeably next-gen to downright impressive. I have created an example:

There, you see? Vegas the original in-game on the left, Vegas 2 in-game on the right. What I found especially nice was the detail put into the character and weapon models, though I’m sure a closer look at the environment would affirm that this game is better-looking all around. Also, point of personal interest, the C4 explosions are now almost illegally fancy. Makes me wish I could carry around more than a pair.

Now, more maps, more weapons, more camo: all good. Of course, there’s nothing especially interesting here. Nothing that I wouldn’t have argued for release as DLC. What I do consent to shelling sixty shillings for is the way in which these things are presented to you. First of all, if you’ve played Vegas 1, Vegas 2 recognizes your rank and gives you all of the gear you already earned. So that’s nice. Secondly, there is now a system for gaining experience–which adds to rank–in terrorist hunt and story modes offline or on a LAN. That’s right, all of those times you try to run a high-density map on Realistic will count for something! In fact, I’ve recently discovered that exp. gained on Realistic is double that of normal, so being an average, bullet-wound-susceptible human actually makes ranking-up go faster.

Furthermore, for each kill, points are added to one of three categories: either Marksman, CQB or Assault. Killing enemies from a distance add to marksman, at close range to CQB, and shooting them through cover to Assault (which is kind of strange, really). You can rank up in each of these categories individually and, in what I consider a brilliant move, Vegas 2 awards weapons based on ranks in each school. You won’t get the more specialized sniper rifles by rushing in and shotgunning fellas. (Interesting note here: My spell check is not at all concerned with ’shotgunning.’ Apparently, it’s a common English word. I’ve got to look that up at the WRC on Monday.) Anyway, this system of rewarding play-styles with weapons reinforcing each style is, in my humble opinion, awesome.

Though I could go on and on, I hear the crackling fuse of my hypothetical readers reaching its end, so I’ll wrap it up. Why did I just pay sixty guineas for a game I already had? For the incentive of an ranking system, for pretty graphics, and for the fresh breath of air. Let’s just say that it was worth it.

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